V for Victory not Vendetta

Thanks to the efforts of the good folks at my preferred online music retailer, I've now got the EP of music recorded by David J of Bauhaus and Love & Rockets fame for Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta. Those of you who have read the comic may remember the chapter told in song (with musical notation) This Vicious Cabaret, provided for your listening pleasure below. It's funny, when I saw the V movie a few years back I remember thinking it was mediocre but not awful. I think in the time since I've kind of grown to hate it. For one thing it strips away any of the real questions and complexities of the story and leaves you the kind of message that only Hollywood could consider political, essentially that "Fascism is bad". Yeah, way to take a stand there guys. At any rate, Alan Moore said it best : "[The movie] has been "turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country… It's a thwarted and frustrated and largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values standing up against a state run by neoconservatives—which is not what the comic V for Vendetta was about. It was about fascism, it was about anarchy, it was about England."

All that aside, this is a really cool little track. I always forget that David had some neat solo material, maybe sometime I'll post one of his oddball spoken word/ambient pieces, if and when I find the cd in my damn collection.

David J - This Vicious Cabaret

Dr. Pepper Democracy

Well, this is interesting. Dr. Pepper (yes, the soda) is calling out Axl Rose.

Tired of a world in which Americans idolize wannabe singers and musicals about high schoolers pass as rock 'n roll music, Dr Pepper is encouraging (OK, begging) Axl Rose to finally release his 17-year-in-the-making belabored masterpiece, "Chinese Democracy", in 2008.

In an unprecedented show of solidarity with Axl, everyone in America, except former GN'R guitarists Slash and Buckethead, will receive a free can of Dr Pepper if the album ships some time — anytime! — in 2008. Dr Pepper supports Axl, and fully understands that sometimes you have to make it through the jungle before you get it right.

"It took a little patience to perfect Dr Pepper's special mix of 23 ingredients, which our fans have come to know and love," said Jaxie Alt, director of marketing for Dr Pepper. "So we completely understand and empathize with Axl's quest for perfection — for something more than the average album. We know once it's released, people will refer to it as "Dr Pepper for the ears" because it will be such a refreshing blend of rich, bold sounds — an instant classic."

Commented Axl Rose in a statement: "We are surprised and very happy to have the support of Dr. Pepper with our album, 'Chinese Democracy', as for us this came totally out of the blue. If there is any involvement with this promotion by our record company or others, we are unaware of such at this time. And as some of Buckethead's performances are on our album, I'll share my Dr Pepper with him."

So they plan to give away 300 Million Cans of Dr. Pepper? Wow.
At least Axl is nice enough to share his with Buckethead. Slash, however, is left out in the cold.

Taking the wind out of your piss soaked sails

So today is the day Crystal Castles drops their new CD.
For those who don't know, Crystal Castles are the "newest thing" and well on their way to being the most overhyped band since THE KNIFE. Rest assured, there will be a steel cage handicap match featuring myself against Alex and Bruce over that comment.
Seriously though, do people even listen to music anymore, or just add "Favourite Bands" to their facebook profile based on what's hip with the hipsters?
Watch, right now, as I unveil the secret to composing "Untrust Us"
1.) Download ringtone of a New Order Song. The crappy old ringtones that sound like the tinny ass Midi files people used to put on their Geocities pages.
2.) Turn it into a high bitrate Mp3
3.) Play said MP3 on an old 386 computer that doesn't have the processing power to play an mp3, so it skips and irritates you.

There you have it. The colonel's 13 herbs and spices have been exposed.
Perhaps you expected more from Bif Naked's little sister, and the guy who pumped my gas last week?
I didn't write this post with the specific intent of calling the band's music credentials into question, but more to use it as a red carpet for the bigger point:
Crystal Castles are thieves.
That image of Madonna looking like she just called Chuck Liddell a fag that's on their T-shirts and was going to be on their album cover is by an artist named Trevor Brown. Like any band with integrity, they took the image, made thousands of shirts, and gave no cash or credit to the artist. Not only do the two C's in CC stand for Crystal Castles, but they also both stand for Class. Pure Class.
Not only that, but they straight up jacked Chanel's logo too.
Stealing some artist's art for your shirts is one thing, but trying to steal the logo of one of the world's largest fashion labels? Don't be surprised if their next single is called "Forced Anal"

Ceci n'est pas une pipe

Building on Cyril's bitch-slap on Crystal Castles and their tacky art theft...

To be honest, I'd managed to avoid hearing anything by Crystal Castles (I've somehow worked myself into a strict diet of Jesu, Current 93 and Dr. Octagon) until now. I'll give it a "meh". Would definitely work in a club full of girls with brown bobs, knee-length olive dresses and those unfortunate wide belts. Not offensive, but certainly not deserving of any serious comparisons to The Knife, as will be proven in the aforementioned cage match. Yeah, you heard me right Cyril - this Sunday the Unnatural Boy Alex Kennedy and The Devastatin' Deconstructionist are comin' for you!

...Anyway, Cyril's more than bang-on about the cheesy art theft - read all the recent bloody details here. A clusterfuck all 'round to be sure, but the apparent lack of common courtesy is depressing. As Alex said, "Way to go indie scene, way to act worse than the fucking majors". The whole snafu calls to mind the infamous "This Is Not A Fugazi Shirt" shirt that was ubiquitous in the 90s. The legend goes that since the band had (and still has) a strict no-merch policy, Ian MacKaye regularly contacted those making bootleg Fugazi shirts, asking them to cease and desist. After receiving such a call, one particularly enterprising fellow came up with the "This Is Not" design. Impressed by the sheer cheek of the act, MacKaye came to an agreement with the printer wherein the portion of proceeds from the shirts that would normally go to the band were instead diverted to a women's shelter. See? Channels of communication are opened in good faith, and DIY ethic and entrepreneurial wiseacre coexist peacefully. Had common courtesy prevailed, maybe the Crystal Castles debacle could've ended similarly. This, of course, wasn't the last time that Ian MacKaye would garner ink fighting to keep his legacy free of crass commercialization - this bloke has a nice run-down on the great Minor Threat/Nike dust-up of ought five. Let's not even get into Converse's tasteless hijacking of dead rockers who never even wore Chucks in the first place.

Seeing the Fugazi shirt without knowing the back story confounded me. As an aspiring devotee of the band shirt (I'm now hard-pressed to think of five preferred tops that aren't band shirts, much to my mother's chagrin), I needed to know - was it a Fugazi shirt or not? Some have cannily noted that this recalls Magritte's "this is not a pipe" dilemma. The response made by Nirvana (or at least whoever was designing their merch around the "In Utero" period) seemed to argue that it wasn't. A shirt was produced which was covered with seahorses, with no indication that the shirt was "about" anything other than seahorses. On the back was a lengthy essay about the behavior and life cycle of the seahorse, which ended with the words "by the way, this is a Nirvana shirt". Those with a linguistic or philosophical bent might want to gloss JL Austin's "How To Do Things With Words" and his notion of performative utterances.

