electronic

I checked out Life Index after being very impressed by a few of the singles that I’d come across from the producer. Unfortunately, the debut album doesn’t appear to be up to the same standard. Some of the vocal performances sound like Mortiis trying to break into the mainstream dance scene, and admittedly that leaves a little bit to be desired. Recommend sticking to the EPs for your Maceo Plex fix.

I attended Field Day 2017 with some work colleagues (sadly it was the same day as the London van attacks – mental shit) but I failed to inspect the merch stall and missed this record, which was for sale on this day only. Thanks to the wonders of the internet however, I’ve been lucky enough to not miss out retrospectively. This is, purely, a stunning display of Aphex Twin-erisms. I can’t really say more than…

Infinity is a task of a record, if I’m being real here. Just sitting down and honestly, thoroughly listening to a track of this scope is a bit difficult for me, which is weird considering how much I love harsh noise. There is just something about the pace of Jesu’s music, which is heartbreaking as it is at the same time enormously uplifting, that results in me only being able to ingest it whilst in…

This was one of those little gems that I accidentally discovered via Spotify. Maceo Plex’s Conjure Infinity EP/single seems to tread the line between deep house the more hypnotic stylings of the pystrance genre. Throw over some dark electronic passages and you’ve got yourself a recipe for success. The two tracks almost meld as one (the second may even be a re-working or a remix? What do I know…) and have a chilled, subliminal feel…

You gotta love Richard D. James, right? Often imitated (attempted, at least!) and discussed, but instantly recognizable and stands in his own little microcosm. Orphaned Deejay Selek came out around the same time as Syro, and honestly, I still spin this a lot more than I do the Syro record. There is something much more imminent about this; the way the opening tracks pulse and drive makes you just want to get up and go,…

There is something about this release that I find very hypnotic and mesmerizing; there is definitely a sense of mystery here, which I absolutely love – it isn’t something you see all to often in these glory days of the information age! Couple the fact that this cassette release meanders within itself as much as it leads with hypnotic rhythms, and you have the perfect recipe for pulsating electronic work. The “cassette” quality sound of…

Whoever thought that goregrind that sounds like it has been composed entirely on an early 90s game console chipset would be a good idea? I mean, I’m not even sure if it is actually a good idea, but fuck it, I think it is pretty awesome, so who cares, eh? S.M.E.S., if you don’t know, is the baby of once Last Days Of Humanity vocalist Erwin De Groot (who is also doing vocals more recently…

Head Noise are a 3 piece Electro Art-Punk band from South Wales, often using a keytar as a primary instrument as well as an array of nontraditional instruments. With no live drums or an actual drummer they are certainly a different act and stand out from the crowd with their less conventional, more experimental approach. So here we have the bands new 6 track mini-album “Special Effects Improves The Defects”, a very fun sounding release…

I can’t tell you how rare it is that I come across the perfect album, and I mean that in the sense of when on a record every single song is flawless; each piece contributing not only to the overall experience, but able to stand its own ground without just being needless filler. Faithless are not a band that I spin all that often anymore, but if I’m in the mood for this style of…

Dense, thick, industrial beat loops is the order of the day, from the excellent JK Flesh project. Nothing Is Free seems to have dropped completely the guitar elements that so heavily caressed the beatwork on recordings such as Posthuman, in favour of bringing the beat entirely to the centre-stage. Nothing Is Free is not dissimilar to the work produced by Mick Harris in some of the more transitional and experimental eras of his excellent project…

Martian Cartography is an excellent album release by the criminally under-rated experimental duo Necro Deathmort. Mixing catastrophically heavy atmosphere with intelligent, progressive electronic work has always been ND’s forte, but on Martian Cartography, I find that this approach to sound design has finally had chance to spread its wings and fly. In some respects that means that this record isn’t as hard-hitting or droning as something off Music Of Bleak Origin or earlier, but the…

