In California, you might meet a “Deal3r“, in the form of the latest Male Tears single, released independently, on July 15th. Comprised of members JamesEdward and FrankShark, this goth/ darkwave duo have been going from strength to strength, after being started by Edward in 2020.
Might be more than a touch Euro dance style mixed with future pop and lashings of creamy dark, sexy vocals. Instantly likeable with those club friendly rhythms and spiralling synths.
I’m sure you have probably met these creatures in your clubs and bars. They are seen as the pinnacle of perfection in the scene with all the right accoutrements and connections but it is all a facade, a lure and a means to an end. There is a huge cavernous sound to this track, almost verging on what could be taken as being live and if MaleTears sound anything like this on stage…. what a glorious thing to behold.
May saw the release of French darkwave project, SPIRYT, with the album BLOOD TWINS. jluc Courchet has joined forces, yet again, with US vocalist Kimberly Bow Ever Down to create an experimental project spanning across two continents.
There is a blurring of reality and fantasy throughout the whole album, such as the track “In Cold Blood” and the imagining of shooting another down in their dreams. Experimentation with time signatures, which create an on edge mood, along with the unorthodox arrangements, while there are discordant notes that right themselves.
A definite industrial element creeps in with the clashing and bristling electronics, grating and pointy. You still have ballads, such as “V“, though these are more about surviving another’s love that tried to crush them. It might sound a little odd but I hear a lot of another band, from the 90s, in Kimberly’s vocals and the music. Inkubus Sukkubus lingered in the back of my mind as I listened. SPIRYT’s “BLOOD TWINS” might not be witchy but there are just as many elements that make your toes curl in a most delightful way.
Brought to you on the German label, Blackjack Illuminist Records in Europe and self released in their homeland, Social Union is the Aotearoa (New Zealand) darkwave/synthpop project with their latest EP, Fall Into Me.
With the title track, “Fall Into Me“, kicking things off and it feels old school synth with beautiful rolling vocals entwined with the electronics, smooth and tugging at your heart strings. “Choke” has these lovely guitar jangles infiltrating the tune which gives this track a nice dark feel with the lyrics about needing a friend but instead, being put in a situation of wanting to escape.
Staccato beats between the drum machine, guitar and synths, herald in “Abscond” and the vocals fall into your ears, while the vocals in “Our Hands Don’t Fit“, are gorgeous as they sit hand in hand with the guitar. “Fall Into Me (Social Sport Remix)” just kicks this track into a new realm. Bass heavy with touches of power noise and trance, that pierce your insides in a rather pleasant way and this would be great on any dance floor.
What can I say? It is pretty lush mix between the vocals, electronics and guitar work. Social Union holds your attention with their wonderful compositions, borne of light thrown on murky corners, matched with soul touching simplicity. Fabulous darkwave coming from New Zealand that easily matches the likes of Twin Tribes or She Past Away.
Gold Coast based, Jed A Walters, dissolved his previous project, Tesla Coils, which was well loved in the Brisbane scene and began something new in Chiffon Magnifique. This latest incarnation is a lot more serious in manner with lashings of electronic/darkwave/post-punk creamy bits and the newest single “Cyanide” is a perfect example of this. Not only have we been able to listen to the latest single but Chiffon Magnifique have been doing a few live gigs for the release, which I was lucky enough to attend one of these.
It is a breezy, winter evening in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane and I rock up the the pirate bar, O’Skulligan’s. It is dark inside and I spot a few of the regulars of the scene, from there it is not long until Chiffon Magnifique are on stage, bathed in red lighting. Everyone moves towards the stage and before we know it, Walters with his friend, LindsayBright-Mync, helping out on bass and synths, start up the show. Every track has a different feel or texture to it and when they strike up the debut single “Abomination“, there are squeals and cheers from the masses as they dance.
Of course, the song of the show is “Cyanide” and from the start of the drum sequence and those spooky guitar notes, you won’t be able to stop yourself from dancing like Saint Vitus’ Dance has you under it’s spell. Lurking under all, are those deep bass lines, as you drift off to the land of dead, in a whirlwind of guitars and synths.
Walters really has a knack for writing great, solid minimal wave with danceable rhythms and catchy hooks, in the vein of an outsider looking in, whom feels far more at home in the shadows. Also, a consummate professional and showman on the stage, if you get the chance to catch Chiffon Magnifique live….do it! Added bonus is the fact he is a really lovely fellow. You will not be disappointment in the live experience and neither will you in giving “Cyanide” a listen or ten. Warms the cockles of my small dark heart.
People might recognise the name Jasyn Bangert and that is hardly surprising as the lead singer of the ever popular God Module but he is also the fellow behind the synth pop project Hexheart. Funeral Flowers is the second album from Hexheart, which was released on June the 17th.
From the first track, “Erase Yesterday“, there is actually a profound sense of joy, as if the whatever happens, there is always a tomorrow or sparkling rivulets of synths such as “RED“, which for some reason reminded me a little of early New Order. “OV ME” and “(bottom of) BELOW” feel like the lead up to the first single off the album, “The Funeral Party“. If that sounds familiar, then you would be correct as it is a cover The Cure track, though this version has a far more jaunty vibe to it than the original, off the vaunted Faith album.
Keeping in that mode, “See In The Dark” with the chiming guitars and dance beat, while the cosmic “PsychicFriends” spirits you away with the pulsating rhythm. There is the wending “After This“, that bops it’s way through to the last track, “(so far) BELOW” which is the only song that sports a slightly harder edge in it’s melancholy.
