Venera, a newly formed experimental electronic outfit featuring James Shaffer (Korn) and Atlanta-based composer/filmmaker, Chris Hunt, release their self-titled, debut album on Oct. 13 via Ipecac Recordings.
Venera enigmatically launched their debut song “Swarm” (https://venera.lnk.to/swarm) late last month. No information, no pre-sale, simply the three-minute single released in tandem with a mysterious screed and a pulsating black-and-white video directed by EFFIXX.
Today, the pair step out from the shadows, revealing who and what Venera is, as well as releasing their first single, and video, for the track “Hologram” (https://venera.lnk.to/hologram). A song that features guest vocals/piano from Rizz of VOWWS.
In a joint statement from Shaffer and Hunt, they explain: “’Hologram’ emerged quickly from our first session together. A nearly unchanging drum machine pattern nested in warbling guitars. We don’t interact much with holograms but they seem to offer an image of an alluring emptiness and light, which resonates well with the universe we are driven to explore.”
Several guests join Hunt and Shaffer on Venera. Drummer Deantoni Parks (Mars Volta, John Cale) plays on “Erosion” and “Disintegration,” HEALTH’s Jacob Duzsik contributes vocals on “Ochre” and Alain Johannes lends his voice to “Triangle.” The album was self-produced.
Album pre-orders (https://venera.lnk.to/venera) are available now, with Venera available digitally, as well as physically on CD, and an assortment of vinyl, including limited-edition red, snowy white and skull gold variants.
Today NYC based band Lathe of Heaven share their new single “At Moment’s Edge“, which is taken from their upcoming debut album ‘Bound By Naked Skies’ out Sept 1st via Sacred Bones.
When writing “At Moment’s Edge”, Lathe of Heaven initially intended the song to be a one-off, poppy departure from the otherwise depressive and urgent atmosphere of their debut record ‘Bound by Naked Skies’. Once recording the track however, the band found it to contextualise perfectly, the dualistic nature of the record and the band as a whole, proving itself to be a prime candidate for the album’s second single. Laden with dreamy synths and enchanting vocal melodies, “At Moment’s Edge” invokes within the listener a current of visceral elusion, ebbing towards a total re-imagination of any prior notions they may have had about the band.
“Existing in the lyrics are themes of process, change and complexity on a very personal level,” remarks the band’s vocalist Gage Allison, “which we believe is indicative of the recurring themes represented in the album.”
The video accompanying the track was directed by Emma Penrose and Zach Shorrosh, who aptly cultivate the surreal and absurd atmosphere the song was meant to invoke. When asked to comment on the video Penrose stated “Gage reached out to us asking if we wanted to make a music video for Lathe of Heaven and showed us maybe the most thought-out mood board I’ve ever seen, referencing Man Ray, Caravaggio, Marcel Duchamp as well as classic and contemporary science fiction. Inspired by the monochromatic imagery, we shot At Moment’s Edge entirely on 16mm black & white film & print stock and developed it by hand ourselves. We processed the 900’ of film at Mono No Aware using an eco friendly developer consisting of coffee, beer & vitamin C powder. The results turned out exactly as we’d hoped.”
With little more under their belt than a relentless string of live performances, and a twice pressed (subsequently sold out) Self-Titled Demo, NYC based band Lathe of Heaven have proved themselves to be a potent and cohesive element amidst the torrent of hardcore punk and synth-driven pop revival currently proliferating throughout the U.S. underground. Formed in 2021, the band features members of noteworthy Brooklyn based projects such as People’s Temple, Porvenir Oscuro, Pawns, Android, Hustler and more.
Though this roster of past and alternate musical endeavors exposes a diverse range of genre and skill sets, Lathe of Heaven can only be understood as a departure from such influences, exploring a sound entirely of its own.