I'm not aware of any similar merch hubbubs ever erupting around any goth/industrial or related bands, be they license-based (Crystal Castles) or ontological (Fugazi), although I'd love to hear of any people might be aware of. This might have something to do with the oft-cited criticism that there's a profoundly consumption-oriented ethic at work in the bedrock of goth. I finally picked up that recent collection of academic essays on goth, which seems to set itself up as a reaction to Hebdige's book on punk in much the same way that goth was a reaction to punk, so watch this space for more on the commercialization of subculture. All that being said, I still want a pair of those fresh Joy Division kicks.

The endtimes aren't what they used to be

:wumpscut:, Schädling
Crikey, this one's a stinker. "Schädling" sits on the mellow end of the :w: spectrum, with none of the classic club-oriented endzeit crunch, but the latest from the non-papal Ratzinger also utterly lacks the evocative ambience of "Cannibal Anthem". After that record and the equally respectable "Body Census", we're squarely back to a "Bone Peeler" level of craptitude. Embarrassing vocals drown out any subtle flourishes that Rudy might have crafted into the tracks, but nothing here could go half a round with any halfway memorable :w: cut you'd care to mention. The only bright spot is the instrumental "Hard To Bear", which deftly constructs a traditional, non-EBM electro groove with surprising flair and panache. That there isn't any other real experimentation on this album is another mark against it - had Rudy tried to broaden his horizons and fallen flat on his face (*coughskyshaper*), it'd be slightly more forgivable than releasing what sounds like a hastily assembled collection of sub-standard leftovers from the previous two albums. By the time album-closer "Nest" ends with what (I presume) is meant to sound like the buzz of a swarm of insects ("schädling" appropriately translates to "pest", according to Google), you'd be forgiven for mistaking it for the final flatulence of a slowly dying, decrepit old horse, and being thankful that the sad thing's finally given up the ghost.

Rudy claimed a while back that "Schädling" would be more uptempo than recent releases, and that he was returning to "Music For A Slaughtering Tribe"-style aggression with all tracks weighing in at 135 BPM or more. He might be technically right about the latter claim (this couldn't be "MFAST" part II even in bizarro world), but when the beats can't even evoke a single foot tap or head nod out of yr highly over-caffeinated writer (again, with the exception of "Hard To Bear"), hawking a record on the specs of its BPM isn't just moot, it's comically pathetic. Rudy recently flooded the market with a glut of reissues and remasterings of far stronger classic material, so if you've got a hankering to drop some cash on :w: produkt in '08, you've got loads of options beyond the limp and uninspired "Schädling". Strong recommendation to avoid.

It's the economy, stupid.

Long-running UK Industrial/Electro retailer Music Non Stop just closed its doors (no puns about the name, please). Interestingly, the statement on their site cites "current exchange rates of the Euro and the dollar against the pound", "the lack of consistent ‘big name’ releases in this scene" as well as the "increase in distributor and day to day running costs" before pulling out the ubiquitous spectre of file sharing, which they couch within the broader descriptor of "other methods now available of obtaining new music" (ie, all manner of paid, legal models of mp3 distribution are taking a bite out as well). At a personal level, while I was always staggered by MNS' catalog (I have fond memories of grabbing a particularly limited Welle: Erdball vinyl box set from them), their shipping prices, not to mention the aforementioned exchange rate always made buying from them a special case, rather than the rule.

It's interesting (as well as depressing) when basic global economics takes down a scene staple, rather than "personal issues" or piracy. This hasn't stopped the Side-Line thread on the subject from devolving into the usual poo-flinging about who is and isn't "supporting the scene", of course. Whether the recession (dammit, US media, you've been asking if yr in one for over a year now - just admit it) will put the squeeze on retailers/distributors who rely on domestic sales remains to be seen, but in the meantime the prices that COP/DDT are posting right now look rather tasty to this Canadian vulture.

...but what is this world about, anyway?

Here's a bit of an oddity. Those weirdos in Xiu Xiu opted to do a cover of the ubiquitous Queen/Bowie collab "Under Pressure" on their new album...and brought Michael Gira along for the ride, who takes Bowie's vocal parts while free-jazz cacophony nicely accompanies Jamie Stewart's caterwauling Freddie Mercury impersonation. As a long-time devotee of just about all of Gira's output, there's something profoundly odd about hearing one of the granddaddies of noise and misanthropy gamely croon his way though karaoke-worn lines like "Love's such an old-fashioned word and love dares you..." Check it out:

Xiu Xiu - Under Pressure (feat. Michael Gira)

Wipeouts at the End of Scenesterism

Between the recent glut of abominable beardo folk and the triumph of by-the-numbers hipster disco, it's easy to forget that there was a time when the indie rock establishment actively championed bands that weren't only aggressive, but passionately and evocatively dark.

I'm certainly not the first to cite the following bands as fascinating and rewarding mid-points between the lumbering, schizophrenically-scarfed monster that is indie rock and darker genres like noise and goth, but given that all three have atomized and reformed in various guises countless times, giving their family trees confoundedly fractal structures, I felt it was worth pointing to three touchstones from the past.

The VSS
Hailing from Colorado, these guys would record one LP and a smattering of singles before spinning off into Slaves, the thoroughly excellent Pleasure Forever, and even the now sadly defunct Gold Standard Labs label, amongst other projects. That one LP, "Nervous Circuits", would prove to be a landmark of post-hardcore wipeouts thundering through a death-pocked synthesizer vacuum. The riffs snap bones, the synths make your teeth hum in their sockets.

Out of print for most of the ten years since its release, "Nervous Circuits" is finally getting the deluxe reissue treatment it so rightly deserves this May.

The VSS - "Death Scene"
The VSS - "Lunar Weight"


Camera Obscura
No, not those fey Scottish pea-coat wearers. A San Diego-based quartet that fused a hardcore template with the dirges and plateaus of shoegaze. One LP ("To Change The Shape Of An Envelope") and one single's all we got. Last I heard, various members are now performing as Champagne Kiss, about whom I know absolutely bupkis.

Camera Obscura - "Cinematheque"
Camera Obscura - "Twenty Five Diamonds"


Love Life
After dissolving the ridiculous yet compelling Jaks (spazzy howling with fake blood), Katrina Ford and Sean Antanaitis spent two albums ("The Rose He Lied By", "Here Is Night, Brothers, Here The Birds Burn") grinding glass into concrete with big black boots as Love Life. As slow and devoid of light as early Swans, as bleak and desperate as Birthday Party records slowed to 22RPM. Throughout it all, Katrina's vocals reach gutteral basements Danzig didn't know existed. Seriously, kids, don't listen to too much of this in one sitting. Katrina and Sean now kick it much more uptempo and high-profile in the 4AD vetted, Creatures influenced, TV On The Radio produced Celebration.