King Midas Sound is a beautiful collaboration between Roger Robinson, Kiki Hitomi and Kevin Martin, which (I think, correct me if I’m wrong) began life as a track for Kevin’s much more wider known project, The Bug. I find it hard to describe and categorize KMS simply because my exploration into this kind of music is incredibly limited (I got here through Godflesh, Techno Animal, etc.), although I can say that this is a incredibly…

Aun are one of those bands that I constantly end up back at. For what is essentially noisy ambiance with synths and the odd guitar, this is quite impressive. Fantastic, shoe-gazy drones meet unfurling electronics in transcendent “songs” that average around the 7 minute mark; deep, involving worlds swirl into life, conjured from the chasms of nothingness by this bleak yet somewhat inspiring show of digital noise. Enter the Black Pyramid!

Sleaze Servant is the new EP from long-time techno-gore-grind filth mongers, Libido Airbag; a “band” so balls deep in scum and vulgar sounds that even your gran loves a dance to some of their older tunes. They’ve hardly pumped out volumes of material in their long existence, but the fact that they can still develop and spew out fresh sounds in such a restrictive genre is a testament to gore and porno grind, especially the…

I find that Nine Inch Nails’ release history is constantly hit-and-miss. This latest EP is absolutely no exception to that rule. How can something that is only 5 tracks long be so “meh”? I mean, surely it is either going to be shit or it is going to be great? No. Not Nine Inch Nails. Not Not The Actual Events (see what I did there?). Below is easily the best track on the whole release….

Another thing that slipped unrecognised under my nose in 2016 was the new Burial EP. It appears that the urbanism-as-sound mastermind continues to favor the EP format over releasing another full length for us, although there is something beautiful about one of these EPs dropping every so often, offering us a glimpse into the modern, concrete existence of Burial’s world through a drizzly, fractured lens. It may sound a bit frightful if I tell you…

I stumbled across this on a 3am YouTube sesh recently. There really isn’t anything quite like closely examining all the different types of cheese in the reduced aisle at Tesco with underground deep house filling up your skull; that one Filipino shelf-stacker eyeing you suspiciously from behind the Anchor Spreadable. The bass on this is absolutely incredible, as is the gentle progression of the beat; retaining that old-school house feel without dedicating too much time…

Baltra is a deep house artist from New York, and an オメガ (appears) to be a single-tracked EP with very little information available about it (it is even missing from the artist’s Bandcamp page, as well as having no listing on Discogs, whose users are usually on the ball with this type of shit). (2020 edit: appears to have been eventually released as part of this a year later: https://www.discogs.com/Baltra-Cant-Explain-It/release/12586745) オメガ (translating simply to Omega) offers…

I might be a bit late to the Blank Banshee party, but that doesn’t stop me from chaining the entire discography a few times on a night shift or two. It definitely got the ol’ chair reclining; it was actually quite pleasant working away to the busy-yet-lucid tunes in a 2am caffeine haze. What stood out to me the most out of the Blank Banshee records was this one, the first one. There’s just something…

Perhaps it is because I find myself more and more nocturnal, with my life seemingly spent basking in the constant glow of some sort of screen or interface, but I find myself becoming one with the [ v a p o r ] ((( a  e  s  t  h  e  t  i  c ))). Yes, this is the only logical reason I can think for my sudden interested in what is referred to as vaporwave….

I love Björk, I really do, but a lot of her later output leaves a lot to be desired, in my opinion. Case in point: this entire album. Despite the lead single “Crystalline” being one of my favourite Björk tracks, and “Mutual Core” being a fantastic, brooding ballad-meets-speedcore headfuck, the remainder of Biophilia is unfortunately a lazy wasteland of ploinky ploinky quirkiness that goes absolutely nowhere, which in a bizarre twist of fate is simultaneously…

IMPLΛNT, more commonly known I’m sure as the full project name Infected Manipulation Parasite Last Λbstract Noise Terror is a fairly prolific speedcore artist. Most of his (?) stuff has been released through the Bulgarian netlabel Глисти, but some releases (like this one) have been put out by Legs Akimbo Records, amongst others. Forgive me if I’m a little off here, as I’m still kinda finding my way with this type of stuff, but I…

