Hey friends, we wanted to take a moment to thank our friends and acquaintances who came out to see us this past Sunday here in Vancouver as we celebrated the website’s 15th anniversary, DJing as part of our longstanding residency at the mighty Coffin Club. It was a really enthusiastic long weekend crowd who were pretty much down to dance and have fun from open to close, and it really reaffirmed our belief that there’s an audience for new music alongside well established classics and deep cuts, and that appetite crosses age and taste barriers. Of course we paid for the indulgence yesterday, but those medium-gnarly hangovers couldn’t stop us from putting a Tracks post together. Speaking of which, here it is!

Aurat

Aurat

Belly Hatcher, “No Body”
Legit, we’re pretty upset at ourselves for sleeping on Montreal’s Belly Hatcher for so long. The project has been releasing music since 2022, and had an EP as recently as last December, but it wasn’t til we saw the absolutely killer video for “No Body” crawl across social media timeline that we took notice. More fool us, because this is exactly our vibe; grimy old school industrial in the vein of Portion Control or middle period Cabs, complete with metallic percussion sounds, vocal sample cut ups and a damningly insistent bassline that should have dancefloors slamming. We won’t be missing anything going forward, and with any hope we won’t be waiting long.

Child Of Night, “Old Moon”
Synthpop isn’t what comes to mind when we think of Phage Tapes, the Minnesota label which has kept us stocked in death industrial, grimy EBM, and similarly confrontational material, but that’s exactly what Columbus’ Child Of Night are serving up on their second LP. Tunes like this are a bit of a switch-up from the darker club overtures of their first LP: chilly, slightly lo-fi (with the likes of Matia Simovich and Josh Bonati in the mix), but still decidedly melodic stain of synthpop which hearkens back to the likes of SSQ while also touching upon some of the same terrain as Sally Dige’s early solo work. Watch this space for a full review.

DSTRTD SGNL, “No Limit$”
Okay this is interesting; most of what we’ve heard from Torben Schmidt and Stephan Kessler’s project has been covers of classic techno and EBM cuts and the occasional remix. “No Limit$” certainly isn’t their first original (the duo has been doing well on some of the Beatport charts with a few cuts), but its the first that hits a real sweet spot for us in terms of finding that sound that lands squarely between body music and underground techno, without relying on the now well worn production formula that burnt itself out sometime in the early parts of the decade. We daresay this should work for ravers and rivets alike, its got a nice edge, a pounding kick and enough attitude to get the blood up and pumping. We’ll drop it in a few upcoming sets and see what happens.

Aurat, “Cobra”
Some more industrial strength noisy, art punk electronics from California’s Aurat. As with all their releases the Urdu vocals are a major part of the project’s remit here, with the three tracks on the EP spanning straight electronic minimalism to outsized percussion workouts, feedback and noise spikes and all kinds of oblique and engaging variations. We’ve been tracking Aurat for a few years now, and the evolution and development of the project has never been anything less than bracing, as they are here. If you haven’t yet had the visceral pleasure, well, this is as good a place as any to get initiated.

Octavian Winters, “By The Stars”
Some pleasantly contemplative stuff from San Francisco’s Octavian Winters on the way to their second record. Drawing together moody trad goth, dreampop and shoegaze with a sense of space and pacing, it’d be really easy for a piece like this to drift too far out to sea to ever come together, but the interplay between the vocals and guitars is deceptively tight without ever losing the pure dreamy pleasure of either.

Public Circuit, “Damager – r//mix”
We slept on New York act Public Circuit’s interesting 2025 LP Modern Church which cemented their transition from indietronica to mutant EBM, with links to Physical Wash and Spike Hellis easily detected. A new remix comp of that record mostly recapitulates its tracks back into their earlier sounds, but this in-house remix holds to the new aesthetic. Check the original LP out, too, while you’re at it.