Genre/Influences: Electro-pop, indie-pop, wave-pop.

Background/Info: 0Kontrol saw the daylight early 2018. The band was set up as an internet-project between St. Petersburg (Russia) and Brussels (Belgium) featuring  Vladimir 4.44 (involved with the post-punk band The Quinsy) and Masha Kasha (active as a synth-pop journalist). They were joined by third member Konstantin Stanis1avsky.

Content: 0Kontrol is clearly driven by ‘pop’ influences, but we can’t speak about a clear and explicit sound. The songs are covering other influences, which are moving from indie-like songs to d’n’b passages to an EBM bass line reminding me of Front 242. Diversity is the keyword to seize the sound of “3rdeye2ndhand” and that’s an aspect that also comes back in the lyrics and vocals. The songs were sung in English, French, German and Russian. Masha Kasha is the lead vocalist, but there are also male (backing) vocals.

The last songs are remixes by People Theatre, WANT/ED and Alphamay.

+ + + : I like the diversity of the album. Right in the beginning it definitely sounds a bit versatile, but you rapidly will understand 0Kontrol deals with a wide-spectrum electro-pop sometimes reinforced by guitar playing. The songs are mostly powerful and I especially like the energetic cadence running through this opus. Now melodic and then into power-pop, this album has a lot to offer and make discover. The vocals have something fragile, but still featuring a few heavenly passages. I also like the EBM bass line running through “Traitors”. The songs have been masterly boosted by the remix of WANT/ed.

– – – : 0Kontrol still has to polish some little details of the production, but I don’t have real major minus points. I however think the artwork; especially the back-cover could have been better and clearer.

Conclusion: 0Kontrol is an original and refreshing newcomer band active in the wider fields of electro-pop music.

Best songs: “Light”, “Gologramma”, “Lune”, “Traitors – WANT/ed Remix”.

Rate: (7½).

Artist: www.facebook.com/nolkontrol

Label: www.scent–air.com / www.facebook.com/ScentairRecords

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

(By our Norwegian correspondent Jan Ronald Stange)
The Kaliningrad based Russian electro pop band WANT/ed have had several collaborations with other Baltic and Scandinavian bands and artists the recent years, more or less becoming their trademark. On their latest EP “Peace” (five remixes of two songs) they collaborated yet again with the Danish singer Catrine Christensen (from SoftWave), and the result can be heard in the player below – another fine mix of Scandinavian vocals with Russian beats!

Listen & buy at BandCamp, Amazon and Spotify:

jrstange

Sometimes – when I’m not cooking, biking, listening to music or attending concerts, I write stuff for Side-Line.com. Mostly about Norwegian bands, but it’s been some Swedish, English, American, Danish, German and others too… 😉

www.facebook.com/jrstange

Genre/Influences: Electro-pop, body-pop.

Background/Info: Russian electro-pop formation WANT/ed returns with their fourth full length album. The band actually consisting of Yury Aryasov and Sergey Surkov unleashed an album featuring 10 songs plus 2 remixes. Some of the cuts have been already released on previous EP’s.

Content: The band invited numerous guest singers to achieve this work. Tomas Gustafsson (known from Erotic Elk) is not only singing, but also playing guitar on a few cuts. I also have to mention Patrik Hansson (Vanguard) and Miranda Cartel while names like Catrine Christensen, Holger Muller, Evgenly Rodionov and Teemu Salo (Fadeout)       are maybe less familiar names.

Because of the different vocalists this album also sounds pretty diversified. The tracks however moves in between electro-pop and harder body-pop cuts. Some of the female singers cover the work with a breeze of sensuality while the male singers mainly sing on the ‘harder’ cuts. From danceable tracks to melancholic passages, WANT/ed clearly sounds clearly inspired by Depeche Mode.

The bonus remixes have been done by Uncarnate and Erotic Elk.

+ + + : I’m often a skeptical about a band working with multiple singers, but I’ve to admit WANT/ed did a real great selection. The diversity of the work is interesting as you might be seduced by the sensuality of the songs featuring Miranda Cartel and Catrine Christensen at one side and Patrik Hansson (often linked to Mesh) at the other side. The songs are sometimes evoking Depeche Mode, but the most important thing is that they’re well-crafted and revealing all the experience of this Russian duo. Among the harder cuts I’ve to mention the pretty cool “Future Rhythm 2017” with guitar playing by Tomas Gustafsson.