Love Life - "Joy"
Love Life - "Good For Nothing"

hopeful ghosts

By now you've likely chosen one of the various formats in which the new NIN material has been released. Looks as though the uber-1337 with-vinyl-and-Trent's-sinal-fluid-sample box sold out in about a day - one IEI writer saw fit to shell out for it, but I'm not telling which of us it was. Whether or not this sort of model can succeed is one question - whether it's a viable option for any artist smaller than the Radioheads and NINs of the world is another matter entirely. For now, I'll leave that to Wired bloggers and BoingBoing regulars (I'd also like to hear my buddy Jean at Clicknoise weigh in if he's got a minute to spare between Phd comps and daddy duty).

Me, I'm more interested in how this sort of distribution model affects albums as aesthetic experiences and, in the case of those of us still interested records qua records, as physical objects. What happens when an impromptu jam session at NIN headquarters (caveat: I'm aware that if yr "jam sessions" involve Adrian Belew and Alan Moulder, you aren't using the term in the same way that the Jack Johnson-listening frat douches down the hall are) doesn't just net as-yet incalculable amounts of cash or hammer another nail in the record industry's coffin, but actually affects the way we think of and listen to the actual music of an act as established and iconic as NIN?

Talk to any science fiction writer who's dealing with issues like posthumanism and the singularity, and they'll talk about how the psychological normalization of technology relies in part on that technology becoming fast enough to accomplish its purpose without speed being a noticeable factor in that technology's perceived efficiency by the average user - technology sufficiently speedy to operate without yielding enough time to allow the user to notice the operation in the first place. To use a couple of commonplace recent examples, internet connections with enough bandwidth to offer halfway decent streaming video, torrents that can deliver mp3s of a CD I own faster than I could by going over to the shelf, hunting the CD out and ripping and encoding it. In brief - technology that operates at the speed of human thought, or (trust me, I'm bringing this back to "Ghosts I-IV") in the case of online music, distribution that matches the speed of production.

As revolutionary as the business model of "Ghosts I-IV" might prove to be, it's the fact that the commonplace nature of file-sharing has, in this case, taken down the notion of the "rock album" as a cohesive, planned and grandiose object in time that seems the most revolutionary aspect of it to me. Consider the psychological and cultural weight of "The Fragile", both in how Reznor talked about its pained production, and how we, the public, chewed over every snippet of sound or news that trickled out while waiting for its release, years before premature Internet leaks. The album took on an iconic status before any of us had actually heard it, expectations were correspondingly (ten miles) high, and after its release we spent untold hours nitpicking song orders, and trying to edit the thing down to a single disc. The concept behind "Ghosts I-IV" - muck about, record some stuff, release it and allow people to more or less pay in accordance with how much value they place upon the fetishistic aspects of albums (vinyl, gatefolds, signed prints) - turns the cultural logic of the rock album, exemplified by "The Fragile", on its head.

In "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", Walter Benjamin talks about the ability of technological reproduction (the duplication of photographs, mimeographs, etc.) to destroy the nigh-religious "aura" of essential authenticity, historical location and cultural/spiritual mystique that accompanies the work of art (which Benjamin traces back to its cultic origins). A variety of factors allow this to happen - the lack of a single, "real" work of art thanks to photography and reproduction (never an issue with rock albums, really), but also increased access to the means of production, theoretically making artists of us all (which we've of course seen with mixed results via Reason and FL Studio). In the case of "Ghosts I-IV", it's the ease and speed of the distribution of the rock album that's stripping away its aura, and in turn affecting how we think of the production of a rock album.

The fact that we aren't going through the same media-enabled high drama of the birthing of a rough beast as we were with "The Fragile" suggests that we aren't as vested in the pomp and circumstance of The Album as we once were - we're instead identifying favourite tracks and deciding for ourselves how much we're comfortable shelling out for it. Trent's playing into this as well - by seeding portions of the album on PirateBay and eschewing song titles for (utilitarian?) numeric ordering he's helping tear down our (and possibly his own) inflated expectations for how revelatory we expect NIN material to be. Given the opulence and essentially legendary status of both "The Downward Spiral" and "The Fragile", this is no mean feat.

As for the music itself - I'm liking it. A great deal, in fact. I remember thinking when "Still" (the bonus disc on the generally unremarkable live album documenting the Fragility tour) was released that I'd love to hear Trent forsake the well-trodden teen angst territory (which, despite how much I loved "The Fragile" musically, was wearing pretty thin by 2002) for impressionist, stripped-down piano tracks on a more permanent basis. The welcome shift away from navel-gazing whinging in "With Teeth" and "Year Zero" made me forget about that passing fancy, but with "Ghosts I-IV" dropping flat out of nowhere, I'm reminded of just how well Reznor works when he's on a Debussy binge. Personal faves? 18 and 24 right now. Ask me again tomorrow...

A few years back, there was much talk about how Napster and the like would kill off the album - choosy consumers would just nab choice cuts from albums otherwise bloated with filler, and record sales would plummet. As a life-long fan of the album experience, this gave me some worry. I liked immersing myself in a lengthy, developed, conceptually grand if occasionally self-indulgent experience, and both "The Downward Spiral" and "The Fragile" were nothing if not all of those. If the death of the album (which still, like that of Mark Twain, seems to have as of yet been greatly exaggerated) means the emergence of new forms like this, these hopeful ghosts that apparate and disseminate without warning, then there might be a space for us esthetes in the post-Album landscape.

rude awakening

London After Midnight, "Violent Acts Of Beauty"
Trisol/Metropolis/Iron D
Sean Brennan's become the goth Axl Rose over the past decade. No, seriously. Much talk of a new London After Midnight record was thrown about for years with little to show except a revolving-door parade of band members coming and going and the odd cover or oddity squeaking out on a movie soundtrack (I swear - the "Saw" soundtracks exist only to fulfill bands' contractual obligations with Trisol). The crucial question about a new record remains the same for both men: giants in their respective scenes and times, will they be able to release a record that doesn't make them sound hopelessly out of touch after all these years, yet won't alienate their loyal fanbase? Admittedly, the stakes are somewhat higher for Axl given all of the very public bad blood with former band members and the intense scrutiny and debate that arises every time another release date or canceled show crops up - ask yourself honestly, how many times have you asked yourself what London After Midnight were up to in the past five or six years - but unlike Axl, Sean still has his hips and hasn't opted for Dexter Holland-style braids. Chalk one up for pretty boy.

Anyway, the record. It's good. Excellent, in fact. No really, listen...

It's mournful in a majestic, rather than whinging manner, which, come to think of it, is a thin divide by which many goth bands live and die. Moreover, it's punchy and aggressive in a fashion that you just don't hear in goth rock anymore. In short - the band's roots in the second wave of goth are a big help, not a hindrance here.

