74 minutes, 41 seconds

Angels & Agony
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Futurepop--industrial music's attempt to burrow its way back into the synthpop womb--really took off about seven or eight years ago with VNV Nation and Apoptygma Berzerk. (The Praise the Fallen and Welcome to Earth albums, respectively.) And maybe it came along at just the right time for a lot of people who'd grown a little bored with the distorted vocals and the dull, melody-free thud of most "industrial" music. This stuff had song structure, vocals that articulated hope and not despair, and clean-sounding arpeggiated synth lines. It was thoughtful dance music, and it continues to be popular.

But it's not as new as we think. Remember Prayer Tower? They were a one-album wonder back in 1993 on the late and lamented Third Mind label (once home to big names like Front Line Assembly and In the Nursery). But you don't even have to get that obscure--try X Marks the Pedwalk. Go back and listen to their later (mid-'90s) material. What were albums like Meshwork and Drawback if not futurepop? (Now, if only you could figure out what XMTP was singing about...)

Anyway, just wanted to give credit where it's due. Harumph.

Also today:

74:40 Severe Illusion, Accomplishments of Leopold II
74:39 Painbastard, No Need to Worry
74:38 Von Thronstahl, Re-Turn Your Revolt into Style

75 minutes, 4 seconds

Dubstar
Disgraceful

I'd call Dubstar a guilty pleasure, but what's to feel guilty about? I love Sarah Blackwood's angelic yet cool vocal delivery and pronounced northern accent. And Steve Hillier's cynically funny lyrics about failed relationships. Even the music, a pastiche of jangly indie rock and electronic pop, manages to be catchy without sticking annoyingly in your brain.

This is the Japanese edition of Disgraceful, which offers an extra track or two not found on the British release. Some of these songs also wound up on Goodbye, which was released for the U.S. market. And then there are a bunch of CD singles, most worth getting for the unreleased material. (Dubstar, like Lush, is way overdue for some sort of box set.)

Blackwood went on to front the aggressively mediocre electroclash band Client, and while it's nice to still hear her voice, listening to Client's subpar songs and pale lyrics only makes me miss Dubstar more. Is there hope? If you go to the official Dubstar Web site, it seems to indicate that something will happen in 2007. But that's it--no links, no further info, nothing. Reunion? Retrospective? Tour? So coy...

Also today:

75:02 Caul, Epiphany/Fortunate
74:55 Qntal, IV: Ozymandias
74:42 Moctan, Suspect

75 minutes, 12 seconds

Terence Fixmer
Muscle Machine

I'm new to Terence Fixmer, but apparently just in time for this pretty cool two-disc collection. It's EBM, but in an arty way--decidedly old-school, with a slight wink and nod to the '80s. Very distant and repetitive, as though you're looking at an endless series of Mondrian paintings.

I tried listening to the collaborations Fixmer did with Nitzer Ebb's Douglas McCarthy but couldn't get past the vocals. (Sorry, Doug!)

Also today:

75:11 Acylum, Your Pain
75:09 Delerium, Karma (CD 1 of 2)
75:09 Digital Poodle, Noisea
75:05 Front 242, Pulse

75 minutes, 29 seconds

Current 93
Black Ships Ate the Sky

I haven't spent enough time with this CD yet. I've probably listened to it twice, in piecemeal form, which isn't nearly sufficient to form an intelligent opinion of a release as sprawling and complex as this one. Or any C93 album, really.

The first thing that strikes me is the number of guest vocalists. This is not a new approach for David Tibet, who's always relied on a cadre of collaborators to flesh out his musical ideas and enunciate his lyrical ones. Think back to the days of Swastikas for Noddy, to which Rose McDowall, Douglas Pearce, Ian Read, and others all contributed. Other albums similarly featured a rotating cast of characters (I particularly liked Nick Cave's vocals on All the Pretty Little Horses.)

But I count no fewer than seven vocalists helping out here, and that's not even counting the ones on the I Am Black Ship companion CD (available only with the subscriber version of this album). Antony (whom I haven't yet learned to like, although everyone else seems to), Baby Dee, Marc Almond, Shirley Collins--even Cosey Fanni Tutti! It's like the the Durtro equivalent of the '80s 4AD supergroup This Mortal Coil.

Anyway, despite the numerous and varied vocal styles, it's still unmistakably Tibet's album. He waxes fanciful about apocalypse dreams, weaves images both religious and profane, and just generally envelops us in his strange and disturbing world. Which is exactly what you want from a C93 album.

I sometimes wonder whether someday they'll make a film documentary about David Tibet and C93, à la the Daniel Johnston movie from earlier this year or In the Realms of the Unreal, the great documentary about the outsider artist Henry Darger. I realize that in comparing Tibet to these two, I'm suggesting he has some sort of mental illness. I don't think that's the case, but I do think Tibet is in possession of (or possessed by) some sort of insane genius. Perhaps all artists are.