– – – : This is album sounds cool, diversified and enjoyable from start till finish, but I’m just missing a potential hit!

Conclusion: WANT/ed simply confirms great electro-pop is not only and most of the times made in Germany or Sweden, but also in Russia. ScentAir has a nose for national talents and WANT/ed definitely is a band to discover and keep an eye on.

Best songs: “Future Rhythm 2017”, “Fall”, “Nothing To Fear”, “My Pride”.

Rate: (7).

Artist: www.facebook.com/wantedelectronicsounds

Label: www.scent–air.com / www.facebook.com/ScentairRecords

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Genre/Influences: Electro-pop, EBM.

Background/Info: Dimitri (DMT) Berzerk is a Mexican DJ and producer you for sure already discovered by one of his endless remixes he made for other artists. He started assembling these remixes on albums and has unleashed the second volume in the “Remixes Collection”. The CD format is strictly limited to 200 copies and has been released on his very own label.

Content: This second edition features remixes Dimitri Berzerk made for Future Perfect, Reflection, Sinestar, Vox Humana, Cid Project, Want/ed, Devilsight, Dead Man Recovering, Zoon Politicon, Wumpscut, Data and Kromak. It’s an interesting selection of bands dealing with different kinds of electronic music; from electro-pop to EBM to dark-electronics.

DMT Berzerk seriously reworked the songs into mainly electro-pop driven edits, but he also added or hold on EBM influences on other cuts.

+ + + : Making remixes is a long-time habit in different music genres, but the interesting element about this artist is he has some particular skills to do the job. It’s not just a remix that has been made in a hurry, but you can feel a real sound approach and I dare to say ‘sound philosophy’ behind the remixes. Even if most of the songs have been restyled into danceable and sometimes clubby electro-pop, I also noticed a few surprising songs such as the minimal remix of Wumpscut’s “Wreath Of Barbs” and the trance vibes that have been held on at Kromak’s (side-project C-Lekktor) “Dying 4 U”. There’s a great diversity, which sometimes moves at the edge of electro-ambient and then becomes pretty vintage-like, but globally speaking there’s a real coherence between all remixes.

– – – : This is a fully enjoyable and entertaining album, but maybe without absolute hits although multiple tracks for DJ’s.

Conclusion: I’ve never fond of remixes, but this kind of concept is different. I think it’s a damned good idea to get the remixes Dimitri Berzerk made for others on one disc.

Best songs: Kromak: “Dying 4 U feat. Manriquez”, Sinestar: “Fortunes Faded”, Wumpscut: “Wreath Of Barbs”, Zoon Politicon: “Dreamer”, Devilsight: “This Is The Feeling Of My Hate”.

Rate: (7½).

Artist: www.dmtberzerk.mx / www.facebook.com/dimitri.berzerk

Label: www.sector–industrial.com / www.facebook.com/sector.industrial.producciones

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

(by our Norwegian correspondent Jan Ronald Stange)

The Russian band WANT/ed, with Sergey Surkov (music, sampling, production) and Yury Aryasov (music) from Kaliningrad, just released their fourth album “Unthinkable” this week. As they yet again have increased their guest vocals we had to ask Sergey about this quite international release.

Side-Line: It’s noticeable that you’re expanding the use of different people on vocals, more for each album, and lots of foreigners. Can you tell us about the process of finding all these people and where they come from?

Sergey: As you know, for the first two albums we had a permanent singer, Evgeny Rodionov. After his departure, of course the question arose, “what to do?”

On the horizon was Holger Müller from Germany, he sang a couple of songs. As other songs for the album “Fringe” were created, the idea came to involve other singers in this process. He became a transition period in the sound and approach to music.

And now we’re at the fourth album; “Unthinkable”. We wanted to change something in ourselves, our personal attitude to music and its creation. In 2016, about four compositions were prepared. The question “who will sing?” constantly arose – we wanted something new…
We started with involving Holger Müller again, along with Patrik Hansson and Tomas Gustafsson from Sweden. On the Internet I found a girl named Miranda Cartel from Poland, real name Emmanuella Robak. While she sang, Tomas made an arrangement on the guitar for a song that has become «My Pride». I liked the result, later we made it a single. The real guitar was new to us.
Then Tomas recorded the vocals for the song “Nothing To Fear”, and again I asked him to play something on the guitar. And for this single we made two acoustic versions.

