If you didn’t listen to the podcast last week, it ended up being a somewhat fraught conversation regarding everyone’s favourite and certainly not at all charged topic, artificial intelligence. Specifically in relation to Our Thing creatively, and our personal feelings about it (largely negative). It wasn’t a convo we particularly wanted to have, but also some recent shows and revelations/allegations about certain bands kind of demanded it. No shame if you’re sick of the conversation and would rather not partake, but for those of you who did check it out, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic, whether or not they align with ours. That said, here we go with your regular Tracks post, enjoy!
Sleek Teeth
The Tear Garden, “War Crier”
Further to our discussion last week of The Legendary Pink Dots and the forthcoming LP from The Tear Garden, the long-running collaboration of Cevin Key and LPD’s Edward Ka-Spel, we’re getting their third pre-release single from the album (with accompanying video by Cory Gorksi of Volt 9000 fame). Like the two preceding tracks, “War Crier” is pretty much exactly what we want from a Tear Garden song in this day and age; it’s emotional, beautifully crafted and just the right amount of the project’s particular brand of sad-bastard psychedelia. This record can’t come soon enough, if these songs are any indication it’s gonna be an LP you can slide into and just be inside for a while.
Seeming, “Zebra Tramples Horse Trainer”
Seeming’s The World is easily our most anticipated record of 2025, and with less than a month to go, the energy around is palpable. Per project mastermind Alex Reed, much of the album was written some time ago, but this pre-release track, “Zebra Tramples Horse Trainer” was written very recently; a decision to switch up the album’s artwork to a painting of a Zebra by Dragan Bibin left Reed wanting to put together a track to tie the image to the stylistically wide-ranging LP. And here we have it; baroque synthpop rendered in analogue, with all the samples, left-field change-ups, witticisms, and ludicrously catchy little musical motifs that you could want. It’s not long now, set some time aside for this one folks.
Forma Tadre, “That Soul Be Neat”
The more modern electro-industrial we hear, the more we love Forma Tadre. That’s not to slight newer bands, it’s just that tracking their development and range of influences puts into sharp relief just how confidently Andreas Meyer executed his off-kilter mix of influences and approaches to programming right from Forma Tadre’s earliest days. The forthcoming archival Seven Century Factory LP will give us another welcome deep dive into that font, including oddball grooves like this mix of liquid programming and It Came From Outer Space samples.
SARIN, “Bestial Nature”
Chewy, wormy bass, modern minimal kicks, classic electro programming and sampling – damn right it’s a new single from SARIN. Emad Dabiri’s now released nearly half of the forthcoming Searching Hell LP as standalone tracks, and the picture of a much more blended in and not beholden to one particular era of EBM production release is coming into focus. We’ll have a full review of the record in a few months, but til then there’s lots for savvy DJs to pick up on with this cut and its predecessors.
Sleek Teeth, “The River”
We got a sneak preview of “The River” live when we saw Sleek Teeth perform this past summer, it sounded good then, and sounds just as good in recorded form. Like all of the Los Angeles duo’s small but powerful catalogue, it walks a fine line between classic EBM (the syncopated 16th note bassline, the punchy vocals) and modern synthpop (the sneaky melodic bells and pads that slide in around the metallic percussion), of a piece with their other songs while feeling like an entirely other angle than we’ve yet heard from them. One of the best acts going right now, and one well worth your undivided attention when they put something new out.
Ner\ogris, “Mainframe”
The 2023 debut from Germany’s Ner\ogris impressed us at the HQ for the way it was clearly willing to experiment with song structure and arrangement while also keeping one foot firmly in the longstanding European tradition of electro/EBM releases. This cut from their forthcoming Silenci EP makes some similarly oddball moves, switching the focus between seething vocals and an almost electro-pop styled reworking of kling-klang EBM.