Most electronic/industrial artists seem to have more than one project on the go and Hexheart is very synthpop orientated, so utterly different from God Module. There is a air of Birthday Massacre, mixed with The Cure’sDisintegration, with that lilting guitar . I am still not sure if I like an album completely with electronically altered vocals, though I know Bangert is using them to create a theme throughout, the semi human or slightly detached to humanity but I would love to hear him sing a few of these tracks in clean vocals as I think that it would be magic to hear these dreamy pieces given extra soul breaking warmth.
Mmmm, okay. A new single from a project called omyügen which is titled “come with me” (yes this is all in lower case). Where does he come from and where is he going? Yeah, I have no idea because he is not on Facebook nor Bandcamp and don’t feel like playing stalky stalker currently but I will tell you that his music is of the post-punk and darkwave persuasion, with production by slxxshy.
The vocals are pretty trippy, like tape that is being eaten by a tape-recorder making it both interesting and creepy. A mantra to how the world in general is screwed up and that omyügen will show you the light. There is a constant hypnotic tune on guitar, playing in the background, lulling your senses into a false sense of security while the vocals invade your brain. The synths are there as well, adding to the wonderfully happy lunatic asylum feel that everything is burning….and that is completely okay.
The London based band, History Of Guns, has us “Running In Circles” for the newest single off the soon to be released album, Forever Dying In Your Eyes. The trio of Del Alien (vocals), Jamu Knight (guitars) and Max Rael (synths, programming) are giving you a slice of their punk inspired gothic/industrial world.
In true punk modus operandi, the vocals of Alien are so at odds to the music, a wail of disconcerting gravity amidst the sea of the throbbing drum machine and scintillating futuristic synths of Rael. Into this mixture, Knight’s guitar work stokes the fire that makes this track of doubt and questioning burn.
“The story of our lives never goes in a straight line from birth to death. Sometimes we get stuck, and it feels like we’re not moving at all; or worse, just endlessly running in circles, like dogs chasing their tails, and you feel like you’d do almost anything to break out of it.” – Max Rael
The video for this track looks pretty slick, with the guys transposed into the everyday world. “Running In Circles” is like looking at two sides of a coin at the same time, the dark with the light in perfect harmony and Alien’s singing like oil drifting across water, not mixing so much, as colouring the music.
2009 is when Australia’s goth rockers, IKON, released the album, Love, Hate And Sorrow, and last year was the band’s 30th anniversary. Elenor Rayner is Robots In Love, ex-Aussie now based in New Zealand and she has taken the fourth single that was taken off that album, “Torn Apart” giving it an electronic makeover in the form of a remix, that came out on the July the 11th.
The beginning bell like notes herald something a bit special and those tones pepper through the track, giving it a mystical effect, in stark contrast to the electronically altered vocals, metallic and slightly cold. The bass heavy beats kick in, drowing in sorrow, while the vocals come clean, giving the song an ever more keenly felt expression of sadness.
When I compared the original to the remix, it was surprising how much more emotion Rayner pulls out the track, as well as making it sound almost like a different song. IKON have always made amazing music and Robots In Love has really capitalised on this talent for songwriting, polishing “Torn Apart” with an electronic pearl essence shimmer.
It is good to see more women creating music for themselves in the electro-industrial scene and Nuda is no exception. Seattle based, she has previously been a guitarist for Possessed Tranquility and started Nuda in the beginning of 2019, so far with 2 albums under this moniker. June 23rd, saw the latest single, “Trigger“, drop from the soon to be released third album, Stranger.
“Trigger” starts with all those nice reverbing, cycling electronics, before kicking off. There is electric guitar in there but it blends so well with synthesizers. There are wallowing lulls, followed by frenetic movement.
You can hear the old school industrial creeping through but still this is kept in check, throughout this instrumental track. Nuda bends the music to her will giving it a cleaner sound. “Trigger” and the album Stranger, are based in the topic of mental health/illness, stress and rauma.
Portland’s Xibling (Sibling) are a synth lead duo on the experimental edge and on March the 1st, the label Young And Cold Records, combined two previously released EP’s, Yesbody and Maladjusted onto one vinyl. Moriah West and Julian Thieme have so far released four original EPs, plus other livestream material.
“Hello Stranger” exudes the enthusiasm that this band seems to be all about with a rhythm that thrusts you forwards, glitching with the howling vocals replicating a wolfs’s call. The single, “Butterfly Curbstomp” is a brutal space oddity of having your teeth kicked in, with an strangely B52’s feel while “Fold” could have come from the early 80s with its manic robotic intent. To be a model, you might have to be made of “Plasticine” to keep your looks and figure, which is exactly about what this song is about, sung with such passion. “Schadenfreude” or the pleasure gained by someone else’s failure, the male German style vocals in staccato, all over this piece and this mixes so well into “Maladjusted“, with the rap inspired spoken word that melt into beautiful, silken tendrils of singing and who can say no to lyrics like a maladjusted little shit, dropping the bass. There is a slow burn to”Slow Fold“, as it curls around you, fingers digging into your throat.
“Butterfly Curbstomp IV” is possibility what it is like to be on speed in a formula one vehicle, an insane ride for a remix. The darker allure of fetish and sexual angst is “Latex Gloves“, which is going to stalk you with those commanding beats, though this all hits the brick wall in “Vine“, with the echoing, glossy attitude. The bleeps and electronic distortion vie with the vocals for control with “Contract“, while “Puppet” has an air to it like the Siouxsie/Budgie project, Creatures, especially vocally. There is this beautiful synth line that runs through “Reflection” and though the lyrics are not a happy affair but the music itself whirls around you. The last track is one of the title tracks “Yesbody” and it had an amazing vibrancy and a pop like perfection.
Bloody marvelous and such a fun collection of tracks. I love how they manage to pull so many different sounds out of their electronic equipment and it is all about the passion behind the music. You can hear the enjoyment Xibling exude when they play and while they might play electronic music, but they really have a very punk attitude behind it all.
Onyx Music Reviews 