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Should you dare slip into the wooded areas of Marietta, Ohio, after dark, you might happen upon the ambient and industrial musing of Pressed Flowers. Blake Pipes is the man bringing forth the electronic magic/madness in the single, “The Ascension.”

‘I composed “The Ascension” using, among other things, the sounds of hammers on large nails, the sounds of vehicles barely able to bear the weight of their load, and a mess of synthesizers. These elements were each stretched to their limits and sculpted carefully into place. In the track, there is a choice to make, a choice to stay or to go. The choice is made to go. The path forward is not necessarily a pleasant one, but neither is the path back. Too often, we can only hope to outrun what we try to leave behind.’ – Blake Pipes

This track is saturated in growing dread, from the scraping metal into the nails being knocked in. There is a near Hitchcock shower scene , which prevails and then collapses into what could be described as the warblings of an estranged classical orchestra, which is oddly satisfying. It is an intriguing use of elements and experimentation. There is a horror filled majesty with “This Ascension” by Pressed Flowers.

http://pressedflowers.bandcamp.com/

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In 1997, The Cure released the iconic Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me album, and on that album was the track “All I Want“. Now, in 2023, Now After Nothing, have covered “All I Want” and released it as a single. Matt Spatial and Michael Allen of Now After Nothing can also lay claim having Carl Glanville (U2, Joan Jett) doing the mixing and the mastering by John Davis (Placebo, The Jesus and Mary Chain), while the guitars are courtesy of Mark Gemini Thwaite (Peter Murphy, Gary Numan) and Howard Melnick (Astari NIte).

“I’ve never been one for recording covers but ‘All I Want’ holds a special place in my heart. I instantly gravitated toward the song when I first heard ‘Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me’ as a kid. I was captivated by the sound and the multiple perfectly woven melodies. Years later, I thought about the feel and energy of the song during my first attempt at song writing. I gave my first song the working title ‘Sonic Goth’ as, in my mind, it sounded like Sonic Youth meets The Cure. Truth be told though, what I ‘wrote’ was a blatant rip-off of ‘All I Want.’ The noobish-ly named ‘Sonic Goth’ never came to be a fully-formed song, and likely never will. Rather than rip of the original, it makes more sense to pay homage to it even more blatantly. So here it is…my cover of The Cure’s ‘All I Want.’ Oh, but in my version, it’s ‘Doll’ not ‘Dog’ – I am an aspirational feminist, after all.” – Matt Spatial

The guitars have a heavier, more modern sound but ring true to the original, and the synths add an air of floating graceful darkness. The vocals by Spatial don’t try to emulate Robert Smith because, honestly, no one sings like our eye liner wearing floppy hero, and this works really well, giving an authenticity of becoming a Now After Nothing track… even for just a little while. The essence of a dream for this is “All I Want.”

All I Want | Now After Nothing (bandcamp.com)

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I don’t think I can quite explain how much Glaswegian band, The Jesus And Mary Chain (JAMC), held me in awe, as a kid in the 80s, with drawling vocals and waves of guitar reverb filling your ears. Label, Fuzz Club Records, is poised to release the live album for JAMC, aptly named Sunset 666, on August the 4th, where all tracks were recorded at the Hollywood Palladium, in Los Angeles, in 2018. The single “Half Way To Crazy” has been dropped to give us a taste of what you can expect on the album.

Rightly so, the quality of the recording is actually beautiful and clear. William Reid’s Gibson guitar transports us away, together with his brother, Jim Reid’s distinctive vocals, reminding is of what a magical powerhouse JAMC have always been.

“Half Way To Crazy” was originally released on the 1989 album Automatic, and the new Sunset 666, has all up, a whopping seventeen tracks, including “Blues From A Gun“, “Just Like Honey“, “Teenage Lust“, “Some Candy Talking” and “Head On“. Apparently, the recording isn’t a mirror, with occasional wrong notes, and imperfect timing, but that’s the point of live music, because it is alive at that very moment of time, and it has been captured in all its raw brilliance. As far as sonic rock music goes, The Jesus And Mary Chain have been responsible for creating songs that you feel in your gut, but also hugely influenced other musicians to push the rock envelope. This is bliss.

https://thejesusandmarychain.bandcamp.com/album/sunset-666

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https://themarychain.com/

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21st of July saw the release of the single “Burial” by Milwaukee based Choke Chain, the project for Mark Trueman. Written and produced by Trueman, while the mastering is by Eric Oehler, at Submersible Studios. Excitingly, this single heralds the new album Mortality, which will be out in September the 22nd, on Phage Tapes.