Now nearly two years later, LoH are finally prepared to unleash their debut Full Length Bound by Naked Skies. With careful consideration, this eleven track LP blends elements of British New-Wave and Finnish Post-Punk into a nuanced juxtaposition of 80s sonic mania. Incorporating themes of classic and contemporary Science-Fiction, Bound by Naked Skies indebts itself as much to its literary influences as it does to the music that informs its unique and deliberate sound. Paying powerful homage to the uncanny worlds of authors Arthur C. Clarke, Octavia Butler, Ken Liu and of course Ursula Le Guin (whose novel the band is named after), themes of cosmology (Ekpyrosis), simulation (Heralds of the Circuit-Born), mental illness (Moon-Driven Sea), and ontology (Entropy, The Spider.), weave implicitly throughout the arch of the record, providing a sense of insight into the minds of those plagued by the ambiguous nature of humankind’s terrifying and not-so-distant future.
Lathe of Heaven tour dates: 18th Aug – Union Pool (w/ Temple of Angels), Brooklyn,, NY (Tickets) 7th Sept – TV Eye (w/ Witness and Eyedrops), Brooklyn, NY (Tickets) 13th Sept – The Dirty Bird (w/ The Poisoning and The Exile), Santa Ana, CA 14th Sept – Knucklehead ( w/ The Exile and Shrouds), Los Angeles, CA 15th Sept – Zebulon (w/ Diode), Los Angeles, CA 16th Sept – Stork Club (w/ Vulture Feather and Vague Lanes), Oakland, CA 17th Sept – Enzyme, San Francisco, CA 18th Sept – Naked Lounge (w/ Vulture Feather and Exposure Therapy), Chico, CA 19th Sept – Coffin Club, Portland, OR 21st Sept – 23rd Sept – Varning Festival, Montreal, MTL (Tickets)
A pungent ooze emanates from the subway. As a sticky drum machine sequence rolls out like thick dark fog, ice cold synth swirls rise from the depths.
Since the debut album Europe By Night, one of the main references associated with Henrik Stelzer and his Metro Riders project has been that of cinema, and particularly the European genre films of the 1980s. With its seedy subject matters manifesting both in visual style and music, the vibe of that era has crystallized over time. Passed down to us from deteriorating video cassettes, it became an invaluable key to decoding our present day reality.
And this is true for his new album Lost in Reality, announced today for a September 29th release via Possible Motive. Stelzer does not hide the fact that he builds heavily on that vibe; referencing it through track titles and utilizing a particular recording setup consisting of a Fostex and a reel to reel in order to achieve and recreate the feeling of those soundtracks — as heard on magnetic tape rather than vinyl.
Hear it yourself on the new single “Spasm,” out today, and pre-order the album here.
The motion picture soundtrack as an arbitrary genre definition becomes, in the hands of Stelzer, a pair of X-ray specs for him to envision a kind of music that deals in grains and contrasts rather than hooks and choruses. And like Roddy Piper in John Carpenter’s 1988 film They Live, he hands those glasses over for us to see the true face of our times.
On Lost In Reality, Metro Riders maps out an emotional geography of the cities at night, wherein the cinematic haze becomes a tool by which we can view the cities with new eyes. Not steering away from the darker alleys nor the harsh realities of modern day politics masquerading as progress. Yet escapism, in the end, seems the only viable option. But not as an endgame, but rather a stepping stone for building a new vocabulary for an utopian language.
Lost In Reality is the second album from Sweden based Metro Riders (real name Henrik Stelzer). Employing outdated software and now obsolete analogue recording equipment, Metro Riders conjures a suspenseful and gloomy, true to the era re-imagining of lost sounds. Metro Riders encompasses a very niche palette, everything from the prophetic visions of John Carpenter,to the warbled world of Troma films, to Italian horror flicks, euro-crime and the cybernetic sewers of The Skaters.
Alternative-electronic artist Slighter presents his new album‘This Futile Engine’, released via Brutal Resonance Records and Confusion Inc. This 13-track record features collaborations with Steven Seibold (Hate Dept) and Craig Joseph Huxtable (Ohm, Landscape Body Machine, Front Line Assembly, Noise Unit), as well as Yvette Winkler (Vaselyne), Morgue VVitch and Deep Dark Water.
