Well, no sooner do we make a post last week about the weird Schrödinger’s cat scenario in which shows are both happening and not happening, but the cancellation of a number of tours and appearances are announced. We’ve discussed this a fair bit on the podcast, but thought it worthwhile to reiterate here; this is a rough, garbage time to be a promoter or a touring act. Many of these people rely on show income to pay the bills and have already been through a year and a half of COVID hell with regards to their livelihood. Regardless of how you may feel about shows going ahead/being canned, remember that there are people struggling every day in the live entertainment industry, trying to make sense of this very difficult to grasp situation and its implications, and being a jerk online doesn’t make that easier. With any luck we can still lick this thing and be back to live music sooner rather than later.

89s† & Petra Flurr

89s† & Petra Flurr

Riki, “Marigold”
Hot on the heels of last year’s tremendous self-titled debut Los Angeles synthpop artist Riki returns with the first single from her forthcoming LP Gold. Sure, there are some changes: Josh Eustis of Telefon Tel Aviv/Black Queen is behind the boards, and the sound of the track goes even deeper on early eighties new wave styles a la Berlin. Then again, if you were one of the folks like us who was immensely charmed by Riki’s vocal presence and musical persona, this should precisely hit the spot. Album is up for pre-order now and drops via Dais on November 26.

89s† & Petra Flurr, “Sandkorn”
Tracing out all of the lineages and origins combined in Oraculo’s release of Trübe Stadt, the new LP by 89s† and performance artist Petra Flurr, would take far too long (Mexico, Spain, Italy, and Germany are all in the mix). Suffice it to say it’s an international effort we’re looking forward to spinning out. While Petra Flurr first landed on our radar via a more modern, techno-influenced team-up with Unconscious, we’re looking at pure DAF-styled trad-EBM on this one.

Maenad Veyl & The Sarcasm Ensemble, “Suntrails”
We’ve really enjoyed the industrial club bangers Thomas Feriero, aka Maenad Veyl, has handed us over the past few years (seriously, that Onto Duat EP was murderous – cop it if you still haven’t). But Feriero has other styles at hand and it looks as though the new Comfort In Misery LP will be digging into some murky and stoned territory, touching upon drone and dark ambient. Don’t let the crediting twist you up – The Sarcasm Ensemble is simply another of his aliases.

Stendeck, “Red Neon (Hypnoskull remix)”
We still haven’t reviewed the new Stendeck LP from June, but we promise we will – given that their LP Folgor is a modern technoid classic in our eyes, we can’t let it pass without comment. Shit, it’s been out long enough now that there’s a remix companion to it out on Hymen, featuring acts like Sonic Area, Synapscape, Blac Kolor and even ol’ Stefan Alt himself. We selected this remix by Hypnoskull for your listening pleasure – a worthy follow-up to that bonkers mix they did for Ancient Methods the other month – make sure you put it on a system with some real bass.

Memorex, “Black Watch”
Some classic throwback synth styles from Toronto, in the form of the new Memorex EP. David Lush’s work is clearly rooted in a combo of nostalgia and hardware fetishism, but the smooth way in which he combines kosmische, synthpop, minimal wave, and even some early electro-industrial with a real sense of melody and coherence makes numbers like this one from new EP The Staircase much more than an exercise in nostalgia for its own sake.

Soft Crash, “Dressed to Kill”
We admit we’ve been pretty nonplussed with a lot of the EBM-techno crossover stuff of late, although that scene has still got some shining moments. In particular there have been a number of good compilations providing interesting stuff to spin, not the least of which are the Georgian (as in the country) label Murder’s eponymous comps. Their forthcoming comp happens to feature this number from Pablo Bozzi and Phase Fatale, aka Soft Crash, highlighting the techno, body and italo sounds they ply individually and together. Tasty stuff, and the rest of the tracklist features Restive Plagonna, Puritan and Silent Servant amongst others if you needed more reasons to check it out.