Back catalogue: Industrial/Noise

Review: Dark Entries label regulars De-Bons-en-Pierre are back with more of their scuzzy delights in the form of their Card Short of a Full Deck EP. It's drenched in textbook sludginess as is often the way with Beau Wanzer and Maoupa Mazzochetti ever since they came together in 2016. These tunes were all originally written back in 2019 for live performances and really find the pair pushing at the boundaries of accepted social norms. The absurd sounds pair skipping rhythms with dark and freaky basslines and plenty of eerie rave chords to make for an all-new kind of dance floor energy.

Review: Having spent much of the last few years working alongside Lou Savary in cold-wave revivalists Reymour, Luc Bersier has decided to go solo as Marcel Die Sie. His debut release, which also happens to be the inaugural EP of the Rababoo label, naturally inhibits a similar sonic space to his work with Savary, with each of the three original cuts on show offering a mixture of chugging, mid-tempo grooves, wayward electronics, early '80s new wave synth sounds and a subtly psychedelic mood. There are similarly impressive remixes on the flip too, with De Roo's moody, occasionally spacey IDM style take on 'Poetic Frame' being followed by a hypnotic, acid-fired and trance-inducing interpretation of the same track by Dark Entries artist Anatolian Weapons.

Review: After ten years of silence, 'Regimen Galactico Totalitario' materialises as the new release of the Mexican producer Dellarge, renowned for his experimental noise project I.N.R.I. (Industria Nacional del Ruido Infinito). On this latest mini-album, Dellarge propels his vision of today's evolution of EBM toward a futuristic blend of breakbeat, industrial, and electro, synthesising the an apt soundtrack for a future apocalypse, were it somehow quantized and filtered through a killer sequencer ahead of time. All instrumental, and with every track firing off its acid sixteenths as if each semiquaver were escaping a micro-fusion-powered mech-blaster, every track until 'Hades' is breakneck; that is until the EP commits to a tempo drop, as if to evoke the fact that most of the carnage has been meted out, and that all that's left is for the mechsuits to do now is dance an evil victory dance. Limited to just 300 copies, this is an end of the world you won't want to miss (how could you?).

Review: Death On Wax has already slipped out a handful of sharply informed edit and remix 12"s which fly the flag for the early 80s dance culture, when seedy, nocturnal bands were colliding with the flamboyant grooves of disco and synth pop. On this latest record, Jaz goes low and slow on the new wave goth tones of 'Cleopatra' before Frantz leans in on the Eurodisco freakiness of 'Hyde & Go Sleaze'. DJ Rocca & N2B pile on the pressure with the camp delights of 'Abuse' and Facets completes the set with the boxy beats of 'Never Passing'. Essential cuts for any discerning death disco.

Review: Gravers kicks off with a strong various artists release that sets out is electro stall in fine fashion. Kovyazin D opens up with the rugged and hard hitting electro-techno of 'Modularity' (feat Alexandr) with its stomping drums and frazzled synths. There is plenty of gothic energy to the slapping machismo of the acid laced'Proven Witch Psalm' from Antoni Maiovvi, then Millimetric offers up 'Espace' with a spiralling synth line and more caustic drums. Anton Levdikov closes down with 'Vardi' and a dark, driving bassline. This is a high impact EP for those who like it tough.

Review: Rhode Island based metallic experimentalist duo The Body have become renowned, not just for their own unique brand of heaving, caustic, dread-laden doomgazing, but for their dynamic slew of collaborative projects which has seen them work with the likes of deathgrind extremists Full Of Hell, sludge metal bastions Thou and noisecore industrialists Uniform, to name but a few. Orchards Of A Futile Heaven is the latest work to join this ever-expansive list of collaborations, seeing the pair link up with Berlin based DJ and experimental producer Dis Fig (aka DJ Felicia Chen) in an effort "to find new avenues to make heavy music that looked beyond tropes of metal and electronic music by merging the two". The resulting maelstrom offers a cacophonous swarm of distorted, screeching electronics and ethereal, menacing vocals submerged beneath layers of haunting, nocturnal, sonic malevolence. Perfect for all the family.