Slighter is the solo moniker of Colin C., who has been fine-tuning the future of electronic music since kickstarting his music in Mid City Los Angeles in the early 2000s. Creating from a unique vantage point, he was involved in collaborations for various Metropolis Records releases and Cleopatra Records compilations, in addition to Slighter releases via his own Confusion Inc. imprint.
Mixed and mastered atThe Cell Studio, through the sonic experimentation and innovation entailed in recording this album, Slighter continues to provide new fuel for the counterculture..
“This record was a lot of fun to make with my friends. I’m always enjoying collaborating on Slighter albums and, this time, it felt best to leave the majority of the vocal work to some great voices from Craig to Steven and Tara, Yvette, and Anastasia. It has been an experimental but cohesive experience, the classic cinematic vibes I’m known for hitting with faster Techno and killer bass lines across a 10 track narrative,” says Colin C.
“I think I have a pretty unique way of working outside of genres, but my work still gives off this sort of expansive cinematic vibe, which also retaining a darker mood that gets me associated with various dark sub-culture genres. The themes I often explore has me adopting an ‘Electronic Death Music’ umbrella for the music I make – a play on words, with the music I make being the antithesis of popular EDM”.
While very much an independent artist who largely files under the musical radar, Slighter’s music has also found its way on to mainstream shows over the years, with songs and remixes featured on such television shows as Showtime’s ‘House Of Lies’, ‘Elementary’(CBS), ‘Bones’ and ‘Lethal Weapon’ (FOX), ‘Defiance’ and ‘Covert Affairs’ (NBC-Universal).
As of July 21, ‘This Futile Engine’ will be released across fine digital platforms, including Apple Music, Spotify and Bandcamp. Available as a Deluxe Edition limited edition CD and as a digital download, this album includes three exclusive bonus remixes of ‘Cold Black Waters (feat. Morgue VVitch)’, ‘Pulling Me Under’ and ‘Have No Fear’.
Colorado-based artist Alien Gothicpresent their debut single‘In The Night’, a song that stretches cosmic goth music into a whole new realm, combining all the elements the duo has been striving to integrate into the project in the four years since their inception.
Conjuring up music that can be described as gloom from other worlds, they have been trying to find their way back to the original trajectory they were on previous to crash landing in Barnum, Colorado. With no time to put their lives on hold, they have cooked up a deal to release their ‘High and Dry’ album viaLatenight Weeknight Records.
With classic goth rock as its backbone, ‘In The Night’ also sees darkwave smoldering at the surface. A symphonic journey telling the tale of two unknown lifeforms, bringing their favorite sounds to a place they have never explored before, this music is inspired by the beauty of the world around them, while still being pulled into the darkness of the dead stars they came from.
The video tells the tale of their recent exploration as they look for a way out of this world, gravitating to the most iconic structures they find along the way. Mixing in elements of AI, traditional film and lost portraits of the two core members, the song blends reality and fiction, while introducing a vibe they hope to spread to all the other planetary systems around us.
Made up of Ryan Policky (A Shoreline Dream) and Andy Uhrmacher (Genessier), Alien Gothic creates deep gothic electronica, fused with spacial goth autoharp symphonies, deep mellotron overtures mixed with noises from unknown origins on the vast hour long debut. Themes and words recall events that the duo have had from the far reaches of the beyond. With deep beats, lush goth rock entwine with psych and shoegaze layers to create cosmic, pulsating melodies.
Recorded from 2020-2023, Alien Gothic take a journey out of a world gone mad, to spread a sound that is immersive and rich with varied instrumentation. Soundscaping goth is what these artists have become known for elsewhere along the milky way, their spectrums now hitting earth to bring forth a dreary alien orchestra, lost deep in a dark forest beyond the normal stretches of human imagination.
“It’s something we knew would destroy the seedy, cobweb filled danceclubs of the past, bringing forth a new era of goth… alien goth!” says Ryan Policky.
