Old Fashioned Fisticuffs!
It’s been a minute or three since we made a mixtape, with so much of our audio based efforts getting put into the We Have a Technical Podcast. Still, ID:UD has been rocking these mixtapes basically since the site’s inception, and we’d be lying if we said we didn’t miss throwing ’em together. The theme is pretty simple this time out: we’ve selected songs from lower profile releases we reviewed this year and enjoyed and tossed ’em all together for your enjoyment. Pretty simple, although the mood actually stays pretty cohesive, on some dark and lo-fi sounds of various stripes. Stream from the player below or download from right here!
So Fragile #21: Glancing Blow by I Die: You Die on Mixcloud
Lamia Vox, “Enemy of Heaven”
Sigillum Diaboli recommends itself to dark ambient fans fluidly and easily, but it’s also a solid buy for anyone into dark atmospherics of any stripe. Moving cagily between martial-inflected pieces like this one, more symphonic fare, and the classic funereal drones from which the genre originates, this Russian act is well worth your time and interest. Read our full review!
USHERsan & HIV+, “Swamp Nerves”
The origins and aesthetic of this left-field collaboration really need to be read about in full in order to be grokked, but the Coles Notes version – coldwave legend and rhythmic noise stalwart team up for odd retrofitting of minimal synth – should be enough to raise your eyebrows. If not, we humbly suggest you reconsider after hearing this hissing, foggy menace.
Body of Light, “Burn As One”
The Brothers Jarson’s most recent outing is a bit less lowdown and off the cuff than previous efforts, although as this track illustrates they aren’t exactly shooting for bright and sunny. Their first tape for Chondritic Sound, Volontà di Amore shows off some previously more subdued songwriting chops and a yen for a catchy arpeggio. Read our review here!
Kangarot, “You Humans (Chemical Scum)”
We gave this US newcomer’s new tape an in-depth look just a couple of weeks ago, but its unassuming mix of spaced-out krautrock and vintage electro-industrial keeps pulling us back in. Ain’t nothing much more inspiring than younger acts who can see missing links between genres, the interstitial frames the rest of us skipped over, proving to us all that this music’s only ever as played out as we are.
Disharmony, “Empty”
This year has had a few releases that seek to draw lines between electro-industrial and IDM, but none so successful as Disharmony’s Room 78 (in our opinion). On this track the duo wed piano, 90s style harsh whisper vocals and pulsing electronics and even some guitar chuggery with aplomb. Check out write-up and peep the record!
Gheists, “Hit List”
Did you know that Bee from from crazy-go-nuts industrialized psy-trance act Mangadrive was also doing downtempo stuff in the cinematic/trippity-hoppity vein? If not, you should go read up on his debut release as Gheists Age, and then maybe just go ahead and grab the album from Bandcamp. Think of it as an extension of the twisted and complex sounds of MD, as fed through one of those plug-ins that slows down your music by 300%, which in the case of Bee means it’s still at a pretty listenable BPM.
