Holy crumbs is it Mid-march already? It’s almost as though the inexorable passage of time waits for no one, and obsessing over arbitrary measurements of it is futile or something. All joking aside, this is when the rubber tends to hit the road for coverage on the site, and with new albums from Test Dept, Mr.Kitty, Download and innumerable others in the hopper we’ve been busy listeners of late. Plus, with a marathon podcast recording session on the weekend (the results of which you’ll hear in upcoming episodes of We Have a Technical and We Have a Commentary), we’re going full-speed with no signs of slowing down yet in 2019. Have some Tracks to start your week with us, why not?
Profit Prison: Thelemically Swole.
CRT, “Blister Pack”
New DKA signee CRT is working raw on their cassette release CS2. Not quite EBM and not quite techno, the lo-fi sounds of “Blister Pack” put us in mind of a blown-out Severed Heads; its funky bassline and a rusty hook adorned with a commanding, distant vocals. This is exactly the sort of thing we go to DKA for, a new to us artist who is working in sounds and ideas that intrigue us but with a spin that sets them apart. Look to a full-review of this release on this site in the near future.
Randolph & Mortimer, “Despotic”
We’ve been banging the drum for Randolph & Mortimer’s classically-influenced but still fresh and punchy brand of body music for years. Hard hitting while still deftly weaving sample-based social comment, the Sheffield outfit have been releasing tunes exclusively through singles and EPs, the majority of which have been wholly digital. Now, finally, with Manifesto For A Modern World they’re collating “greatest hits, choice cuts and a couple of unreleased tunes” into a unified release. New (to us) tune “Despotic” bangs just as hard as anything in their back catalog, and again shows why they’re a band we’ve been happy to rep for years.
Sweat Boys, “I Don’t Love You”
Put your hand up if you were expecting a slice of smooth, eighties style synthpop a la Images in Vogue from a project called Sweat Boys. We admit we were a little taken aback when we first hit the play button on “I Don’t Love You”, but it didn’t take long for the sweet melancholy and simple instrumentation to burrow their way into our ears: it’s that rare track that you can sing along with during a first listen-through. Solid stuff from an act we’ve mostly overlooked ’til now, but this has gone miles in making sure we don’t make the same mistake again.
Profit Prison, “A Strange Situation”
You have to love a label like Avant! who can serve up some blisteringly nihilistic dark electro like the new QUAL EP one week and then hip us to some sweetly bubbling italo/minimal synthpop the next. We didn’t check Profit Prison’s 2017 tape on Dom Fernow’s Hospital Productions, but it looks as though the one-man Seattle outfit is approaching this sort of whimsical, emotive style from the same sort of lo-fi/hardcore-background angle as Cold Cave.
VR SEX, “Landmine”
Speaking of hardcore backgrounds, the trend of folks with roots in that scene digging into post-punk nostalgia continues with VR SEX. Featuring personnel from Drab Majesty and legendary gothic post-hardcore wipeout artists Antioch Arrow, the trio’s debut tape is set for release on Dais this Friday. Heavy Red Lorry Yellow Lorry feels from this one, both in terms of vocals and production (not to mention the lyrical “talk about the weather” nod).
Razorback Hollow, “The Sanctity of Your Temple is Ruined by Your Inability to Cope”
What would a week of Tracks be without a contribution from Daniel X Belasco, friend of I Die: You Die and artist best known as Glass Apple Bonzai? This time out we have a fresh release from the resurrected Razorback Hollow, Dan’s post-industrial outlet. “The Sanctity of Your Temple is Ruined by Your Inability to Cope” has some elements you might associate with Belasco’s production style; dialogue samples, gated verb snares and a bassline with some movement to it, but check those sinister pads and Dan’s almost unrecognizable vocals. We’d go for a whole album of this, no question.
