From the forthcoming album, The Machine in the Ghost, Haujobb present “Opposition.” Featuring Emese Árvais Illés (Black Nail Cabaret) on vocals. It’s an electro-industrial nightmare with found sounds and a tense vibe.
(Photo: Chris Ruiz)
Inspired by the vibes of Kim Wilde and the Pet Shop Boys, Sweden’s Ankomst return with a slice of summer bliss. Drizzle it with eurodance and drench it in sunshine – it’s a poptastic main course.
There’s a classic line from the movie, Blues Brothers, when a bartender is asked about the music they play at the bar: “We got both kinds. We got country and western.”
So, welcome a new country-themed, star-spangled, rhinestone-encrusted, guitar-jangling group fronted by Kandle Osborne. Formed together with Jennie Vee, Leah Bluestein, and Rex Elle, The Midnight Cowboys have released their first single to acclaim by one of the Gallaghers from Oasis. And why not? The band might be half-Canadian, but it is all country.
Sad news reaches us that Andreas Catjar-Danielsson has passed away, aged 51, after a battle with cancer. The Swedish musician was closely associated with Covenant and Abu Nein, but he also created his own music and worked in theatre – at home and in Germany.
We send our condolences to his family and many friends.
The new album from Simon Fisher Turner, Instability of the Signal, comes out on Mute on 2 August 2024. Ease into it with this subtle track from the British composer with gentle strings from the Elysian Collective and whispered phrases added to his piano work and electronics.
Mute tell us:
The composer, musician and Zelig-like artist who has worked and performed in groundbreaking and underground music, film and art scenes since the 1970s has created a lush, soothing and intimate album, a landmark in his ever-expanding catalogue of projects. The 13-track album features Fisher Turner singing for the first time in many years, accompanying compositions built from tiny snippets of sound along with piano, classical strings, a detuned Fender Telecaster, and his field recordings.
Ann Winsborn and Dominic Bugatti return with an extra juicy slice of summertime pop. The Sun might or might not be out where you are, but this radio-friendly track about dumping your partner lights things up enough to call for an ice cream.
Mark Spybey (Zoviet France, Dead Voices on Air) and Graham Lewis (Wire, Dome, UUUU) have collaborated for a new album of experimental material. Lewis Spybey features six tracks of intriguing rhythms and drones that loop and spiral with intensity. The result is somewhere between the moment before sunrise and an infantry assault.
Out now on CD and digital formats from Emergency Hearts.
The latest single to be lifted from Page’s excellent album, En ny våg, “Frusen” features a contribution from Rrussell Bell. The Dramatis man and former member of Gary Numan’s touring band adds a touch of the OG Synth Britannia sound to Eddie Bengtsson’s reimagining of the spirit of 1979.
Throbbing Gristle terminated their original mission in 1981. The rock and roll cliche version is that the band broke up over a girl. The deeper reality is that Genesis P-Orridge, the band’s lead vocalist, was a complex character with some truly dark features. The “girl” in question (she shies from gender labels) was Cosey Fanni-Tutti. The guitarist and one-time UFO album cover model brought them to light in her writings: she was trafficked, physically assaulted, and subjected to mental abuse by P-Orridge during their time together. To twist a phrase attributed to the latter, TG was a challenging organisation for challenging people.
At the same time, TG was a creative force that blew holes in the rock establishment. The band created an independent label to release their own music and that of like-minded artists. They wrote with synthesisers and made songs inspired by ABBA, while mining true crime subcultures and inflicting tinnitus on their audiences. Their sense of humour and exploitation of “indecency” won them fans and enemies in equal proportions.
Mute, which has quietly acquired large swathes of the industrial music back catalogue, has announced two reissues from TG’s archives. The first is a relaunch of TGCD1 with a vinyl option. The second is a CD and vinyl releasd of The Third Mind Movements. The latter was previously only available as merch on TG’s final US tour in 2009. Both are available from 23 (see what they did there?) August 2024.
Mute tell us:
TGCD1 comprises 42 minutes of studio recordings, recorded at TG’s infamous Martello Street studio on a TEAC 8-Track recorder on 18 March 1979. The release, which comes with a booklet featuring the original 1986 sleeve notes by the band, was an exclusive piece of unreleased material for Throbbing Gristle’s first-ever CD release, and today, the record’s dark sound stands as a significant chapter in their discography.
In 2004 Chris Carter, Peter Christopherson, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti regrouped – 23 years after their mission was originally terminated – and between 2004 and 2007 the band released Part Two: The Endless Not, TG Now and A Souvenir of Camber Sands – all recently reissued via Mute.
The Third Mind Movements – available for the first time on vinyl and commercially for the first time on CD – was initially an exclusive CD release for the band’s final US tour in 2009 – they would split for the final time the following year. The tour, which saw them perform in the US for the first time in 28 years, included their first shows in NY and an appearance at Coachella festival. The Third Mind Movements album, recorded during the Desertshore sessions at the ICA, London several years earlier – a series of six live recordings from the ICA attended by an attentive audience – journeys through manipulated, time-stretched and distorted samples, with rhythmical breakbeats and hypnotic oscillations of electronics.
The ICA sessions were a unique and fascinating experience. An audience was assembled near Buckingham Palace, composed of refugees from Thee Temple of Psychick Youth and curious office workers. They were able to observe the band in action from seats overlooking work tables. Considering that TG had been maligned in the press and Parliament as “wreckers of civilisation,” the domestic scenery and polite interactions of the event turned a mirror on TG’s critics. As they consumed fantastic quantities of snacks and lashings of milky tea, TG turned Nico into something new and created new material of their own.
The gristle throbbed on and off after that. Again, a “girl” was involved. Maybe more than one. These releases are relics, but they don’t belong in a museum.
Arielle Andersson and Fredrik Lundvall Kindsäter are Octolab. Another act from Sweden’s West side, they do elegant pop with influences from the electronic underground. For this track, they have produced a sleek video with some masked guests and masses of strings.