Man I wanted to be at this festival, but the night was impossible for me. I should have seen Geneviéve Pasquier much earlier than yesterday and however I did see Propergol already, it would not have hurt (perhaps the ears, but who cares) to see him life again. Now I see some pictures…… Fortunately for all those who were or were not present, there is this compilation. It is supposedly limited to 250 copies, about 100 of which get an addition flyer and card. I got my copy from Pasquier and my copy says “Geneviéve Pasquier limited edition 02/17″ which seems to imply that each artist got a few copies to sell as well. In a nice foldout cover and with the nice artwork of the flyer comes an 8 track cd with with three tracks of Pasquier, three of Propergol and two of Bad Sector. These are not recordings of the performances by the way. Pasquier opens moody with a trance-ambient song, but continues with her catchy industrial electropop including the title track of her new album. Propergol seems to have stepped off the ambient soundscapes path (for a moment) and comes with great harsch industrial noise. Bad sector contributed an ambient track and a ‘club remix’. In total spanning only 35 minutes, this compilation may be a bit short, but very nice, especially regarding the fact that most tracks are exclusive.
Link: Chamber Music
16 August 2010
Comment
At the height of the fascist-musicians-hunt, Der Blutharsch came to the Dutch city of Leiden in September 2004. Of course the at that time usual raids of protests arose, but the major did see no reason to justify a prohibition and the show continued. The whole event became national news, especially when some of the local politicians said to go and see the show and Albin provocatively answered insinuating questions during the interview. There were no protestants outside the venue, but visitors were checked for ‘forbidden symbolism’. People had to deposit their iron crosses, while being the bandlogo at the time, they featured meters-high on each side of the stage. In the end everything was pretty much ‘a storm in a glass or water’ as we say here in the Netherlands. The politicians found the show tasteless, but not illegal.
Almost six years later, Albin decided to release recordings of the show, possibly for the old fans who are not happy with the new sound, as a reminder of people who were there or maybe as a bit of provocation, because the provocation ebbed away in recent years. The sound of the recordings is much better than I expected. The music is of course the martial industrial style with out of tone singing. I am not too fond of live recordings, usually studio recordings sound a lot better, but “Live In Leiden” is indeed a nice reminder.
Link: Der Blutharsch, WKN





2 July 2010
Comment
“Triangle Of Sorrow” is the first release of Dead.Circuit’s label “Hidden.Circuit”. The release notes and the flyer seem to suggest that the music was composed jointly and that the result is something between “dark drum ‘n’ bass, ambient passages, broken beats and industrial soundscapes”, but the album with well over an hour of music has five tracks of each project, very separate tracks. First up is Septicserpent and inspite of a nice idea here and there, overall his music is not too appealing soft and light dance music. The soft and light touch is blown away by Dead.Circuit’s magnificent first track “Embracing Uncertainty”, an 11-minute “noisescape” in the Propergol style (or rather of course “Repressed Memory Theory“). After this we get Dead.Circuit’s “new direction” in the form of a dark ambient track that goes over into something IDM’ish. “Time To Heal” is a soft techno track like those on the first half of this album, but then we get some more rhythmical industrial sounds with “broken beats” which sound alright. An ambient track closes “Triangle Of Sorrow”.
The more interesting project is Dead.Circuit the ‘old style’ track is brilliant, some parts in other tracks are very nice, other parts/tracks are less so. Of course it never hurts to experiment and since this cd is only € 9,-, it does so neither for the listener.
Links: Dead.Circuit / Hidden.Circuit, Septicserpent





1 June 2010
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