You folks still with us? Cool, we got like a month of regular coverage, give or take, before Year End coverage commences and boy, do we need to cram a lot into those months. We’ve got a list of about a dozen albums, including new ones from Das Ich, Lana Del Rabies and Odonis Odonis in the queue (some or all of them in the hopper this week), not to mention the actual tallying up of our listening and reviews to get the top 25 sorted. No better excuse to get to it then, so lets get into Tracks and see what’s bubbling up from across the breadth of Our Thing.
Seeming, “A Failure of Imagination”
The anticipation for the new Seeming album The World is pretty high around these parts, and why wouldn’t it be? Twice Alex Reed’s post everything project took our prestigious album of the year honours, and every time he releases music we find it making itself at home in our playlists, in our imaginations, and in our lives. So it goes with “Failure of Imagination”, which starts almost like a folk song before transforming into the kind of genre-agnostic maximalist synthpop that Seeming has had on lock from their debut. “This a love song/even if it doesn’t sound like one/because there’s a lot of strange love/that doesn’t fit into the way love’s done” is one of those lyrics we’ll be turning over in our heads for a long time.
Restive Plaggona, “There Is Regret”
Greece’s Dimitris Doukas is one of the more prolific techno associated producers we track, whether under the nomadic Restive Plaggona handle, or in the underrated industrial experimentation of his Matriarchy Roots project. New Restive Plaggona LP Short Story is on the smoother side of his body of work, but he’s still able to massage the EBM elements of his sound into tracks like this one, whose leads (possibly inspired by traditional Greek folk instrumentation) add a dash of classic new beat exotica flavour.
Antoni Maiovvi, “Colours of Night”
We had a really lovely chat with Antoni Maiiovvi a few weeks ago regarding the excellent three LPs the artist/producer released under the Ye Gods moniker this year. During that conversation Maiovvi hinted at some forthcoming work, which turns out is the expansive Deathgames release, a soundtrack to an imagined eighties crime picture, think Thief or Manhunter. While many of the songs fit neatly into Antoni’s classic giallo-disco sound, we’re quite fond of this bit of funky atonal synthpop “Colours of Night”, just as moody as you’d expect given the release’s premise.
Absolute Body Control, “Surrender No Resistance (Potochkine Remix)”
Precious few entities are handling reissues in Our Thing with the thought and care of Poland’s Mecanica label, whether they’re unearthing effectively unknown lost treasures or reintroducing crucial moments in EBM, synthpop, and industrial history. This time, they’re putting the legendary Absolute Body Control’s 2010 LP Shattered Illusion on vinyl for the first time, but are adding a slew of new remixes as an incentive for those of us old enough to have copped Ivens and Van Wonterghem’s comeback the first time around. The likes of everyone from Rue Oberkampf to Portion Control chip in with reinterpretations, but we’re taken with just how few adjustments Potochkine had to make to “Surrender No Resistance” in order to make it sound entirely of 2025’s dancefloors.
Pig, “Feed the Wound (Assemblage 23 remix)”
So if you read our review of the recent Assemblage 23, you would know we’re of the opinion that there’s no flies on ol’ Tom Shear, as evidenced by many of his recent remixes. Take for example this version of Pig’s “Feed The Wound”; it sounds nothing like anything Shear would release on his own, but instead hails back to the classic KMFDM era that Raymond Watts was involved with, taking the song’s chugging guitars and diva vocals and spiking them with fat club drums and big synths. It’s shockingly good, not because we don’t expect a lot from A23, but because it delivers in an entirely unexpected way.
KIFOTH, “Cowardice”
Longstanding Slovakian act KIFOTH (formerly Kneel In Front Of The Executioner and Kneel In Front Of The Hangman if you’re not into the whole brevity thing) are getting back into the swing of things after a bit of a layoff with an EP of new songs fleshed out to LP length with remixes of tracks new and old from Brain Leisure and dISHARMONY, amongst others. New tunes like this feel chunky, menacing, and bring a whole mess of swagger. Recommended if you want your electro-industrial brooding, atmospheric, and unreconstructed.