You can almost taste the anguish in Trueman’s vocals, raw and reproaching. The rhythms are unrelenting in their pounding, while the wailing in the background is like klaxons going off, creating an atmosphere of cloying terror that you still must find yourself moving to. Propelled by claustrophobia, each throbbing note is driving your heartbeats. They say death is cold, but the industrial aggression of “Burial” by Choke Chain is smoking hot.

Burial | Choke Chain (bandcamp.com)

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Harsh Reality Music has been a purveyor of electronic music since 1982 in Memphis, Tennessee, and they have released the latest Mad Masks single “Structures.” Based in the French Alps, Mad Masks has been around since 2013 and is made up of duo,  Zio Voodoo and Dominique Stela.

For one dollar US on Bandcamp, you can purchase this thirty-five minute epic. The guitar strums away as the electronic waiver and fuzz. I believe I hear a ghostly female vocal in the mix, a sighing phantasm into the computerised morass. Eerily ambient, interspersed with twinkling chimes, there is the ebb/flow of the synths and a sombreness that feels un-naturally ancient and alien. “Structures,” by Mad Masks, is a perfect experimental and atmospheric electronic piece that invades your senses.

▶︎ MAD MASKS | MAD MASKS | Harsh Reality Music (bandcamp.com)

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Australian’s love claiming New Zealander’s as our own, and quite frankly, the talented Kieren Hills is no exception. His crust punk, crossed with industrial stylings with the project Schkeuditzer Kreuz, is perched to release a new full length album on the 25th of August, named No Life Left, and a packed tour of Europe, over this September and October (which is well worth every cent). For now, you are able to listen to “Second Life,” the latest single off the album.

Photo by Jeremy Belinfante

Instantaneously, the pummelling, heavy as fuck rhythm grabs your ears, with a taste of black metal gloom, as the claustrophobic pall tries to suffocate the breath out of you. Hills snarls and growls lyrics such as ‘free to kill, free to take a life away’, a protest of the constant gun related killings in America, where the victims and families seem to have no voice. The loops and synths ooze discontent at the failing system.

“I’ve always had a policy of playing anywhere and everywhere with SK. I’ve played in a lot of weird and wonderful places in the last 3 years – in sheds and video stores, in the forest and in car parks, house shows, club shows, in-stores, and pub shows – under bridges and in skate parks.  Anywhere at all. So, I wanted to do that for the video.

I found an alleyway choked with long-dead street bounty – sofas and white goods and old guitars, and pots and pans and cupboards and sheet metal, and building waste and everything that gets left behind when people move on or move up. All long left in the elements to degrade and die. So, I set up there and played to a few friends – interspersing my usual walls of sound with throwing stuff around and bashing on things in the pile, more or less rhythmically along with the music.‘  – Kieren Hills on the video for “Second Life“

The video is beautifully shot/produced by Shaye at DMWC Films, filmed in an alleyway in Sydney. This track hits hard, not only in the voluminous reams of auditory crush, but also the overwhelming disappointment in a society where guns mean more than people’s lives. The vinyl records for the album are already on pre-order from Bad Habit Records (AUS) and Sorry State Records (USA)

No Life Left | Schkeuditzer Kreuz (bandcamp.com)

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When the guys from the Swiss band, Far Away From All This, asked if I remembered them…. well, of course! The shoegaze/alt rock stylings of duo VEGA (guitars) and IX (vocals, bass, synthesizer, drums) are highly rememberable. And, too that end, we have the latest single, dropping on the 17th of July, called “To Dream The Universe.”

The bright and upbeat beginning is a front. The glorious guitar laden wall of fuzzy sound, is crowned with the vocals that want to float away to other realms, unbound from this world. Delicate at times, causing shivers down the spine, and melodious shoegaze noise that reminds me ever so much of the late 80s rise of the genre, which then proceeded to mould the alt rock sound of the 90s with grunge. With the return of Scotland’s Teenage Fanclub this year with a new album and touring, Far Away From All Of This are just adding to the mounting joy that this style of music brings, as they take you on the epic journey “To Dream The Universe“.

