Rainy Vancouver weekends mean lotsa time for us to look into new music, and this week’s tracks post will attest. People might complain about the weather here (although in our experience the same holds true of pretty much every city in Canada), but we’d be willing to wager that the city’s storied history of dark electronic music did not entirely develop without the influence of 8 months of rain and grey skies. People either learn to love it or they leave, we’re cool either way. This is our home, and we dig being able to bunker up and dig into some records while the wind blows outside. Fire up some of the songs below to see where our heads were at over the last couple days.

Comaduster, “Far From Any Road (Handsome Family Cover)”
So maybe you don’t come to I Die: You Die for all the latest on what TV shows we enjoy, and even if you did, maybe you’re unmoved by all the praise for HBO’s True Detective. Whether you dig it or not, here’s something by the show spurred that you’re bound to enjoy, a cover of the show’s theme (originally by alt country darlings The Handsome Family), perpetrated by Réal Cardinal, aka Comaduster to mark the end of the first season. The unlikely transition of the original’s strum and twang over to swaying low-end and programmed drums feels wholly natural, almost like it was something that was waiting to happen whether we knew it or not. You can download it gratis over at Soundcloud, between it and that Displacer/ESA cover of “Ghost Riders in the Sky” we think there’s adequate proof that an IDM Sings Country record would work, were some industrious soul to produce one.

Body Cosmic, “Excalibur”
It’s getting rather tough to keep track of everything which is coming from Chis Gilbert’s boards and being broadcast through the aether. We’ve showcased his krautrock influenced work as Mild Peril before, along with the retro-EBM/new beat dancefloor murder of his Body Party project. His latest release (somewhat confusingly released both as Mild Peril and Body Cosmic) splits the difference, reworking two recent Mild Peril pieces in Body Party’s punchier style, with a heavy dollop of Italo giddy-up. Gilbert’s new beat interpretation of Yaz’s “Situation” was our first introduction to his work, so circling back to this sort of fusion makes sense to us.

The Fourth Man, “Dare (1989)”
You guys, you guys, you guys: The Fourth Man are on Bandcamp. Living in Vancouver and being the approximate ages we are (not telling), The Fourth Man were a sort of missing link between the city’s famed industrial past and the present we inhabited, but their stuff was notoriously rare and out of print. Suffice it to say we’ll be doing a piece on the digital reissue of their LP shortly, but in the meantime have a taste of some utterly raw late 80s Vancouver electro-industrial.

DSX, “Shifted feat. Zoé Zanias (M‡яc▲ll▲ Mix)
In case you missed it, the unicode in M‡яc▲ll▲’s name doesn’t really equal witch house anymore, whatever that label means in 2014. You’re far more likely to get some moody giallo electro stuff from the NY-based project of late, twitching death nerves and bloodying up bays wherever they pop up. Another mix from the forthcoming single from DSX, who have enlisted ∆AIMON, Antoni Maiovvi, V▲LH▲LL, D/SIR, and TSTI for alternate versions. Pre-order the cassette over at Bandcamp, and stream from Soundcloud below!

▲NDRΛS, “True Believer (∆AIMON Remix)
Speaking of artists who have outgrown the ol’ WH tag, we have ▲NDRΛS being remixed by ID:UD faves ∆AIMON on a pay what you want EP from the former artist. Nobody does portent and circumstance like the Showers’ as the verbed out ghost orchestration on this version will attest, taking the original’s moody instrumental electro vibe (which almost reminds us of stuff like Doubting Thomas oddly enough) direct into the belly of some rainsoaked cityscape, bleak and grandiose in equal measures.

Zex Model, “Stigma”
More sample-happy, grinding dark electro from Russia’s Zex Model, hot off the server less than 24 hours ago. Like we said in reviewing the project’s debut LP, Paul Von Aphid is really finding a muse in the concrete beats and sickened leads of the genre, mixing classic tropes with his personal preferences.