Despite the Cold Waves FOMO it’s been a busy few days for us here at the HQ, with a NIN-themed club night, The Chameleons coming through town, and a visit from the always sagacious Legendary Pink Dots to attend to this evening. As if all that wasn’t enough, we have Pixel Grip, Leila Abdul-Rauf, Poltergeist, and Lene Lovich shows to look forward to in the coming weeks. In short, despite all the chaos affecting shipping and touring right now, we’ve been fortunate enough in Van to have a steady stream of great live stuff coming through town. Hope it’s the same wherever you are.
Those upstanding young men of Odonis Odonis.
Odonis Odonis, “Hijacked”
Where Toronto’s Odonis Odonis made a meal of cacophonic machine-rock on their last LP Spectrums had a goodly amount of post-punk flavour in the mix as well. “Hijacked”, the first track from their forthcoming self-titled album seems to be pursuing that sound, albeit through a noisier lens; the song’s waves of distortion of busy but organic rhythm section bring to mind A Place to Bury Strangers, while the vocals have the frankness and purpose that the duo have long relied on. An exciting first taste of a record we’re quite keen to hear.
Breach Unit, “Mind Drift”
Feels like every other week we’re posting some new to us deep scene fare coming from Sweden which punches well above its weight, and today’s no different. The second single from the newly formed Breach Unit (whom we’d guess might be made up of folks who’ve been around the track once or twice) has a great minimalist, lurching approach to dark electro which calls back to the genre’s roots, with just a wisp of an elegant production style we associate more with the likes of [:SITD:].
Antigen Shift, “Superheavy Particle”
Are those some notes of big beat we’re hearing in “Superheavy Particle”, the lastest pre-release cut from Antigen Shift’s Artoffact debut? Whether it’s intentional or not, there’s definitely a bit of 90s electronica in some of the sample manipulation and atonal synthwork at play here, elements that aren’t new to the Canadian duo’s instrumental industrial playbook, but we’re really feeling the funk in this cut, not the mention the sharp mix and detailed textures that creep around behind it all.
Jimmy Svensson, “The Void Between”
Speaking of Sweden, Stockholm utility player Jimmy Svensson might have retired his more traditionally post-industrial Toxic Sludge project, but anyone who’s checked his Yabibo Hazurfa material knows that he’s just as adept with more experimental fare. Once again releasing under his own name, Svensson’s latest LP oozes with trippy but decidedly nihilistic soundscapes which should appeal to those who want more of the likes of Controlled Bleeding (or perhaps the X-TG record) in their dark ambient.
God Tongue, “Panic”
God Tongue is a project with a face familiar to these posts – one half of the mutant synthpunk duo is Isku Katerwol of Total Chroma, Weird Candle, Wire Spine and Verboden fame. The vibe of the tracks is somewhere between the rawest iteration of modern darkwave, the obscure end of minimal synth, and a whole lot of seething aggression, courtesy of vocalist Camille. It’s some pretty spooky and unnerving stuff, barebones by design and suggests a constant move forwards towards some inevitable but no doubt unpleasant incident.
Skren, “In Deiner Hand”
Strange reformulations of aggrotech from acts far too young to have been out in the clubs during the subgenre’s heyday continue apace. The last time we checked in with Dusseldorf’s Skren their Fragment EP was pushing cyber and aggro beats to their BPM limit, but this new cut drops the tempo way down. Thankfully it fills the resulting space out with lots of swagger and menace, and maybe most impressively draws a line back from what we’d guess their direct influences are back to those turn of the millennium acts’ debt to the likes of :wumpscut:.
