What’s up friends? If you’re not one of the folks who follows us on Facebook or Twitter you probably haven’t heard the good news: we will be partnering with our awesome friends at Festival Kinetik to book a second stage of music and a few mainstage acts in 2014, the first year it will be taking place in Toronto! We can’t share too much yet, but suffice to say we are crazy excited and honestly a little terrified; we’ve been down with the K since year 1, and the fact that we were asked to participate and present some music is a huge honour. More details as we get them sorted, keep watching this space (as well as the aforementioned social media) for all the latest. Now, let’s check out some new songs, shall we?

Douglas J is still movin' on

Caustic, “Massiv Aggressiv (feat j-l from Straftanz)”
We’ll be talking about the new EP from Caustic a bit on this week’s episode of We Have a Technical (which you should catch up on if you haven’t listened to all the episodes yet!), but we’d be remiss if we didn’t give The Coprophagia/Consummatia a shout out here as well. Matt Fanale has mentioned that these songs are the final parts of his The Man Who Couldn’t Stop LP from 2012, a record we rather enjoyed even before finding out it was structurally patterned after Finnegan’s Wake Ulysses (for reals). Go have a boo at this collab with Straftanz, and cop the release tomorrow off of Bandcamp if you like what you hear!

Størung, “de-rail”
We were pretty sad to hear that NTRSN called it quits last year. Of all the groups digging into the classic EBM steel, they were the most engaged with the textural end of body music’s golden era, displaying an understanding of genre DNA that went beyond simply aping DAF and 242. That said, it looks like Pieter from NTRSN has a new thing with Vomito Negro’s Gin Devo, and while it’s difficult to tell what form the project will take from the lengthy, barebones instrumental “de-rail”, I’m curious as to what sorts of creepy shenanigans these two will get up to together. Album is due in March apparently, we’ll be keeping tabs.

Prude, “Plague Star (Black Light Returning)”
Something interesting here from Prude, the long-gestating project featuring Jared Louche of Chemlab, Matt from Caustic and members of Plastic Heroes and Cyanotic. A middle ground between sleazy industrial rock and gritty MC5/Stooges style proto-punk seems to be the path this supergroup of sorts is taking, and from the samples we’ve heard so far (another track “Great Eraser in the Sky” is also streamable) there’s some fun to be drawn out of the formula.

Night Sins, “London to the Lake”
When Bruce reviewed Night Sins’ debut he noted that the band wear their debt to 17 Seconds era Cure on their sleeve while never seeming wholly imitative. Gotta say that this new jam they just dropped is on the same tip, but leaning even more heavily on the second wave gawth rhythms and guitar lines. No complaints from us, as we have been known to enjoy a goth-rock LP with a snifter of chartreuse when the mood strikes. These are the cats who are supporting Youth Code on their upcoming tour: nice to see some of the ol’ rivets vs. bats rifts being repaired.

Douglas J. McCarthy, “Move On (Kloq remix)”
Nice new remix of the most Ebb-like track from DJM’s debut album Kill Your Friends. Douglas provided vocals for KLOQ on their early single “We’re Just Physical”, a match made in techno-EBM heaven. If you didn’t weren’t aware, one of the key elements of the KLOQ line-up is programmer/producer Oz Morsley of Empirion fame, so you know everything he touches is gonna have that late 90s Hack-the-Planet vibe up into it. This’ll be on a new CD single that’ll be available on the upcoming McCarthy tour with Cold Cave, which you should go and see if you can: the rest of us will have to be content with peeping this new video.