Then I saw an ad on the Internet from the group “SoftWave” from Denmark … They were looking for remixers, I made two remixes for them, later they were published on their CD “Together Alone – the remixes”. After that I suggested to their vocalist Catrine Christensen to contribute on a song. It became “A World Within A World”, and the result really encouraged us!
Her voice was a real discovery for us and I invited her to sing another song, which became “When Nightmares Bleed” – the most dynamic song on this album.

Another new and interesting voice for us this time was Teemu Salo from Finland, who did the vocal on “World Empty of Stars”.
This time Patrik Hansson only sang one song; “Fall”, and Holger sang three songs – excellent vocals!

In this album we also included a new version of the 2014 track “Future Rhythm”, with vocals by Tomas, and we also recorded extra guitar distortion to the chorus.

The guys and girls gave all 100%, and maybe more. As you said Jan Ronald, the whole album turned out around the Baltic Sea. We like that our geography is expanding and the music gives us so many different emotions. It should have been called “BALTIC” – maybe next time!

Preorder the album: http://www.poponaut.de/wanted-unthinkable-p-17015.html

Listen & buy: https://wanted.bandcamp.com/album/unthinkable

jrstange

Sometimes – when I’m not cooking, biking, listening to music or attending concerts, I write stuff for Side-Line.com. Mostly about Norwegian bands, but it’s been some Swedish, English, American, Danish, German and others too… 😉

www.facebook.com/jrstange

Genre/Influences: Electro-pop.

Background/Info: Telekon reminds me of an album of Gary Numan, which might be a potential source of inspiration. This duo is driven by Juan Grande (Techni-ka) and Raúl Muñoz-Torrero (Insight). The released their debut full length now a few months ago on Russian label Scentair Records.

Content: Scentair Records is a prolific ground for electro-pop formations and that’s clearly the main influence running throughout the album. “Hope For Believers” has a cool vintage sound approach, but which is also inspired by Depeche Mode. These cuts are more ‘classical’ pop songs. Some of the cuts are pretty dance-like.

The album features 10 songs plus 5 remixes by Nordika, Uncreated, WANT/ed, Cyborgdrive and a remix by Telekon themselves.

+ + + : This is an accomplished debut work mixing 80s influences together with contemporary elements. I especially prefer the songs, which are less inspired by Depeche Mode. I especially refer to the debut part of the work, which is more into a creative process of great sound treatments, effects, cool choruses and electronic space sequences. The vocals (sung in English) are pretty cool.

– – – : The ‘traditional’ pop songs aren’t bad at all, but suffering from originality. I also expected a bit more out of the remixes, which don’t bring a real bonus to the work.

Conclusion: Telekon has released an interesting debut featuring noticeable cuts and a mature song writing.

Best songs: “Time”, “King Of Nothing”, “Promise Of Radio”, “Be grateful For What You Have”.

Rate: (7½).

Band: www.facebook.com/Telekon

Label: www.scent–air.com / www.facebook.com/ScentairRecords

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

(By our Norwegian correspondent Jan Ronald Stange)
The Russian electronic band WANT/ed continues their collaborations across the Baltic Sea when releasing their new digital EP ‘Nothing to fear’. This time with the Swedish musicians Tomas Gustafsson and Fredrik Sigeback from Erotik Elk, resulting in two excellent electronic tracks, but surprisingly also two acoustic versions.

Tracklist:
01 Nothing To Fear [Single Version]
02 Nothing To Fear [Erotic Elk Remix]
03 Start To Leave [Acoustic Version]
04 Nothing To Fear [Acoustic Version]

Buy the album at iTunes , or download the EP here (Russian) or here (English).

jrstange

Sometimes – when I’m not cooking, biking, listening to music or attending concerts, I write stuff for Side-Line.com. Mostly about Norwegian bands, but it’s been some Swedish, English, American, Danish, German and others too… 😉

www.facebook.com/jrstange

Out of the blue the belgian Alfa Matrix label releases the 2nd volume in their massive ‘Electronic Body Matrix‘ series. The first volume of this compilation series (check the release here) got qualified by many as the ultimate anthology of the EBM / electro-industrial scene. The 2nd edition of the “Electronic Body Matrix” compilation box once again manages featuring a real “who is who” artist selection bringing all new, exclusive or rare tracks.

