If there’s some kind of irony in the fact that I spent Labour Day at a Mining Museum marvelling at how shitty the lives of miners were in the 20s and 30s, I’m not smart enough to divine it. It was a good weekend, and I’m sufficiently full of vegan pizza and hair of the dog to actually focus on writing about some new songs that have come across my desk in the last little while. We’re coming into the home stretch of 2012 what with it being autumn now (fuck the calendar, everyone knows summer is over when the kids go back to school), and the good music is apparently not gonna stop. Let’s dig in, shall we?

Okay, I'm over shaving the beard, but if anything happens to the hat we're gonna have a problem.

Laibach, “Warm Leatherette”

“Warm Leatherette” is one of those songs that could use a moratorium on being covered. Even within the confines of our thing it’s been done by practically everyone, hell, I think I recorded a cover of it at one point, and I don’t even make music. It seems like kind of an on the nose thing for Laibach to do considering their history of subversive cover versions but I can’t be mad at this, it’s just too perfect. The charm of the original has always been in that stiff, mechanical groove, paired here with Milan and company’s stately and anthemic (like, literally anthemic) version of industrial. Treten der autounfall klub!

∆AIMON, “Maasym (MODERN HOWL remix)”

Another week, another excuse to talk to about ∆AIMON, the California duo who’ve run away with our hearts. Now I could go on about how cool and atmospheric and unclassifiable their particular brand of dark electronic music is, and show pictures of how I totally drew their logo on my English binder, but perhaps I’ll settle for telling you that our chums at Artoffact are doing a CD re-release of their amazing 2012 record FLATLINER with a healthy dollop of bonus material. The t-shirt package even comes with some kinda crazy handmade bone totem thing, hella CVLT stylez for all you occult-minded kids. So yeah, look into that. This mix by Russia’s MODERN HOWL is a far cry from the original, but I’m feeling those wacky synthlines they added, just the thing for a nice fall evening.

DE/VISION, “Brotherhood of Man”

You gotta give it up for DE/VISION, they’ve stayed the course stylistically for almost 25 years at this point, faithfully producing ultra-melodic synthpop. I don’t know that I would have pegged this jam as a single when listening to their new album Rockets & Swords, but it has a pleasantly low-key and laid back feel that is totally working for me on some “Blasphemous Rumours”-type steez. Not too shabby DE/VISION, what else you got for me?

V▲LH▲LL – “A T4LE On 5TONE (DSX-remix)”

Did you read our feature on 12 bands you should know about a few weeks back? If not, you should totally go do that. Two of the bands featured were the mysterious V▲LH▲LL and the less mysterious but still exciting DSX (a solo project of Haujobb’s Dejan Samardzic). Here we find the latter act remixing the former, applying his metronomic beat to a complete makeover of the gauzy, nordic original. This is the first taste we’ve had of V▲LH▲LL’s forthcoming remix release, which will feature contributions from ∆AIMON and DEATHAUS amongst others.

Sonic Area, “Once More Unto the Breach Dear Friends”

Sonic Area is Arco Trauma, also of Chrysalide, who are just the most unnervingly angry thing going right now. The trailer for the upcoming Music For Ghosts had me prepped for something weird and atmospheric, but I don’t think I was really expecting how cinematic and engulfing this would be. Remember when Ant Zen used to put all the stuff like this on Hymen? Is Hymen even still a thing? I don’t know, but based on this I’m a have to check this record when it drops later in the week.

C/∆/T, “Chasing Game”

Hot off the griddle, here’s the first track released from Ben Arp’s forthcoming release on Phantasma Disques Rise of the Night Terror. If you’ve followed the whole drag/witch/whatevs thing in any capacity you’ll know them at the very least from their distinctive album design. Good to see Arp get on board with ’em, another case of kids from either side of the industrial/WH divide pressing some flesh. You can pre-order that disk here, crazy limited you feel me?

C/∆/T – Chasing Game from C/∆/T on Vimeo.