The Gorillaz self-titled record was the first album that I ever owned. Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory (unfortunately) holds the title for first record ever bought, but Gorillaz was the first thing that I seriously jammed, and it was instrumental in developing my interest in music as a serious hobby. Back in the day I had this terrible transparent blue Aiwa tape walkman / radio combo, and I played the livin’ fuckin’ guts out of my…

High Tech Wreck is an electronic explosion of sound conducted in the grimmest and trve-est of ways possible for electronic music – in 8 bit sound blips, of course! All four tracks here have been painfully synthesized using the primitive sound forms, and actually make for some seriously interesting listening. It would possibly be a primitive and ham-fisted reviewing technique to make comparisons to Aphex Twin whilst talking about electronic music, but High Tech Wreck…

Heartless is the most recent offering from bizarre, dark and menacing electronica group Bestial Mouths. Expect “darkwave” (the YouTube comments section just had a triple bypass with the use of this word) meeting ethereal pop in a world of decay, pain and seemingly endless reverb. The tracks do sound kinda similar however in a bizarre twist this only seems to cement the record together as a solid whole, rather than drive boredom into the heart…

Flux Information Sciences are one of those bands that have got me wondering – “where the hell have you been all of my life!”. It genuinely annoys me when such gems go undetected on my musical radar for so long, especially since they can attribute a sizeable portion of their success to one Michael Gira (who? Never heard of him) after being signed to Young God in the early 2000s. Hell, even Chris Pravdica, the…

If I wanted to hear freaky English kids talking about fucking potatoes over a meltdown of electronics, up until now I’d have said that I’d have to either a.) knock up my ex a few times (aayyy lmao) or b.) hit a shitload of acid. But now, thanks to the Aphex Twin side-project / spin off AFX, I can just wap Spotify on, and away we go! Wow, technology has come so far, I think…

This is a short, limited edition EP that Jesu released towards the arse end of 2012 on some ridiculously limited quantity (I can’t remember what number it was exactly but it sold out and I missed out on a copy, but to be honest, I probably wasn’t paying enough attention and let it slide). It contains an unreleased Jesu track in the form of “Veiled” and a beautiful cover of The Stranglers’ “Duchess”, redesigned in…

(words by Kristian Cole, Merthyr Tydfil’s very own laureate of the digital noise revolution) As we are inclined to wash the feet of the beggars John Cage (American Tramp) and Karlheinz Stockhausen (German Weirdo) I cannot help but think what shit they pulped out over their years of sound production. Cage and Stockhausen, both from academic musical backgrounds, may have seemed ground breaking to the other chin rubbing fucksnouts who pretended to understand their take…

Rainforest by Clams Casino is probably my top contender for favourite driving music at the moment, especially during the night time. Rainforest is as dense and multi-layered as its moniker suggests; overlapping, almost distorted layers of electronic auras mingle freely over retro drum programming and ethereal vocal tomfoolery. Honestly, the whole thing is a bit disjoined but each individual track works so well in unfolding its own world that you don’t want it to end….

Nada! is my favourite Death In June record. Brown Book is kind of similar but I prefer Nada! for its dominating dark 80s synthpop vibes and martial background. There’s also less Nazi imagery flirtation going on here, which is always a plus. I believe that this album was the last the group did as a three piece; and seems a fry cry from the acoustic solo project that Death In June has been for so…

Anamnesis is a ‘rarities’ collection from Mick Harris’ genre-spanning project Scorn. It’s actually a bizarre cross-section of the sounds that Scorn had made up until the late 90s; encompassing the early Nik Bullen material, the loud beatwork of the Logghi Barogghi era and the minimalist, bass heavy electronic beats that would come later. It’s all a bit of a mess, to be honest. It’s like this CD can’t decide if it’s a b-sides collection, a remix…