As of July 18, ‘In The Night’ will be available exclusively via Bandcamp. The full ‘High and Dry’ album will be released digitally on August 18 across all fine music platforms.
Here’s a riddle for you: What’s an album that was made in 2023 by Swedes, but sounds like it was a horror film score made in 1977 by Italians? If you guessed Pericolo Di Morte (“Death Danger”) by Contaminazione (Contamination), you’re right!
Right out the gate with the title track, the trio of keyboardistSofia Rydahl, drummer Mikal Styrke, and bassist Staffan Tengnér change the tone of wherever you are to something creepy and otherworldly. It sounds like something you’d hear while walking down into Lucio Fulci’s basement. I mean, the track is named “Death Danger.” Rydahl’s keys invoke fear and terror, while Styrke and Tengnér invoke dread…yet it’s danceable dread.
Tengnér’s thick bass on “Vivi Vilocemente, Muori Lentamente” (“Live Fast, Die Slowly”) sounds like the relentless footsteps and breath of a horrible monster coming at you from Fulci’s basement as Rydahl’s synths open up strange portals between worlds that you hope you can close before horrible things emerge from them.
“Il Necroforum” is what you hear when you’re trying to figure out a murder’s motivation and scheme in a Dario Argento giallo movie. Styrke’s beats convey the sensation of sweat beading on your forehead and neck as you get closer and closer to learning the identity of the masked butcher who’s been plaguing the city’s fashion models. Rydahl’s synths are the killer’s entrance music as he, unbeknownst to you, ascends the stairs to your apartment.
Not to be outdone, Tengnér puts down a funky, spooky groove on “I’Ultima Setimana Di Vita” (“The Last Week of Life”) that blends so well with Rydahl’s spacey synths that the track would be perfect in a 1970s Euro-disco. Tengnér’s bass on “Tema Principale” (“Main Theme”) is extra-thick, which makes Rydahl’s synths sound more ethereal (bordering on synthwave sounds).
It’s a killer (pun intended) record. Someone needs to hire them to score a modern-day giallo.
Returning with their first full-length album in four years, Ladytron are back with their distinctive style of electro-pop music with Time’s Arrow – an album that, like most of their catalogue, hypnotizes you into an altered state and also makes you want to dance at the same time.
“City of Angels” might be about Los Angeles, but it seems more about a city inhabited by beings of light to which Ladytron can readily travel through their use of heavenly synths, electronic beats, and ghost-like vocals. “Faces come from yesterday and arrive tomorrow,” sing Helen Marnie and Mira Aroyo on “Faces” – a song about how people drift in and out of our lives and how we struggle at times to remember them. “Misery Remember Me” is flat-out beautiful with soaring synths and vocals that sounds like they’re bouncing up from a canyon at sunset.
On “Flight from Ankor,” Aroyo sings above shimmering synths about waking from a dream and realizing that the life around her is just as incredible as the dream. “I hear whispers on the wire,” Marnie sings on “We Never Went Away,” a dreamy reassurance to their fans that is a little bittersweet now since one of the band’s founding members, Reuben Wu, left the band earlier this year to focus on his photography and fine art. “The Night” brings the pop to their electro-pop with snappy beats that melt into “The Dreamers,” a darker synthwave track that might have you folding up an origami unicorn.
“Sargasso Sea” sounds exactly like you think it should: Floating synths, seagull calls, bubbling bass, and siren vocals. “California” is possibly a callback to “City of Angels,” and is a song about how the state is a mix of luxury, mystery, and misery. The title track ends the album and has a bold, almost off-Broadway brashness to it with its thudding percussion and swaggering vocals.
Time’s Arrow is a nice return for Ladytron, whose synthwave seduction is always welcome.
What do you get when Tim Alexander (on percussion) of Primus and Skerik (on saxophones and synths) of Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade have a jam session one night and later invite bassist and synth-player Timm Mason from Wolves in the Throne Room to the party? You get something that sounds like Neu! mixed with Aphex Twin. You get Sound Cipher.