This isn't to say that "Violent Acts Of Beauty" is a nostalgia trip - far from it. There's much here that's fresh and relevant. One could also point out a couple comparisons to more recent acts that certainly aren't a knock at LAF: there are occasional flourishes of the yobbish techno-pogo that Katscan have used so well in recent years in "Nothing's Sacred" and "America's A Fucking Disease" calls Snog's "The Human Germ" to mind, and manages to deploy jazz flute flourishes without falling completely on its face, an accomplishment worthy of praise alone.

On top of all this, the songwriting itself is spot on: as a rule it's compelling and memorable material that I'll wager will reward repeat listenings, aided in no small part by Brennan's excellent guitar work. The innumerable socio-political clusterfucks that have jarred the cultural consciousness since LAF's last album ensures that there's a minimum of the cheesy demon lover/dark desire lyrics of the "Your Worst Nightmare" ilk. There are also a couple of club tracks that'll likely make for adequate DJ fodder without compromising home listening. So good on Sean Brennan: he's proven the doubters (myself included) wrong and has with one album turned a band that was little more than a vague memory from the Cleopatra days of yore into a relevant force to be reckoned with.

"In The Shape Of A Ghost": An Interview With Forma Tadre

What an update we've got for you today, kids: an interview with none other than Andy Meya of Forma Tadre fame and excellence. Like we mentioned a while back, after a ten-year hiatus there's a new Forma Tadre album in the works. We asked Andy about the past and future of Forma Tadre, as well as what he's been up to in the interim. We've posted a couple of mp3s at the bottom of this post for those who've yet to check out Forma Tadre, but happily Andy's just reissued the band's entire back catalog on iTunes. If you haven't yet, check out the history of one of dark electronic music's true innovators, before he drops what's sure to be another groundbreaking record.

IEI: "Navigator" remains a landmark album, not only due to its stellar club-friendly tracks, but also due to the theme of exploration that runs through it. How was "Navigator" developed? Was the theme of exploration specifically present from the outset, or did it only emerge as you began to produce the material for that album?

AM: It's difficult to speak from an outset - as such - concerning "Navigator". Large parts of the musical material ("Plasmasleep", "Looking Glass Men", "Celebrate the Cult" and two of the "Navigator" parts) were there even before OffBeat gave me the option to produce an album.

But I remember choosing a title for the album was quiet an easy decision. "Navigator" as a whole just reflects my thinking and my interests at that time - scientific exploration and scientific hybris, prospects of the future, my fascination with adventure, especially the polar expeditions of Ernest Shackleton and a certain cosmic connection I felt to the universe. Well, the last point sounds rather esoteric. I assure you, I have no pretty moonstones here lying around to cure me from odd diseases. If I dare say. I maybe had a similar connection to the universe, the stars and the planets an astronomer has. Outer Space was very real to me. Solar Fire. Stellar Dust. Utter Blackness. I felt like I could touch it. Walk upon the remnants of a bygone planet.

I wanted to share these feelings with the listeners - not totally unlike Lovecraft did with his literary concept of "Cosmic Fear". There's also one thing concerning the title of the album I probably haven't mentioned before. I recall I had a poster of Buster Keaton's movie "Navigator" pinned to my studio wall.

IEI: "Automate" obviously pushed the envelope even further than "Navigator" as far as atmospherics go. The album seems to be less about an overarching theme, though, and more about exploring certain sounds or spaces within the framework of individual tracks (or we could be entirely mistaken). What inspired you to move in this direction, and was this something of a prelude to your work in film and game soundtracks?

AM: The inspiration to "Automate" came from a trip to Paris, visiting the financial center and the suburban parc "André Citroen". A recreation area which would fit perfectly into any star trek movie. "Automate" was about two things: The obvious beauty of the landscape, that was striking to me and the intentions of the big companies (e.g. the Citroen firm) behind this - namely giving their employees an opportunity to relax. Not out of pure benevolence of course, but to ensure more functional "human resources". I thought that we were all "automized" (controlled to act in a predefined way) but more cunningly than in the past, e.g during the industrial revolution. I tried to work this concept into the tracks of "Automate", not with lyrics but with the shaping of sounds and the choice of certain song structures. The whole concept is more clearly laid out in the artwork of Automate 2.0 than in the original album. "Automate" wasn't exactly a prelude to my work in film and game soundtracks but helped me connecting to some movie directors.

IEI: If we're not mistaken, both "Navigator" and "Automate" are currently out of print, at least in North America. Are there any plans to re-release these albums, either on CD or online? Also, we've tried in vain for several years to track down a copy of "Automate 2.0". You mentioned on your site that an album of unreleased material from the "Automate" period might be forthcoming. Any chance that the remixes and bonus tracks added to "Automate 2.0" might be included on that?

AM: "Automate 2.0" should be released on iTunes very soon (like the original "Automate", the projected release is August 2007, "Navigator" has just gone online last week on iTunes!). [IEI: visit Forma Tadre's site to buy all three FT releases via iTunes] If all goes well and if I'm satisfied with the cooperation at iTunes I wish to release an online album this year, called "The Music of Erich Zann". The album is - obviously - dedicated to Lovecraft's short story and will contain solely instrumental tracks. It is not the album I am working on but a project a wanted to realize for some time.

IEI: How do you feel EBM and industrial (as musical genres or as "scenes") have changed in the near ten years since "Automate" was released, from both creative and business standpoints?

AM: I'm certainly not an expert on this. My impression is that - on the creative side - few people are taking musical risks. The dance scene often seems largely dominated by techno beats and technoid song structures. I'm more with the "old school" way of developing irresistible grooves like Front 242's "Headhunter" or Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus" - both of which I think are still excellent and original dance tracks.

On the business side - musicians act far more professional than in the past, setting up their websites, writing newsletters etc. The fan contact through MySpace has become even more important. And there's of course the mp3 thing. Illegal downloads, bands selling less CD's, good labels closing (Dependent), good shops closing. The whole concept of selling physical CD's to get the artists some money and make a living is at stake at the moment.

IEI: When it was started, NEWT was a big sonic departure from the areas in which you and Daniel Myer were working in your respective bands. Was there a conscious decision to move in more of a drum n' bass direction, or was this just the organic result of you and Daniel working together?

AM: Our sound was an organic result but it's also true, that - in the beginning - NEWT started out as a drum n'bass pop project. Later in time it shifted to a more stellar, experimental sonic adventure. I think Autechre and other minimalist electronica have been our biggest influences then.

IEI: You also mentioned in January that you had some new NEWT material potentially in the works. Any developments on that front?

AM: No. I have postponed all my other projects until the new album Forma Tadre is finished.

IEI: It looks as though you've got another side project, Schattenfreunde, in the works with Christian from Distorted Reality, whose last album you produced. What sort of material can be expect to hear from Schattenfreunde, and when?

AM: The music is Electro/Wave with german lyrics. Christian writes most of the songs while I do lyrics and production. We'd like to release an EP next year. There's a preview on our MySpace site.