This 2nd edition presents some 76 bands across 4 CD’s plus an exclusive download link giving you access to another 40 additional bands for a total music play of 116 songs (over 70% rare or previously unreleased tracks), an astounding 10 hour sonic journey! Marketed as a deluxe carton box with an extensive 28-page booklet with band pictures and credits.

All together on one same compilation, the leaders of the electronic scene of yesterday and tomorrow come together and include: FRONT 242 (exclusive mix), NITZER EBB (exclusive mix), FIXMER/MC CARTHY, RHYS FULBER, DANIEL B. PROTHESE, DIVE, BRUDERSCHAFT, POUPPEE FABRIKK, ARMAGEDDON DILDOS, KOMOR KOMMANDO, ELEGANT MACHINERY, AYRIA, FUNKER VOGT, PLASTIC NOISE EXPERIENCE, NOISUF-X, NEUROTICFISH, AESTHETISCHE, THE PSYCHIC FORCE, IMPLANT, [SITD], ALIEN VAMPIRES, HOCICO, ORPHX, NÖVÖ, METROLAND, PITCH YAR OF MATTER, MONDTRÄUME, CULTURE KÜLTUR, TOLCHOK, DEUTSCHE BANK, AVARICE IN AUDIO, THE SEXORCIST, PSY’AVIAH, AIBOFORCEN, ELEKTROKLÄNGE, R.I.P. (ROPPONGI INC PROJECT), ENTRZELLE, and many more, without forgetting the impressive remix work contributions of bands like EISFABRIK, FADERHEAD, ORANGE SECTOR, NZ, ELM, etc.

Add to this all hardcore ambassadors of today’s pure EBM league in the likes of SPETSNAZ, ELM, NZ, AD:KEY, AUTODAFEH, AGREZZIOR, ORANGE SECTOR,KANT KINO, CELLULOIDE, LIGHTS OF EUPHORIA, DIFFUZION, PATENBRIGADE: WOLFF, ACCESSORY, CEPHALGY, AMORPHOUS, VENAL FLESH, PROTECTORATE, STOPPENBERG, CENTHRON, LLUMEN, CARDINAL NOIRE, MILDREDA, CRYTEK, KONER, etc.

The exclusive bonus download link included in this 4CD box also gives you access to some 40 additional songs from artists like MENTALLO & THE FIXER, ACYLUM, SERPENTS, ZOMBIE GIRL, AENGELDUST, EQUITANT, NETZ, STUDIO-X, SIVA SIX, NEIKKA RPM, ESSENCE OF MIND, DEKAD, INTERFACE, NEUTRAL LIES, CIRCUITO CERRADO, TRAGIC IMPULSE, WANT/ED, HELALYN FLOWERS, DIVERJE, SCHWARZBLUT, TOTEM OBSCURA, DIGITAL GEIST, KILMARTH, SIGNAL OPERATOR, ELECTRO SYNTHETIC REBELLION, DIGITAL GEIST, TECHNOID, DEN C.T. BUG, and many more!

The full track listing can be checked right here.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil.

side-line.com

(By our Norwegian correspondent Jan Ronald Stange) The new album from the Russian electro-pop band WANT/ed  includes collaborations with various musicians such as Holger Muller, Patrik Hansson (Vanguard), Tomas Gustafsson (Erotik Elk), Dania Morales (Anything Box), Vlada Haruhi, Julie Newman-Sanders (One Vista), Alexander Brown and Manfred Tomaser (!distain).

The album, named “Fringe”, opens a new page in the band’s history. This time the members adds different methods to the already recognizable sound. As a result is 14 diversified tracks: pure melancholy, serene harmony and full of optimism at the same time. 14 different chapters in a book named Fringe.

jrstange

Sometimes – when I’m not cooking, biking, listening to music or attending concerts, I write stuff for Side-Line.com. Mostly about Norwegian bands, but it’s been some Swedish, English, American, Danish, German and others too… 😉

www.facebook.com/jrstange

(By our Norwegian correspondent Jan Ronald Stange)

The Russian electro pop group WANT/ed releases the single “Trust a broken heart” in collaboration with the British band One Vista, with their singer Julie Newman Sanders on vocals. The 2-track single is being offered as a ‘name your price’ 2-track download single.

Listen & download on Bandcamp.

jrstange

Sometimes – when I’m not cooking, biking, listening to music or attending concerts, I write stuff for Side-Line.com. Mostly about Norwegian bands, but it’s been some Swedish, English, American, Danish, German and others too… 😉

www.facebook.com/jrstange