There’s a lot of Jesu stuff out there now – I think this project ended up being much more productive than even Justin Broadrick could have anticipated when he first started lurching out the aching melancholic drones of Jesu. Silver however, simply has to be some of the best material recorded under this moniker. It fights for the top spot against Lifeline, which was the first Jesu release I heard and therefore I have an…

Welcome to the album that got me banned from the Vinyl Junkies group on Facebook! Haha! There was some spat happening on there over the use of the nude female form as album artwork. The usual pros and cons were discussed, where the line between pornography and art lies etc. etc., and I argued (quite sensibly, I would like to think) that no matter what the image may be, if the band or artist has…

AUN are another band that I picked up on thanks to Roadburn Festival. I missed them on the day (2012 edition I believe) but in a ritual that my friends call Pre-Roadburn Listening I got listening to their Black Pyramid record. Multigone is an earlier recording of theirs, and is a bit harshier than the meandering ambience present on Black Pyramid. AUN’s approach to noise is droning, unfolding soundscapes that almost have some tangible tune…

‘Scuse the lack of posting guys and gals – it’s that time of year again where I fall off. Just had to drop in to share this post though; one of the most positive and uplifting records I’ve heard in a while. I’ve been craving fresh, new musical experiences lately in amongst flying about being mental-busy, and I’ve been journeying to musical realms that I’ve rarely touched up in the past. I heard of Emeralds…

Main is a band that was formed by two members of Loop, including Robert Hampson who was also in Godflesh for a little bit (he played on the Pure album). Main, to me, appears to be some sort of experimental industrial-tinged ambient project that places heavily effected guitar work into a world of noises and other creepy atmospheres. (2021 edit: G C Green of Godflesh also plays on this particular album) And that, essentially, is what…

This is the first time I’ve actually successfully sat through an entire Nadja album. They definitely made delivering kebabs and pizza an ethereal experience, I can say that much. Numbness is like many other releases in the sizeable Nadja catalogue; ridiculously fuzzy, enormously slow, miserable yet hopeful and just a little bit pretentious. Numbness offers (to me) nothing new; it is simply Nadja for Nadja’s sake. Depending on how much you like Nadja, you may…

Lull is another Mick Harris project, one I believe that he worked on between Scorn releases back in the day. Lull takes pages from the book of Lustmord; extremely minimal yet puzzlingly fulfilling compositions of sound, often devoid of any noticeable instrumentation, pummelling you instead with lulling ambience (no pun intended) and claustrophobic barrages of atmosphere. Moments then, is the stifling ambient soundscape of choice for those with a short attention span. Instead of the…

The hype for hhis record has been unstoppable for the last few months, and rightly so, due to the solid consistency of quality albums that The Aphex Twin has churned out over his long and unusual career. On top of that, Syro is the first Aphex Twin release in 13 years, so to say this album had a lot to live up to would be a bit of an understatement. Luckily, Richard D. James has…

It’s not that often that I usually listen to shit like this, but I burned this album when it first came out and it’s just one of those things that’s been stuck in my car since. My stereo broke a few months ago when I tried to spin a leaked copy of Swans’ To Be Kind (that’s what I get for pirating music, folks!*) but when my car went in recently to get a new…

We are about to take you into the world of the LSD user… I’ve been on a bit of a nostalgia trip recently so I’ve been spinning this record an awful lot. When I was 12, life was all about Slipknot and Mushroomhead. Mushroomhead, despite having some dud album releases in the last decade or so, remain one of my favourite bands ever. I picked up XX on the strength of the band’s image alone,…

Wow, just how fuckin’ nasty this sounds is really beyond any words! Fans of Libido Airbag better be scrambling to hit play on this shit – I’m not kidding. There’s legions of lo-fi electronic or techno influenced “goregrind” out there at the moment, and if you’re not deep into this shit then sifting through it all can be a bit of a slog. Thank fuck then, for Gurgle, who are just absolutely fucking amazing. Typical…