IEI: A few years ago you did a string of remixes we enjoyed a great deal (Assemblage 23's "Document" and Haujobb's "Penetration" amongst them) and we wondered at the time when new material of your own was coming out. Was remixing a way to "keep your hand in" during this period?

AM: I'm not certain, but I think I did a lot of scoring and sound design during that period. So doing remixes was in a way a nice "distraction". But I never stopped writing music for my own projects, especially for "Irgendwo Maschinen". I just didn't release anything, that was not my main focus at that time.

IEI: You've also begun to produce an increasing number of records for other bands over the past few years. How would you describe your approach as a producer, and have those experiences affected the creation of your own material in any way?

AM: As a producer, I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning. Especially with Distorted Reality, trying to force them into a direction they didn't feel wholly comfortable with. My vision for their tracks was rather "progressive" pure electronic while their sound developed more into a blend of acoustic and electronic sources. I refrained from to much interference later just trying to get their music to the point, shaping sounds and cleaning up the arrangement. This helped a lot with producing Cesium 137 although Cesium's sound is far more electronic by nature which made it a lot easier for me. I can't tell right now how the experiences as a producer have affected the creation of my own material. Maybe we should wait and see until the new album comes out?

IEI: Was there a specific reason for Forma Tadre being on hiatus for so long, or was it a case of other projects occupying your time?

AM: Other projects were occupying my time but it's of course always a choice of what you do with your time. I decided to explore other musical fields mainly for financial reasons. But although writing music for other people's projects is fun and exciting most of the time you certainly don't have the same kind of artistic freedom that you have when you develop your own ideas. I took me some time to realize this. On the other hand I'm most certainly some kind of control freak. I do everything myself. From production over to marketing, setting up websites etc. This also takes up some time.

IEI: Some time ago you expressed an interest in working with a cellist on the new Forma Tadre album. More recently you described the new material as "certainly not like Automate" and "a timeless electronic experience with a unique feel, style, atmosphere & heavy load of lyrics". What's the latest on the sound of the new material, and your feelings about it personally?

AM: I feel very confident. I am writing and "dreaming" lyrics at the moment. It's great to rediscover old ways and passages to give meaning to words. I rely on subconsciousness and intuition. Writing lyrics is rather an archeologic process for me. It's not invention. Not idea.

I feel like an archeologist or sculptor peeling off the shells of an object to get to the core. The tools aren't different either, maybe. Patience. Caution. Self-Esteem. If I do it right, all goes well.

Besides I have put most of the software-synthesizer into the garbage bin and started to use my hardware tools again (which I have done since 2005, when I started writing songs for the new album). This was also essential for me, maybe the starting point.

IEI: You also added "No Future-Pop, none whatsoever" to that description. Do you feel that Future-Pop is a genre or label that's outlived whatever potential it had, or is it simply a matter of something that has no connection or importance to Forma Tadre?

AM: In the past there has been an extensive hype about Future-Pop. At some time Future-Pop was almost the only imperative for commercial success. I just referred to this style as an example to explain that I don't feel my music to be bound to any narrow stylistic boundaries as such. But it's of course still electro/industrial in a way.

IEI: What concrete details can you give us about the new Forma Tadre album's release (name, date, label)?

AM: No name, no date, no label yet. The new album will contain 10-12 songs, most of them with vocals.

IEI: In the past you've cited HP Lovecraft and his cosmic perspective on humanity's significance as a major influence on Forma Tadre. Do you still read Lovecraft and will he be making his presence felt on the new album?

AM: I still read and reread Lovecraft. There are at least two tracks on the new album that are influenced by his shorter and longer stories, namely "The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath" and "Dreams in the Witch House". Right now I'm writing music for an independent short movie - "The Unnamable". A very faithful adaption of Lovecraft's short story written in 1923. The movie is in the tradition of "The Haunting (Original)", "The Mothman prophecies" or "The Ring". The score is almost completed.

IEI: Any other sources of inspiration for the new album that you'd care to reveal (themes, films, books, other music)?

AM: I am sorry, but I don't want to think to much about this at the moment. I couldn't name single influences either. I'm still in the process of creating.

IEI: Specific inspirations for the new album aside, what music (older or contemporary) are you currently enjoying?

AM: Currently enjoying: Deine Lakaien "20 Years of Electronic Avantgarde", Edgar Froese "Epsilon in Malaysian Pale", Jean-Michel Jarre "Teo-Tea", Kraftwerk "Tour de France Soundtracks", Faderhead & IAMX!

-"Plasmasleep" - from Navigator
-"Lo Rez Skyline" - from Automate

RIP Lee Hazlewood 1929-2007: Make the Little Flowers Grow

Lee Hazlewood passed away on August 4th 2007. Although he is primarily known for his work with Nancy Sinatra (including the writing and recording of the oft covered "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'") and rockabilly icon Duane Eddy, Lee's solo material which combined elements of country, pop and psychedelia had a cult following amongst fellow musicians, as evidenced by covers performed by the likes of Primal Scream, Lydia Lunch, Nick Cave, Megadeth, My Dying Bride and Boyd Rice. He is survived by his wife Jean and his children Mark, Debbie and Samantha.



Einstürzende Neubauten - Sand
Slowdive - Some Velvet Morning
Snog - Make the Little Flowers Grow

There's an excellent overview of Hazlewood's career as a producer and songwriter with iTunes links over at Status Ain't Hood . Make sure you check it out.

"Please rise for the deconstruction of our national anthem."

Yesterday's post by Alex on the new Laibach record got me thinking about the specfics of why Laibach's program of political satire works so well. To start with a quick nit-pick: I wouldn't say that Laibach's aesthetic is rooted in fascist imagery and music so much as it is rooted in totalitarian tropes. There's a black political humour that only comes from having one's tiny eastern European nation repeatedly steamrolled by harsh regimes from east and west, from right and left.

Anyhow, to my mind, it's pithy responses like "we are fascists as much as Hitler was a painter" that confirm Laibach as brilliant satirists. Truly committed conceptual artists (like, say, Andy Kaufman) never give the gambit away, because satire, unlike many "lower" forms of humour, requires some knowledgeable familiarity and conscious engagement with the material being satirized (as well as the formal elements of that satirization) on the part of the audience. On a side note, this is why I'd never be gutsy enough to say that any material of Laibach's wasn't conceptual. A song that they played at their last Vancouver concert sounded like a typically oontzy track in the "WAT" style until a friend from the former Yugoslavia approached me, laughing and explaining that the lyrics were from a folk song sung more than a century ago by Serbs as they were crossing a particular river, preparing to kill Croats. Or possibly vice versa. One way or the other, I didn't get the reference, nor why it would incite laughter per se. In short, my friend had the cultural language required to enter into the satire, unlike myself.

Confusion is Laibach's bread and butter: they bank on it. It's because they only muddy waters further when asked to clarify (at least for that AMG goober) that they are of such a higher calibre than all of those neo-folk ponces who run around wearing the runes and emblems of other cultures without any regard for their connotation and then explode into "defenceless artist" histrionics when anyone questions them. Blah, I don't want to get into all this again.

