While you’re reading this, Alex will be winging his way home from an excursion to Edmonton’s Purple City Music Festival. You’ll be able to hear about it on the podcast next week, but we wanted to highlight how cool it is to have a music festival like Purple City that doesn’t specifically focus on acts within Our Thing book so many bands that are relevant within it. Even leaving aside those acts with big crossover appeal like ACTORS, Urban Heat, and LEATHERS, it’s really neat to see them making an effort to book deeper scene performers like MVTANT and Visit0r, and programming them alongside names like Wolf Eyes and Pelada. Tune into the podcast for a rundown, but until then, enjoy some selections in this week’s Tracks.
Nuda
SARIN, “Fire To Blood”
Some absolutely punishing, pure EBM from SARIN bodes well for the longstanding producer and X-IMG honcho’s next full-length. Between Konkurs, Human Performance Lab, and the General Dynamics collaborative projects Emad Dabiri’s dancecard has been pretty packed over the last couple of years, but stormy, slowly building monsters like this one are a reminder of his strengths as a solo artist.
Nuda, “Break”
We enjoyed the set from Seattle industrial act Nuda we saw at Terminus in July, and have been interested in hearing more from her since then. Come to find out that the album Stranger will be dropping come November, and the preview tracks suggest a lot of what we heard on the stage in Calgary; big industrial grooves, and a fair bit of atmospherics to fill out the mix. While “Trigger” is a bit more club-oriented, and “Psycho” has a bit of a breakbeat, rhythmic noise vibe, we like “Break” best of all, as it provides a nice middle ground for Nuda’s heavier and melodic elements.
MODEBIONICS, “DIVIIDE DIVISION”
If you’re one of the many folks who uses our Year End coverage to find out about new or up and coming acts, you’ll already know that we were very impressed by the craft and energy Rolan Vega brought to the classic dark electro sound with the debut LP from MODEBIONICS last year. We’re happy that he looks to be picking up right where he left off in relatively short order with this new single which perfectly balances the haunting atmospheres and immediate, no bullshit rhythmic programming that the genre was built upon.
Big Time Kill, “Truth”
Hey, something new from Boston’s Big Time Kill, an act who have never shied away from putting the funk back into industrial rock on their releases. “Truth” is a great example thereof, letting that big bassline lead the way, with clean vocal production and solid rhythm programming and some Chic-guitar following in its wake. As with a lot of their other tracks, there’s a bit of classic 90’s alt. rock at play here, recalling Faith No More more than any given industrial rock act you’d care to mention.
Split Diopter, “Navel Gazer”
DKA is one of those labels that we’ve been following basically since the inception of this website, and who put out records by plenty of acts that ended up being big favourites of ours, including High Functioning Flesh and Boy Harsher. While the Atlanta based enterprise has put out lots of electronic music, they’ve also worked with bands in the post-punk and goth rock spectrum, which is the spectrum that the forthcoming release from Split Diopter resides in. We’re feeling the nod to classic second wave sounds in the band’s sound, especially in using bass and pads to build up the tracks behind vocalist/producer Matt Weiner’s croon. Solid stuff from a label known for providing the same.
Witch Of The Vale, “100 Ways To Leave (Kontravoid Remix)”
A Kontravoid tie-in is a savvy move for Scotland’s Witch Of The Vale. The pep and immediacy of Cam’s beats place this mix from the new 100 Ways To Leave EP (no, there’s no Paul Simon cover) keeps it right in the club zeitgeist, but the ethereal grace of Erin Hawthorne’s vocals which first drew us to the project endure; hopefully some of the folks who drive by for the beats stick around for the ghostly ambiance of the rest of the record.