Now this is really nice – imagine combining the sounds of gabba techno drum programming (but slowed down a touch) with the random ambience of early Warp Records electronic music like The Aphex Twin. It’s kinda like a drum’n’bassy Venetian Snares making sweet, sweet love to Optimus Prime, at varying BPM. “Time Is A Disease” is a beast of an opener, with moody synths and epic piano lines, before it bursts this EP open with…

For me, Shpongle is the perfect music for the expansion of mind, body and soul; the perfect background noise for the ingestion of opiates, fungal hallucinogenics and dimethyltryptamine. However, even though I don’t sit around fires chugging bowls of ayahuasca that often, I do feel that sometimes I am halfway there, thanks to Shpongle’s ethereal “psytrance” (yes, that’s a real genre) and its ability to take me other worlds. Museum Of Consciousness is apparently the…

I would probably have never listened to Portishead if it wasn’t for the fact that their first two albums were already on my old computer when I bought it, back in 2009. They always seemed like something my mother would listen to, what with their shit band name and music video circulations on the Sky ClassicFM music channel. It wasn’t until my appreciation for electronic music developed to such a degree that I could hear…

This is a sticky-labelled 12″ that I bought 2nd hand when I was experimenting with scratching back in the day (lol). I’d gotten a Ministry of Sound deck for Christmas and I needed some 90s-to-the-max shit to scratch and test pitch correction / matching on. As expected, I failed triumphantly at this shit and gave it up pretty quickly, although I did find it fun to scratch random records now and then, something which I…

It might have cybergoth written all over it, but this album is the fucking shit. Imagine if Dimmu Borgir decided to start making music like KMFDM or something. Animatronic is a bright, sparkly journey through what should by rights be a dark and mysterious world. The songs are keyboard or female-vocal led, beefed out with chuggy riffage and a combination of programmed beats and heavy drumming. Eagled-eared listeners (is that a thing? It is now!)…

SKI BA BOP BA DOP DA FUCKIN’ BOP NIKKA A bit of a jokey post for you, considering it’s April Fools and all. Despite the ridiculousness of the content, this is a genuinely canon Lines In Wax post and has been added to the Collection page and everything. Ho ho! I got this alllll the way back on January the 2nd when I was helping my buddy Phil out at his job recycling textiles, and…

Ho ho! Now this is something that I have watched grow from a silly one-minute-something demo into a full-blown project of epic proportions. Introducing my good ol’ pal Gareth B, whom is a fellow band-mate with me in Merthyr Tydfilian based rap metal (yes!) group Start! Start!. Mr. B is always grooving our tunes up with his mad bass skills, but he doesn’t get much chance to shine on the mic. That’s where Small Fortunes…

As far as Björk albums go this has to be the most boring one I have heard so far, if you can even call it an album at only seven tracks in length. Selmasongs is the “OST” to the film Dancer In The Dark, which also stars Björk in the main role. I’ve never seen the film and don’t particularly plan on watching it, but I expected from Björk and all her super-creative weirdness a very challenging…

Ever since I decided to include CDs on Lines In Wax about a year and a half ago I have looked forward to reviewing this album. It’s purely one of the most unique things I have ever heard, and every time I scanned my shelf for something to listen to whilst at work, Snuffholic would catch my eye, but every single time I’d think to myself “hmmm, maybe next time”. Well, finally that “next time”…

Before The Berzerker became a fully-fledged band with Dissimulate and the tour that came before it, the project was – if footage from the Principles and Practices.. DVD is anything to go by – basically one very angry Australian man shouting at his friends until they made a death metal record with hardcore gabba drumming. I don’t really know how or why Dig from Earache signed Luke Kenny on two mediocre, dancy Morbid Angel remixes,…

This album was the final recording that Mick did with any connections to Earache. The album itself was produced and “marketed” by Earache Records, but released by Mick’s own label, Scorn Recordings. Logghi Barhogghi is only the second Scorn album after the departure of Nik Bullen, and still sounds a bit bare and unsteady on it’s feet, just like it’s predecessor, Gyral. Although, unlike Gyral, LB is much more straight forward and was a definite…