A point more salient to "Volk" - I think it's fair to say that their project on this record is a complete inversion of one of their most tried and true schticks: their remakes of pop songs which transform often trite original material into frighteningly epic anthems. There are a couple of interesting theories as to the nature of their intent in turning a goofy, touchy-feely song like "I've Got A Feeling" into Nuremburg rally call-and-response, or a song as lazy and crappy as "Live is Life" into a towering monument of glory (but to what?): they could be simply pointing out that aesthetics are substance, that form trumps whatever simple and base content these songs started with, or, and this is what I think makes those covers so compelling, they could be only drawing out and making explicit themes and possible readings of seemingly innocuous pop music that we'd never otherwise see - the supremacy of will, emotion and self within the tiny, insulated perfect world of the love song. We all take it as an indication of his insanity that Charles Manson heard personal apocalyptic messages in the white album (and rightfully so), but it's impossible to approach any of the songs on "Let It Be" from the same position of naivitee once you've heard what they "mean" within the context of Laibach's reinterpretation (with the possible exception of "Across The Universe"). To paraphrase Nietzsche, if you gaze for long into a spinning 45, the 45 gazes also into you.

What does all of this have to do with "Volk"? Well, the genre they're taking as their subject, national anthems, couldn't on the surface be any more different than the pop songs they've repurposed in the past (although, as I've tried to point out, surfaces are quite deceiving when it comes to Laibach). Instead of "sabotaging" the pop song by introducing questions of nationalism, power and politics that are normally anathema to pop, in "Volk" Laibach are creating space for commentary and criticism within a form that is explicitly meant for opposite purposes: namely the unquestionable celebration of nationalism and power. If the isolated would-be dictator can find inspiration in Top 40 dross, then so can the cultural critic, the anarchist and the dissident find fertile ground in the chest-pounding, anti-thought of the jingoistic anthem.

Laibach 'Volk'

Laibach is by nature an incredibly political musical entity. When the foundations of your art are the confluence of totalitarian imagery and pop music, it's impossible to not have pretty much everything you do picked apart and analyzed, searching for a straightforward interpretation which may not even be there, a straightforward meaning which arguably can't exist at all. The strength of Laibach as a group has always been in their acceptance of the lack of easy answers in their own work, and in politically charged art and music in general. The eternal question that has always haunted them, the "are they or aren't they fascists themselves" question misses the point by a wide margin. It's the ambiguity that matters, a fact that the band awknowledges in their refusal to address it except with more questions (ie, vocalist Milan's oft repeated declaration "We are fascists as much as Hitler was a painter", a statement only an idiot would try to draw a literal answer from). Which brings us to 2006's "Volk" another in the band's series of concept records*, this LP finds our venerable satirists collaborating with Slovenian group Silence on a series of songs based on national anthems. The lyrics for each track address some social or historical aspect of the nation, while the arrangements twist the typical bombast and *ahem* anthemic qualities to be found in national music into something much more sinister. It's a natural fit, after all there isn't a piece of music simultaneously populist and political than a national anthem and that fact provides fertile ground for commentary on issues of national identity. On "Volk" the commentary often takes a more laid-back approach, "Anglia" is a light trip-hop style piece which skewers the arrogance of the English empire even in decline, while "Vaticanae" is almost reverent in it's simple Organ and vocal fuelled approach. There is confrontational work here however, not surprisingly on "Yisra’el" which includes within it verses from Palestinian national songs and "Francia" which criticizes France's hard-headed policies in dealing with civil unrest. It's fascinating to listen to both from the musical angle where the pomp of the music is frequently sent over the top as with "Nippon", or alternately stripped of extraneous meaning and turned into simple pleas and statements, as with "Slovania". Simultaneously, this may be the most obvious and most inscrutable piece of work from the latter era of the band's catalogue, driving home the point that Laibach is never about answers, but about posing questions, which in turn are answers in and of themselves.

*Can Laibach not make a concept record? Discuss.

catch-up

Just tossing out some reviews of records from last year that I slept on (for better and worse) before tackling some fresher stuff.

Flint Glass, "Nyarlathotep"
I'm a sucker for any pop culture product that makes even the vaguest reference to HP Lovecraft. As a dedicated scholar of Lovecraft's fiction and philosophy, this typically results either in disappointment (from the tendency in other writers to reduce his creatures to beings motivated by petty and utterly human evil, to the sheer ridiculousness of "real Necronomicons" being taken seriously by gullible idiots) or the collection of some amusing kitsch (from the charming anachronistic film adaptation of his most famous story to Cthulhu slippers). Occasionally, though, something truly remarkable, like Rudimentary Peni's "Cacophony", crops up. Over twenty years later, we have "Nyarlathotep", a Lovecraft-based record of an entirely different cast.

Flint Glass' second LP is a sleek excursion through dark ambient territory that never bores or drones. As with HPL's use of his most awful creations (after which the majority of tracks on the album are named), stark and explicit horror is left off the record, implied instead by menacing implication. When beats bubble to the surface (as on album highlight "Nephren-Ka") they evoke Lovecraft's love for the exploratory revelations of science more than any noisy and chaotic beasts. Moreover, there's a paradoxical sense of calm that starts to temper the danger this record conjures upon repeat listenings. Perhaps it's no coincidence that Flint Glass' one member, Gwenn Trémorin, elected to name this record after one of Lovecraft's most ambiguous figures. While in some fiction Nyarlathotep is wholly alien, in other works he's clearly modeled after various historical gods of science, trickery and heraldry: Loki, Hermes, Prometheus and Osiris.

For the more pragmatically minded who couldn't give a toss about Lovecraft, this is a stellar dark ambient record, with gorgeous art and packaging as well as some decent remixes from the likes of Ah Cama-Sotz and This Morn' Omina to sweeten the deal. Recommended.

Flint Glass - "Nephren-Ka"
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Apoptygma Berzerk, "Sonic Diary"
Enticed by the thoroughly stomping Mesh remake of "Mourn", I decided to wander 'round Stephen Groth's neck of the woods, to see what had changed since "Welcome To Earth". At this point, I don't think it's unfair to cast Apop as the EBM equivalent of Metallica: a string of albums loved by genre fans and critics, then a turning point record, half-full of classic jams, half-full of pitiful attempts at mainstream success, then nothing but boring faux-alterna schlock, alienating their fanbase. While Metallica and Apop might gripe that too much attention has been paid to the shifts in their respective images that accompanied their bids for crossover acceptance, I'll counter that it's more enjoyable to mock Groth's last-ditch emo-cut or Kirk Hammett's wannabe-Dave Navarro posing than it is to actually listen to "Load" or "You And Me Against The World".