Review: Barcelona-based duo Silvia Kostance and Viktor L. Crux make visceral noise and raw industrial a real art form. They have done so now across lots of EPs and two albums on the likes of Mannequin Records, B.F.E Records and Magia Roja. They bring post-punk and EBM to their work but always with their own signature sounds at the core. Their renowned live shows inform their recorded music too and Toda la mentira sobre Dame Area is the first of two twin LPs that find the pair at their most explicit and emphatic. Their darkly seductive avant pop and mix of dub and insurgent noise all make for another superb album.

Review: The Dead C formed in New Zealand in the mid-80s and they remain one of the boldest bands to have emerged from the island's underground scene. Taking a supremely lo-fi, scuzzy approach to improvised rock, they've remained an enduring force with an international fan base as evidenced by their presence on Brooklyn label Ba Da Bing! Now that label are reissuing some of their earlier, hard to find work including this monolithic three-track entity, The Operation of the Sonne. It's a tangled, disorienting affair in which the guitar barely squawks through the thick layer of noise, but it's present enough to wrap around your skull and hold on tight. Not for the feint hearted by any means, but if you appreciate unbound free improvisation and noise rock, you'll definitely want to check this.

Review: New Zealand's foremost, fearless noise rock outfit The Dead C transmitted their dirt-caked sound to the world through a trio of albums in the 90s. Nowadays they're aligned with NYC label Ba Da Bing!, who deemed it high time these seminal slabs got a bigger audience. Originally recorded in the winter of 1994, The White House is a shade more direct than its gnarly predecessor The Operation of the Sonne, but only by a fraction. The trio's sound is pointedly inward looking and actively pursuing a fidelity which renders voice, guitar and drums as one coagulated beast. The fact it still kicks on the likes of 'Pitcher' despite this rejection of clarity is testament to the formidable playing and intent of the band, and perhaps the benefit of a fresh but considered remaster.

Review: After the squalling attack of The Operation of the Sonne and The White House, New Zealand noise rock provocateurs The Dead C had someone garnered attention and praise in 90s underground circles. In appropriately discordant fashion, they responded to their status of sorts by barrelling even further into obtuse noise and creating a double album's worth of sprawling, degraded epics. Despite their clear desire to not capitalise on recognition, there are some sharp hooks which would help the wider alternative rock landscape latch on, whether it's the tense, teasing drumming of 'Half' or the dissolving anti-anthem buried in the grimy folds of the title track. Ba Da Bing! take pride in delivering just the right kind of remaster and reissue for this and the other seminal Dead C records - a document of true originality and the gnarliest of noise bands.

Review: Physical pro-printed magazine of interviews and art prints, QR mix from Janet Davis, Tape from Devil's Gateway with O-Card sleeve Art and A3 Poster from Francesco Goats.

Review: Damage & Their Slices is the debut album from The Drift Institute, the new collaborative project - or shall we say, "cult" - of producers NVST and Theo Muller. According to the album's liner notes, the eponymous Institute is also a secret brotherhood of anarchist occultists taking refuge in an old Gothic castle, with the shared aim of purging the world of its injustices. Welcome to The Drift Institute taunts the cackling, effected voice accompanying us through this dark dronescape, in which the wails of torn souls, the dribbles of unknown liquids, and the filter-passed bangs of dubby warzones collide to form a conceptual guided tour through a hidden eighth layer of hell. But there's a twist: even though it sounds at once bleak, the pair aim to flip our perceptions of what a new world might look like. Listen between the notes, and to the voiceovers from NVST, and we soon make out a convincingly acerbic criticism of the modern world, and a direct-democratic vision of a better future.

Review: "I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring," David Bowie famously quipped at his 50th Birthday concert in Madison Square Garden. That was 1997, and sadly we can now look back at the years between then and now as the last the icon would enjoy, although given the pantheons of unreleased material, music and other, we still have more than his legacy alone to learn from. He certainly kept his word, then, not least by opting to work with Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, a band that found inspiration in myriad styles and sounds, from Human League to Pink Floyd, carving out a 'industrial electronic rock' niche for themselves. In addition to tours and one-off shows, recordings of their collaborations are remarkable, generating fresh wholes from the enormous sums of these parts.