Holy shit what the fuck is going on here!? Ha ha! This is some out-there shit! I’ve experienced gabba and speedcore before but this is a bit more on the edge of insanity; sometimes it goes so fast that there are just blurs of drum hits in a row that sound like a goddamn machine malfunctioning or something. When it slows down enough for some semblance of a beat to kick in, shit is fucking…

It took me a while but I finally got around to buying the second installment in the Audiofilm series. I don’t really know what has taken so long, considering it’s not particularly rare, difficult to obtain or even worth a lot. I got this off Discogs for £1.50, which for even a 3″ CD is criminal. The packaging and artwork is more of the same type of stuff that was introduced on the first Audiofilm…

Some of you might remember my enlightening conversion to the ways of Burial when I picked up the Traunt / Rough Sleeper 12″ not so long ago; what an uplifting yet sorrowful journey that 12″ was, and how it made me long for more Burial records! But, due to the overwhelming amount of shit that I’m into it’s taken me quite a while to get around to buying another Burial record, but I finally picked…

Seeing Justin Broadrick performing live as JK Flesh in Roadburn 2012 really opened up my eyes; it was like a dream coming true, the dirgy rhythms, haunting vocals and nasty guitar sound of Godflesh mashed head on into dubstep-style heavy bass and programmed drums. I didn’t really know whether I should dance or punch somebody in the face. To be true, I did neither; I just stood there bobbing my head as the awesomeness washed…

Oh, how I have longed for a new Jesu release! I snoozed on the previous new material (the Duchess 7″) and it sold out before I had even the slightest chance of even considering buying it, and now it is added to my never-ending list of expensive shit to buy off Discogs. Trouble is, it’s hard to find the money to keep up with all the new releases in the first place, doubly hard when…

Gah, don’t you just hate it when 2 x 12″s are rammed into one non-gatefold jacket? Something about this just gets right on my fucking wick, son. If you’re gonna fork out for a double album repress on heavy-as-shit vinyl then you might as well go the full hog and be good enough to include a gatefold jacket. This poor bastard is loaded to the gills with discs! Blinkin’ heck Warp, it’s not like you…

After the incredible journey that was Requiem, I was terribly disappointed with the first Audiofilm instalment. When I finally got over the fact that this 3″ CD wasn’t going to be more of the same of what was displayed on Scott’s debut, I gave it another chance and now I really like it. I can’t really say much about it as it’s fairly short and entirely atmospheric, so you’ll have to hear it for yourself…

I am a total sucker for a catchy pop song. I guess you can’t deny a well written song when you hear one, and Daft Punk, despite being awfully boring, have a rather large canon of well written songs. I think this might actually top “Aerodynamic” as my favourite Daft Punk tune, which has held the record for a very long time now; something like 13 years? Jesus fucking Christ I’m getting old (I really…

The first thing that I notice about this Warp repressing of Aphex Twin’s classic record is that it is not a double album. That’s not a problem, I just assumed that it would be on double wax. The vinyl is heavy, though! I don’t know how heavy exactly, but it weighs a fecking ton (slight over-statement) and is very difficult to get out of the sleeve. When the needle slides onto the wax though, the…

Hello and welcome to the Lines In Wax 250th post extravaganza! It’s taken just over two years (and just under 20k hits), but we got there in the end, eh? It only seems like yesterday that I was doing the 100th post special; I can’t believe how fast time goes. Anyway, here’s to the next 250 posts…it’s safe to say I already know what I’m gonna do for the big 500th – now that’s thinking…

I’ve not heard the source material for this remix, but I’m not entirely sure if I need to, if I’m honest. The thing with remixes of this nature is that the songs are usually so mutated from their original form that they have become brand new entities in their own right. Mixing gabba techno with awkward synths and nifty, sneaky little drum’n’bass passages, NUH really makes a fucking meal out of whatever source material Hideous…