Anyhow, "Sonic Diary" is a comp of cover tracks, old and new, plus a bonus disc of remixes. I'll be a weirdo and deal with the bonus disc first. The aforementioned Mesh remix remains stellar, a vengeful bootstrapping of a classic cut, but there's really nothing else of note. All but one of the other remixes are from the "Harmonizer" and "You And Me Against The World" eras and only highlight how threadbare the original versions were. That one exception is a complete remake of "Deep Red", and unless you want to know what that song might sound like if Good Charlotte covered it, I'd suggest avoiding it at all costs.

The main disc doesn't fare much better. Almost half of these tracks have already appeared on APB LPs and EPs, perhaps explaining the need for the bonus disc in order for any units to be shifted. Older covers like "All Tomorrow's Parties" and "Electricity" hold onto some charm, but recent takes on "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" and "Bizarre Love Triangle" are nothing short of criminal. Much of the newer material suffers due to Groth's attempts at stretching his voice well outside of his comfort zone, which wouldn't be half as bad if the tracks weren't structured so as to make his vocals their focal point. Just about the only recent track that does anything is "Cambodia", which chugs along nicely and I imagine might work well as the opening theme to an anime series involving airships. For real. No, no digs about a Kim Wilde cover beating out OMD or Kraftwerk - you can't hate on "Kids In America".

So, with the exceptions of "Cambodia" and the "Mourn" remake, "Sonic Diary" embodies pretty much everything that's gone wrong with Apop over the last seven years: egotistical yet pandering, bloated but short on substance, awkward and utterly forgettable. In closing, and by way of summing up how this record makes me feel, listening to it made the thought "this is a bad adaptation of a Keane song" pass through my mind. What could a "good" cover of a Keane song possible sound like? Argh. Damn you, Groth.

Apoptygma Berzerk - "Cambodia"

More Rhymes Than Leeb has Projects

Hip Hop and Industrial have had a rocky history of collaborations over the years. Despite having a lot of common ground historically (Afrika Bambattaa would spin Kraftwerk records at house parties in Brooklyn, Throbbing Gristle was influence by the dub and reggae coming out of the slums surrounding their studio) and a penchant for wanton sampling, most attempts to combine the genres are pretty underwhelming if not ouright awful. That doesn't stop us wondering though, what some team-ups between the lights of both scenes might yield. So without further ado Inner Ear Infection Presents: Industrial-Hip-Hop Collaborations We'd Like to See!

:Wumpscut: vs. The Wu-Tang Clan

Obvious one out of the way first. Rudy's productions are never short on atmosphere, and he's still capable of bringing some fly hooks now and again. The sampled guitar and breakbeat on his last real club hit 'Wreath of Barbs' even kind of sound like something the Rza might have tossed off for one of his much ballyhooed soundtrack joints. And if you check out the unforgettable 'Torture' skit from the Wu's debut album 'Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)' you know that Shaolin's Finest can bring the enzeit vibe if they want to. So say you get Pope Ratzinger to crank out a slow jam, get Ghost, Raekwon and Mef to spit a few roughneck bars a la 'Protect Ya Neck' and zing! A song which could in no way possibly be worse than FLA's ill-advised 'Victim of a Criminal'.

VNV Nation vs. Nas

Ronan and Mark seem to deal almost exclusively in their uplifting trance rip off business these days, but they had a few slower atmospheric jams on the first few albums which maintained an epic scope but had a darker, more forboding sound. 'Tempest' the B-Side off the Darkangel single might be the best example of this (and is a great track to boot). Meanwhile, Nas is the rapper most likely to make ill-advised religious allusions (check the cover to his bloated double-album 'Street's Disciple') and as evidenced by Puffy collab 'Hate Me Now' he can rock an epic number with the best of them. So yeah, get these guys in studio, let Ronan's just vague enough references to Christianity mix up with Nasir Jones' blatant Jesus swagger jacking come into effect and I'd wager you'd have a song of biblical proportions *rimshot*.

Cypress Hill vs. Cevin Key

Okay, this one is kind of obvious. Mr. Key's best material from the past couple of years has been what my friend Rob likes to call 'Stoner Techno', albums like Plateau's recent From the Vaults release and his two solo records from a few years back all sound best when your visiting with "The Green Guy". And Cypress Hill's weed smoking exploits need no introduction, they almost singlehandedly popularized rhyming about mary jane, mostly by rhyming about little else. It goes without saying that their music sounds best when you've burnt a few. So yeah, Get Muggs, Be Real, Sen Dog and Kevin Crompton into the studio, get them a few bags of primo chiba chiba and BAM. Guaranteed to be better than the Cypress Hill/Fear Factory team-up off that record where Burton Bell and company jumped the proverbial shark.

Jim Jones vs. Suicide Commando


Jones (aka The Dirt Angel) having deposed former Jay-Z weed carrier Cam'ron, is the erstwhile leader of New York's Dipset crew. He's not much of a rapper really, but as evidenced on last year's megahit 'We Fly High', he sounds pretty good over hard, simple synth beats. Enter Johann Van Roy, who as Suicide Commando has been producing tracks that rely on one repetitive synthline and some harsh drums for years. So get Johann to pound out a pre-set melody, get Jim to yell "Ballin'!" a bunch of times over it and I'm sure you'd have something that wouldn't be too far removed from either oeuvre. No matter what stupid shit Jones comes up with to rhyme about, it can't possibly be much dumber than anything Suicide Commando has done lyrically, ever.

Kanye West vs. Gary Numan

This one is kind of tenuous, but stick with me. Kanye is one of the most frustrating figures in hip hop, a critically beloved star of massive proportions who never seems to live up to his potential as an MC or as a Producer. Numan is a respected icon in the world of electronic music and post-post-punk, a guy who made several classic albums before a slide into mediocrity followed some years later by an unlikely resurrection doing the style of pop-industrial informed by his early records. It stands to reason that a confluence of Numan's paranoid post-human schtick and West's larger than life, flawed superstar persona would push and pull each of them in the right directions creatively speaking. If nothing else, Kanye could sample "Are Friends Electric" kinda like he sampled Daft Punk on his new single 'Stronger' and the results would be decent if not awesome.


All nonsensical skylarkings aside, there has actually been a pretty good genre crossover track this year. El-P had Trent Reznor guest on his album "I'll Sleep When You're Dead", yielding the quite excellent track 'Flyentology'. Worth a peep no matter what side of the fence you fall on.

news shorts

Andy Meya's in the process of creating a new Forma Tadre site. It's still in the middle stages of constructivitis (to cop a phrase from Uncle Mick), but there's some solid info on all aspects of the project's discography (even the photos in the liner notes!), and most importantly the news that a third Forma Tadre album is in the pipeline, making it the first in nearly ten years. Both "Navigator" and "Automate" are undisputed classics in my book, the former taking EBM into exciting orchestral and oceanic territory, the latter a stunning walk down twilight ambient avenues. Andy sez "the new album (no working title yet) will be a timeless electronic experience with a unique feel, style, atmosphere & heavy load of lyrics. No Future-Pop, none whatsoever." Boo-ya. Count another record under the FT banner one of the titles I'm most eagerly anticipating this year.
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Goth drama? On the Internet? Surely you jest! But no! And coming from the band with more "he said/she said/he released my demos in Europe without consent" history than any other: Christian Death. A new outfit, deemed Christian Death 1334 and featuring original "Only Theatre Of Pain" writers Rikk Agnew and James McGearty has been formed and is touring the classic material by "way of honoring our dear friend Rozz Williams and resurrecting the sound which is distinctly Christian Death."