Their debut album, All That Syncs Must Diverge, is a wild mix of electronica, pulsing beats, saxophone skronks, and glitchy android synths. “Grind Incursion” is the sound of panic in a robot disco. “Ransomwar” reminds you of faraway desert oasis fires and beautiful dancing maidens…and all of it is a slightly unnerving hologram. The way Alexander’s percussion drifts into “Church Turing” and slowly takes over the song like dusk turning to night is a cool effect.
“Permissive Action Link” starts the second half of the album with bad-ass synth bass and growling percussion that will inspire you to throw on a black faux-leather coat and ride a futuristic motorcycle fitted with flame throwers and rockets into a post-nuclear war wasteland in order to rescue someone lovely from a band of mutants. “God Mode” is the song that plays when that quest takes a strange turn after you accidentally fall into a missile silo that’s now used as an underground temple for a strange cult that worships the AI computer that started the war. The song rolls straight into “Entropy Pool,” threatening to pull you down into an even deeper abyss, but showing you a way out of it: a pulsing light in the distance and the sounds of tribal drumming and smoky saxophone reminding you of the lovely companion you came here to rescue. It won’t be an easy climb out of the old missile silo, but it can be done. It must be done.
So, yeah, All That Syncs Must Diverge is pretty much the soundtrack to a cool 1980s European post-apocalyptic / future dystopia film you found one night while scrolling through a weird Roku channel. I hope this project isn’t just a one-off thing. I’d love to hear more from them.
Sound Cipher is the surreal, pulsating audio vision shared by three of modern music’s most uncompromising sound sculptors. It’s the sort of thing that emerges when Tim Alexander (Primus, Puscifer, A Perfect Circle) finds himself inside a thunderous duo improvisation with Skerik (Critters Buggin, Garage A Trois, Les Claypool’s Frog Brigade) during a soundcheck for Primus’ Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory tour in Oakland CA. One person surrounded by a circular percussion station of preposterous proportions, another person hurling psychedelic saxophonic screams into the hellfire of analog and digital circuitry.
Skerik and Tim Alexander knew they were onto something. The first official Sound Cipher excursion was scheduled for January 2, 2017 at Studio Litho in Seattle WA with Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Six Organs of Admittance, Akron/Family) at the production helm. He would bring aboard Timm Mason (Master Musicians Of Bukkake, Wolves In The Throne Room, Eyvind Kang & Jessica Kenney, Jóhann Jóhannsson) to assist with modular synth processing during this first session, generally a technical advisory role involving lab coats and clipboards and chin-scratching. The participants arrived and were surprised to find Mason setting up in the live room instead of the control room. As the recording unfolded, Mason’s direct in-the-moment sonic manipulation of the proceedings made it clear that he belonged at the creative core of the project where he remains today.
Listeners and innocent bystanders have reported spiritual resemblances to the experimental German scene of the ’70s with traces of Can, Faust, Neu and early Kraftwerk, the dark manic rumble of Peter Gabriel‘s early work and the complex digital hardcore first birthed by Aphex Twin and Squarepusher, all of it wrapped in an unsettling atmosphere that verily reeks of familiar ingredients: a tumbling machine-tight groove, a wash of analog synths direct from your midnight movie memories, a snippet from your grandpa’s old Louis Armstrong records stretched across miles of fizzling voltage and contorted into barely recognizable and altogether quite mind-altering new shapes.
Initial plans to release the 2017 session as Sound Cipher’s unveiling were revised when the trio found a new level of clarity in shaping their ideas following a series of live performances in 2018. Further recording and mixing took place in 2018 at Avast Studios, also in Seattle. Now, six years after that initial studio date, the finest flowers from those multiple sessions are available to adventurous listeners everywhere in the form of Sound Cipher’s debut LP, All That Syncs Must Diverge, to be released April 21, 2023 on vinyl and digital formats via Royal Potato Family. The opening track “Grid Incursion” (listen/share) is out today on all streaming platforms. In addition, Sound Cipher will reconvene for three live sonic adventures in accordance with the album’s release.