Where Björk’s Debut record gets off to a confusing yet almost “cute” start, her follow-up record Post really starts to push the boat out. Holy mother of fuck what is going on here? One has to simply compare album covers to get an idea of the difference. Debut was different in so many ways, but seemed to have one guiding theme. Post, on the other hand, seems to have not been planned out in any…

It’s that time again; another Godflesh post! How long will this one be? How far up Justin Broadrick’s arse can I get this time? Ha ha! All jokes aside, my love for Godflesh is seemingly never-ending, although I do have lapses in listening time these days as there is so much other stuff out there I’m currently wrapping my lugholes around. At the moment I’ve been on a tremendous (and possibly worrying) hip hop /…

I got this nice little EP when HMV still sold vinyl at decent, affordable prices. I think it was fiver, so you can’t argue with that (April 2013 Edit: I actually got this from Spillers Records on my birthday last year. Sometimes it’s hard keeping track of where I get all this crap). As far as Venetian Snares goes this record is pretty tame, there is a lot more ambient and nice synth sounds than…

Welcome to what is quite possibly one of the most chilled out things in the world. I’m not talking that lovey-dovey “ambient” chill out shit that comes in box sets of 5 CDs, I’m talking about modern, chillax-to-the-max experimental dub. After being recommended Burial by about 40,000 different people I decided to actually check out some of his tunes on Spotify and I was an instant convert. One thing I don’t agree with here though…

Björk has always been one of those artists I’ve always been interested in but never got around to properly checking out. With my recent upgrade to Spotify Premium, I now have easy access to thousands of records I would otherwise overlook. Sure, I’ve always downloaded music, but typing “Björk” into Spotify and pressing play is easier than researching a band and then finding links to the “best” record, downloading the .rar, importing into iTunes, yadda…

This 12″ marks my first Record Store Day purchase, even though it was accidental. I decided to visit Cardiff on Record Store Day this year, which was fairly disastrous, but I ended up in Catapult browsing where I picked up another King Midas 12″. When I took it to the counter to pay for it, the chap at the desk kindly informed me that the band had put another 12″ out on Ninja Tune just…

Another nostalgic blast from the past for me! Thanks to Zoverstocks selling on Amazon for 3p a record, I managed to get my hands on another album that I’ve put off buying for years. Before the industrial brigade get all up in my grill about how my info on Mr. Empire is all wrong, I must tell you I write this all as an outsider to Alec Empire’s / Atari Teenage Riot’s long career(s). This…

Probably not my favourite Chemical Brothers tune but a good one all the while. I got this for I think £1 in Virgin Megastore when that was still around. This was released on every format possible for a single, barring tape. The 12″ contains an extended mix and a different B-side, and the CD version contains an edited mix and a remix. It seems the only place to get the un-altered single (other than to…

“Slateman” is one of my favourite ‘Flesh songs, and is a prime example of what excellence can be achieved by simply using a drum machine right. This isn’t particularly heavy or drawn out or even harrowing in any way, but it is the perfect example of Godflesh’s sound. The drum sound is absolutely spot on, I don’t really know what does it here for me but it’s just so right. The bass is clanky and…

What better way to see in the new year than with some head-pounding Scorn music? Stealth is probably one of my favourite Scorn records and it is the record that I recommend to people that are new to Mick’s work and who are familiar with the concept of dubstep. Stealth is very similar to the album that followed it (Refuse; Start Fires), but unlike Refuse and its exploration of the one-dimensional sound by using real…

This is the first Jesu record I heard and it is still probably one of my favourite releases by him. It also introduced me to Jarboe, which opened up a whole can of worms in my life in the form of Swans (another very long story for another day), who appears here as a special guest, not to mention as a precursor to the pair’s collaboration album that would follow. Lifeline was released on the…