To Dream The Universe | Far Away From All Of This (bandcamp.com)

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Based in Mexico, Edge Of Decipher, have a new single out called “Your Real Name“. I say single, though to my surprise it looks far more like an EP with the amount of songs you are getting. Definitely bang for your buck on this one with the single out on the machina ad noctem label!

The single “Your Real Name” delicately rolls out with Thai spoken word, gradually adding electronic layers, though the lone piano keys are striking in their loneliness. There is no sense of urgency, but only floating in the now. Next is the real version of “Solaris Reborn“, as the unearthly terrestrial soundscape of synths beautifully blooms, while what could be an alien choir sweetens the starlight. Behold the Blade Runner futuristic dread of “Solitary Skies” where there is foreboding in the intense and glitching electronics, the rhythms unable to settle on a permanent beat, leaving you on edge, whilst hopes and dreams are now but a distant memory.

“The Waves” was released as a single previously, but here you get to hear the Sidekick Waves remix and it still has the cool synth ambiance with a funky kick to it. The next three tracks are the “Angel Code” with it’s erratic bleeps and neuro binding asymmetry, the ascending refinement of “Rise Code” and the foreign and exotic tempo “Waves Code“, that whispers into your ears. The last two tracks are instrumental pieces of “Your Real Name“, where that piano is so vividly at the fore, and the stunning “The Waves (Sidekick Wave remix)”, full of future pop mixed with synthwave.

There is always a delicate refinement to all of Edge Of Decipher’s music, and he seamlessly flows from futuristic star wave, into an alien world, prophetic calamity or pieces of heart felt love, all the while collaborating and bring out the best in those he works with. One does not need to speak “Your Real Name” but rather one should listen to Edge Of Decipher.

Your Real Name | Edge of Decipher | machina ad noctem (bandcamp.com)

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Glaswegian band, Hanging Freud have a new single, out on the Belgian Spleen+ label, just before the release of their seventh studio album, titled Worship. The track is called “Falling Tooth,” and the name alone made me feel all creepy. Not sure what Paula Borges and Jonathan Skinner have been up to, but I’m not sure if I’m up to hearing about falling teeth.

The rhythm sounds like a clock, ticking down, while Borges vocals gracefully wander the soundscape like a ghost searching for completion. Electronics whir and drone, building the tension, as time ignores all of it, matching on.

Beautifully avant-garde and engrossing, like a fever dream that takes you down a path of your mind, you never knew existed. Hanging Freud’s first offering off the new album leaves you wondering what is next… though I am rather relieved to say no teeth were hurt nor fell in the creation of “Falling Tooth.”

https://hangingfreud.bandcamp.com/track/falling-tooth

https://www.facebook.com/hanginfreudmusic?mibextid=ZbWKwL

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PTSD and depression are subjects that are often skirted around by both government bodies and medical institutions. Philadelphia band, Die Tired, want to drag the spotlight onto the subject, and so the single “Better Off Alive” addresses what, for some, has become the elephant in the room, mental health and how people can reach out to find help.

“Better Off Alive is about raising awareness of these serious concerns in our society and highlighting the available resources in our communities to those in need,” explains bassist Jim Lee.

“The additional focus on our military service members in the video hits close to home. With one of our band members being a veteran, we found it especially important to shine a light on issues with PTSD, depression, and suicide in our military communities.” – Singer/guitarist Matt DeAngelis

Even when one comes home, sometimes the war continues in our head. It’s a big, rollicking rock track, filled with sonic guitars, thundering drums, and lyrics from the heart, to find something to hold onto when everything is falling away.

Die Tired are on the label SODEH Records and consist of members Matthew DeAngelis (vocals/guitar), Sean Boyle (guitar), Jamieson (Jim) Lee (bass) and Brandon Ballantyne (drums).

Personally, I don’t have any connection to the military, but in saying that, I have lost a fair few friends due to mental health and suicide. In Australia, we have R U OK Day, which asks Aussies to check in with each other and simply ask if ‘are you okay’? Three simple words can mean a lot to another, and you can do it all year round. Die Tired are trying to normalise the conversations we should be having.

https://www.facebook.com/dietiredband?mibextid=ZbWKwL

https://dietiredband.com/

https://www.instagram.com/die.tired/