Enter Valor, who retorts with "There is a bogus concert being organised by an unofficial 'TRIBUTE band', featuring the christiandeath name which is not christian death. It is billed as taking place in LA. Be warned that this is not christian death and steps are being taken to ensure that fans will not be ripped off as this is not the start of the long awaited tour."

I'll refrain from pointing out the hilarity inherent in Valor calling any incarnation of Christian Death "bogus" (if all of this is confusing, consult the wikipedia article on the band to catch up on one of the most confusing and bitter intra-band feuds EVR) and merely say that I'd be interested in hearing Christian Death 1334's take on the classic material. I'm not nuts about Eva O, never have been, but Rikk Agnew's a great guitarist and songwriter (peep his "All By Myself" solo record for some classic and classy SoCal punk), and there's no way that Christian Death 1334 can do anything but help restore at least some of the lustre to a legacy that's been tarnished for over twenty years by a bottomfeeder without a shred of dignity.

another failed idiom

Bruce: So, them Internets are abuzz about the impending debut release by Blaqk Audio. Why, might you ask, are media juggernauts like MTV bothering to give virtual ink to what amounts to Just Another Futurepop Album? Because Blaqk Audio is made up of two jabronis from AFI. But before we get into what all this means, let's address the material at hand, thus far consisting of two tracks on the band's MySpace.

Like many tepid electronic projects, Blaqk Audio are trying to claim diverse points of comparison in an attempt to con the listener into mistakenly hearing non-existent depth in their tracks: in this case they've opted for Echo & The Bunnymen as the talking point. Clearly this isn't the case, and anyone who's been paying attention to Futurepop and other club-friendly EBM recently won't hear anything here that hasn't been beaten to death over the past five years. More specifically, the two songs are wildly unbalanced, with elements dropping in and out of the mix seemingly at random, and not in a good way. Basslines vanish without a trace, choruses come and go indistinguishable from the rest of the stale offering. There's no semblance of an ordering principle behind any of this, either. Y'know how buffet restaurants always seemed great in theory when you were younger? Pizza, lasagna and chinese food all at once? But invariably you were disappointed: each of the elements were a pale imitation of what they tasted like at real restaurants, and the combination of all of the hollow simulacra on your plate at the same time just seemed like a cruel joke. So yeah: Blakq Audio are the musical equivalent of Buffet World.

As someone who doesn't really have too much time for straightforward, emotive Futurepop these days, I'm not sure that I'm the best person to be taking a sledgehammer to Blakq Audio's output thus far, but I will say this: even when it's devoid of inspiration or novelty, Futurepop is a craft-based medium. A couple of months ago I was enduring a recent A Different Drum comp, and after a brief period of listening it became readily apparent within a few seconds per song which groups did and didn't have a talent for turning out solid product of this type, whatever you think of it. Assemblage 23 and Seabound have it, Blakq Audio clearly don't. Don't be fooled, this is amateur-hour type stuff. Blakq Audio are jumping on the Futurepop bandwagon years too late with precious little to offer the party but stale Cheetos.

Alex: Would you even call this futurepop really? I mean, as problematic is that term is, I'd say it has more in common with some more recent synthpop offerings, like say Depeche Mode's 'Playing the Angel' than with anything VNV or Apop has done. Of course it should be noted that we're basing all of this on two songs, god knows what the album as a whole will sound like.

Bruce: Fair point (although I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with calling "Playing The Angel" synthpop). I'm wondering if this is yet another recent case in which contact between mainstream rock and the long-suffering standard-bearers of "this thing of ours" results in...something else. I think this paid off in spades for Apop when Mesh redid "Mourn" after years of Groth's sad attempts to rebrand himself as a super-sexy bona-fide Rock Star, whereas the notion of VNV playing for tens of thousands of Radiohead fans this summer is far too little, far too late.

As for the specifics of Futurepop and whether Blakq Audio fits the bill or not, you might be right. That said, I don't need to use the F-word to trash this stuff: it's still painfully derivative and awkward.

Alex: More than anything else, I'm curious to see how this will effect the goth-industrial club scene as a whole. My first thought is that this has the potential to bring a lot of attention and exposure to the music that's been motoring along selling nothing at all. Those of you old enough to remember the early nineties will recall when Green Day's "Dookie" broke big, and suddenly So-Cal Punk was a going concern after years of fermenting in the underground. See also No Doubt's "Tragic Kingdom" for the abortive Ska revival and Robert Miles' crossover megahit "Dreams" bringing Trance into the mainstream. With that said, those scenarios usually didn't do much to break other bands or artists in any real way, moreso they just introduced a wide variety of people to music they were otherwise unaware of and a small portion of the people who bought the records became aficionados of the genre. Other possibility is that this goes off like that She Wants Revenge record on a grander scale, wherein it brings no new fans to the genre, but gets mad spins in the club and has people requesting five songs off the album every god damn night.

Incidentally, apparently the one dude who isn't the guy who looks like a bitch claimed in an interview with some guitar magazine that AFI's single "Love Like Winter" was originally written for this project. That song is better than either of the tracks on the Blaqk Audio myspace, I'd be happy to play something along those lines if the full-length album has anything comparable.

The Remix: Das Ich 'Destillat'

Most of you who were frequenting EBM/Industrial nights just before the turn of the century probably recall Das Ich's 'Destillat', or at least the ultra popular VNV Nation remix. Not unlike Suicide Commando's 'Hellraiser', the chances of hearing the original or alternate mixes were pretty slim. After all this was all going down at the height of Ronan-mania, when DJs were looking for even more ways to cram some of that sweet VNV sound into their sets (and consequently dancers on the floor). I've always preferred the 'Club' remix of the track myself, and was pleased to see that Das Ich's new odds n' ends collection Addendum. It's the addition of the female vocals and the guitar sounding synth on the chorus that do it for me I think. Check this mix out and tell me it's not better than the VNV one. Seriously. Also, were the last two Das Ich records that came out on Metropolis any good? I kinda stopped paying attention after 'Anti'Christ'.

Das Ich - Destillat (Extended Club Mix)

And hey, there's even a video apparently!

Come Before Christ And Murder Kenny

World Serpent South Park is likely the best send up of World Serpent and neo-folk stupidity in general since Boyd Rice moved in with the Tanners on "Full House". Butters P'Orridge might be the best of the lot.