SOUND CIPHER All That Syncs Must Diverge
Track Listing: 1. Grid Incursion 2. Ransomwar 3. Church Turing 4. Permissive Action Link 5. God Mode 6. Entropy Pool
Fever Ray and Olof Dreijer on the “Kandy” set, photo credit – Nina Andersson
Fever Ray’s Radical Romantics, out March 10th (digital/CD) and April 28th (US vinyl) onMute, is one of the most highly-anticipated albums of 2023. Today, they continue their enthralling return with “Kandy,” a new single/video which follows “What They Call Us” and “Carbon Dioxide,” “an explosive single about love and sex in a moment of climate apocalypse” (Pitchfork). The song was co-produced and co-written by Fever Ray’s Karin Dreijer and their brother and fellow member of The Knife, Olof Dreijer. This is one of the four Radical Romantics tracks Olof co-produced and co-wrote, marking the first time the siblings have produced and written music together in eight years.
Olof comments on “Kandy,” “I tried to tune in as much as possible into Fever Ray vibes and tried many different styles, or clothes as I usually say when I talk about different music production suggestions. But in the end we took out the same synthesizer, the SH101, used for The Knife track, ‘The Captain,’ and it just worked!”
The accompanying video, directed by long-time collaborator Martin Falck, re-unites Karin and Olof on stage in a homage to the now iconic video for The Knife’s “Pass This On” directed by Johan Renck.
Radical Romantics, the first new Fever Ray album since 2017’s Plunge, “carefully explores well-trod themes of love and sex but through Dreijer’s uniquely esoteric lens” (them). To be precise, Dreijer presents their struggle with the myth of love.
Fever Ray first started on Radical Romantics in fall 2019; working in the Stockholm studios built with Olof, who eventually joined in on working on the album. Other co-producers and performers include the power duo of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Nine Inch Nails), experimental artist and producer Vessel, Portuguese DJ and producer Nídia, Johannes Berglund, and Peder Mannerfelt and Pär Grindvik’s technicolor dance project Aasthma.
This spring, Fever Ray will embark on their first tour since 2018, the There’s No Place I’d Rather Be Tour. As Stereogum stated, “Karin Dreijer likes to stage ambitious, slightly baffling spectacles, so this should definitely be something to see.” A full list of European and North American dates can be found below. New shows have been added in Washington, D.C. and Pasadena as part of Just Like Heaven. Additionally, CHRISTEENEhas been added as support on all other US dates. Tickets are on sale now here.
Fever Ray Tour Dates (new dates in bold) Thu. Mar. 23 – Oslo, NE @ Sentrum Scene Sat. Mar. 24 – Copenhagen, DK @ VEGA Sun. Mar. 25 – Gothenburg, SE @ GBG Film Studios Mon. Mar. 27 – Riga, LV @ Hanzas Perons Tue. Mar. 28 – Tallinn, EE @ Noblessner Foundry Thu. Mar. 30 – Warsaw, PL @ World Wide Warsaw Festival Sat. Apr. 1 – Amsterdam, NLE @ Melkweg Mon. Apr. 3 – Brussels, BE @ Cirque Royal Tue. Apr. 4 – Cologne, DE @ E-Werk Thur. Apr. 6 – Luxembourg City, LU @ Den Atelier Fri. Apr. 7 – The Hague, NE @ Rewire Festival Mon. May 1 – Washington, DC @ The Anthem ^ Wed. May 3 – New York, NY @ Terminal 5 * Fri. May 5 – Boston, MA @ Roadrunner * Sun. May 7 – Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed * Wed. May 10 – Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater * Sat. May 13 – Pasadena, CA @ Just Like Heaven Fri. June 30 – Werchter, BE @ Rock Werchter Sat. Aug. 19 – London, UK @ Field Day Sat. Aug. 26 – Paris, FR @ Rock En Seine
^ = with 100 gecs & Machine Girl * = with CHRISTEENE