(2020 Update: Scorn is now back and released a new EP and new full length in 2019! Yay!) Sadly, Yozza (released in the arse-end of 2011) was to be the last thing that Mick Harris would put out under the Scorn moniker after 20 long years of pushing the boundaries of underground electronic music. Looking back now, it is hard to believe how far ahead of the times Scorn was; playing something that was the…

Initially, I was puzzled to why the WIAFS album was split into 2 parts on vinyl. I could live with it, but it annoyed me nonetheless. When I espied part 2 for cheap on Discogs, I snapped it up. Little did I know until this arrived (go me for researching properly) that these two volumes are just two tracks a piece; one on each side. Man that sucks! I guess it was an easy way…

This 12″ is absolutely massive! Every time I put it on the bass on this Planet Mu pressing literally shakes my house! This is a prime example of electronic music cut onto vinyl; I would gladly use it to put all the analogue-or-die vinyl fans in their place, that is if I was cool enough to know people who could possibly argue over that thing. I was excellently blessed with this for free by someone…

(2020 edit: I apologise for the shitty artwork on this one, Photobucket have laid a watermark over a photo that I took myself, but there we go) I wasn’t entirely fussed on Mortiis’ much more metal approach in 2004 but there are some cracking tunes on The Grudge, including the title track, packaged here whittled down to a club-size bite. I can’t blame Earache for wanting in on the electro-goth club scene audience that Mortiis…

I initially thought this just a completists item, and being a total crazy fan I simply had to get a copy on my quest to own all Godflesh stuff. The “Radioslave” version carries the original off on a whole new tangent, keeping the opening 90s dance vibe as its leading beat rather than heading into the heaviness the original does. The sample of the lyric “Jesus!” blares continually. “Total State” batters “Slavestate” into an unrecognisable…

Godflesh is one of my favourite bands. Not of all time, because I have not known them “all time”. But, when I finally got my head out my arse and searched for some music that wasn’t grindcore, German techno-porngrind or Sunn O))), I never, ever looked back. Godflesh’s effect on my outlook of music is just as important as Napalm Death’s original input into my perception of music (how ironic it is that both bands…

One of my all time favourite songs! Shaming that I never got around to buying this any sooner too! And I gotta say, it sounds fucking massive on vinyl. The higher vocal frequencies end up in fizz a bit, but the bassier parts are much more prominent to what I am usually expecting. Also, the panning seems somewhat different? The joys of analogue music (assuming Aphex Twin was still using analogue equipment to make his…

As far as dubstep goes I’m still pretty inexperienced, but as my musical tastes somehow mutate drastically I find myself listening more and more to this genre. Scorn for me were the in-road into this electronic genre I would have maybe never touched otherwise, despite the fact a lot of types of dubstep (or gorestep) artists mimic the structure and heaviness of metal music. This double 12″ by Ohm Resistance however, does not strike any…

Y’know what, I don’t know anyone who fucking likes Mortiis. Either he really isn’t appreciated at all, or I am just surrounded by people who do not understand his music. I’m pretty certain it is the latter. When I was in school a lot of the goth kids started liking Mortiis when The Grudge came out, and this pissed me off if anything, because I’d been chastised for listening to Mortiis for years, and now…

It is often easy whilst analyzing Godflesh’s contribution and effect upon heavy music to focus wholly on the groundbreaking Streetcleaner record and to overlook this crooked, snarling little gem of industrial terror. More claustrophobic than Streetcleaner’s sprawling inhuman soundscape, Godflesh pummels the listener with a mechanized drum machine attack and plodding, menacing bass. What I have here is the original, untouched Swordfish Records pressing of this EP. Some think that the clear Swordfish pressing is…

To say that The Cumback split Gut’s fanbase in half would be an understatement; 2006’s rap metal crossover fuckfest alienated more goregrind fans than you’d care to even think existed! Who then, I hear you cry, keeps pressing Gut records? And who the fuck still buys them? Well, the answer is labels like Supreme Chaos and idiots like me, it would seem. Pete Steele (may he rust in piece) in an interview about Type O…