We usually keep the plus for our Patreon limited to the podcast (you subscribe to We Have a Technical right?), but it behooves us having just passed the $200 a month mark to drop some thanks hear on the site proper. Patreon has enabled us to make huge improvements to our recording set-up, as well as finance our upcoming (hopefully) site redesign and allowed us to make some charitable donations, all thanks to the generous support of our readers and listeners. We appreciate it kindly, and hope that we can continue to merit your kind support in everything we do. Speaking of which, lets get to the weekly Tracks post, yeah?

Principe Valiente

Principe Valiente, catching some Z's in Kevin Shields' darkroom.

Fixmer / McCarthy, “Chemicals”
While techno/EBM crossover has been a hot flavour for a minute now, you could easily argue that Terrence Fixmer and Douglas McCarthy have been plying it for over a decade at this point. The follow up to their “So Many Lies” single for Planet Rouge last year, “Chemicals” comes to us courtesy of Adam X’s Sonic Groove, the same label that helped bring us that incredible Orphx record last year. Crank it up and get those sweaty body music vibes where they meet ruffcity techno between shifts at the steel mill.

Sex Park, “Bather”
We’ve been talking a lot about Terminus and the like on the podcast lately, but there’s festival fun happening in our own backyard! Verboden, that Vancouver celebration of all things dark in the Pacific Northwest (and sometimes further afield) is just around the corner, and a comp’s been released to get the word out and give folks a heads-up about the bands’ sounds. Here are the winners of the Band With Whom We Were Previously Unfamiliar With The Best Name award for the 2017 iteration of the fest, Sex Park, with some propulsive post-punk.

Hide, “91 Lashes”
Based on our experiences with some of their previous singles, we had expected Hide to be a lot more darkwave and a lot less grinding post-industrial when we caught them live last year. Imagine our surprise at the enveloping, harsh and political performance we ended up on the receiving end of. The material on their new Black Flame EP is much more in line with what we saw from them in concert, all echoing desperation from somewhere between the TG’s more beat-driven numbers and Dirk Iven’s earliest Dive material.

Principe Valiente, “Strangers In The Night”
It’s been a while since we checked in with Sweden’s elegantly dark Principe Valiente. It looks as though their sophomore effort passed us by, but we dug their smoothly moody debut, and are digging this lush lead single from forthcoming third LP Oceans. Almost makes us think of what might have happened if Interpol had doubled down on gothier elements in their early records.

horskh, “Strayed Away”
A couple years back when grindy dubstep-influenced stadium EDM was a thing a few acts in Our Thing made overtures towards it in their material. Most of them were (to put it charitably) not very good. A few years on horskh seem to be giving us a real blueprint for how those sounds can be boiled down and integrated into a hard electro-industrial milieu. You won’t mistake “Strayed Away” for a track by Swedish House Mafia or deadmau5, but gosh it makes good use of those enormous leads and that glitchy bass without falling into any “wait for the drop” clichés. Very keen on this record, which comes out on April 10th courtesy of the good forward thinking folks at audiotrauma.

Dead Voices On Air, “Drie O Indiase”
Mark Spybey digging into his archives is always welcome news. This time, he’s put together a set of tracks which’d go on to form the Frankie Pett plays the Happy Submarines LP. So few people can strike the perfect balance between drone and harmony, but Spybey’s a master of that particular skill at this dreamy cut shows. Also, check the bonus live take on classic Piss Frond jam “Red Kerre”!