Man, you can always count on C93 to make me write an earnest blog entry. I'll try to return to snarky form tomorrow.

Also today:

75:24 Funker Vogt, Always and Forever, Vol. 2 (CD 2 of 2)
75:19 Hocico, Misuse, Abuse and Accident
75:17 Lycia, Compilation Appearances, Vol. 2
75:16 Terrorfakt, Cold Steel World
75:13 Negative Format, Moving Past the Boundaries
75:13 Ophelia's Dream, All Beauty Is Sad

75 minutes, 57 seconds

Project-X
Closing Down the Systems

Another piece of electronic bowel movement (EBM) from Europe. Not as good as, say, E-Craft, not as bad as, say, Fortification 55. Speaking of Fortification 55, looks like they're getting back together after a long period of inactivity. Is this a threat or a promise?

All I know is, Front 242 has a lot to answer for.

Also today:

75:53 Raison d'Être, Lost Fragments (CD 1 of 2)
75:46 Axon Neuron/Vagwa, Documents 1995-2005 (CD 1 of 2)
75:45 Brian Eno, January 07003: Bell Studies for the Clock of the Long Now
75:40 Covenant, Dreams of a Cryotank
75:38 Funker Vogt, Survivor
75:33 Hammock, Raising Your Voice...Trying to Stop an Echo

76 minutes, 7 seconds

SAM
Synthetic Adrenaline Music

More of the IDM, or "intelligent dance music," flavor of industrial. I really like the "intelligent" moniker, the presumption that the people who create this style of music are thoughtful musicians who take time crafting the beats and cobbling together the samples. When in fact most of them are probably just 17-year-olds with expensive new synths who only know how to use the presets.

Don't mind me. I'm just being a crank on the day after Christmas.

Also today:

75:58 Hocico, Triste Desprecio
75:57 Benestrophe, Sensory Deprivation

76 minutes, 12 seconds

Remain Silent
Dislocation

Like the Afghan-Pakistani border, the line between IDM and industrial musics is pretty porous these days, and Remain Silent is another talented infiltrator. Nothing terribly revolutionary going on here, though--no vocals, not much in the way of melody, just straight-ahead beats, dark synth, and samples, evocative of the by-now clichéd Matrix-like landscape depicted on the cover.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's utterly generic, but it's done so well, you almost forget how generic it is. A lot like your average New York pizza slice. (Damn, I miss that.)

Also today:

76:11 P. Miles Bryson, From Some Bygone Heroic Age
76:11 Project Pitchfork, Collector: Lost and Found (CD 2 of 2)

76 minutes, 29 seconds

Current 93
Emblems: The Menstrual Years (CD 1 of 2)

There are only three songs on this two-disc set that aren't found on other C93 CDs: "Happy Birthday Pigface Christus," "Hooves," and "The Signs and the Sighs of Emptiness." "Happy Birthday" alone makes it worth owning, and I'm sort of surprised David Tibet didn't see fit to add this rare track to the SixSixSix: SickSickSick compilation that came out a few years ago.

Anyway, it's a solid overview of the first two phases in C93's musical output, from the noisy looped choirs era to the folky acoustic guitar period. If you don't already own it and can find a reasonably priced copy on eBay, grab it.

Also today:

76:25 Empusae, Ritual Decay
76:23 David Tibet & Steven Stapleton, Octopus
76:22 Noise Process, Neural Code
76:19 Dead Can Dance, 1981-1998 (CD 1 of 3)
76:18 Mentallo and the Fixer, Where Angels Fear to Tread

76 minutes, 50 seconds

Seelenkrank
Silent Pleasures

Chris Pohl is the dude behind the now-defunct Seelenkrank. It predated his current project, BlutEngel. (He also started a few other projects, including Terminal Choice and Tumor.) OK, so enough background info. After all, if you're reading this moronic idea for a blog, you probably already know this stuff.

What I really want to say about Pohl is that he's a huge cheeseball, or at least comes off that way in most of the CD jacket pictures accompanying each release. The images show him sporting the usual leather 'n' latex 'n' dark makeup, and he's flanked by at least two pale-skinned, raven-haired hotties. This is the gothic-industrial equivalent of the '90s gangsta rapper, who invariably ended up photographed on the CD cover wearing a shiny suit and being fondled by several bootylicious women in bikinis.

OK, Chris, we get it--you're a playa. You write dope lyrics about necrophilia and foot fetishes and attend vampire orgies where the Goldschlager flows like Cristal. You're the Jay-Z of goth!

You could almost forgive him if the songs were better.

Also today:

76:48 BlutEngel, Demon Kiss

77 minutes, 14 seconds

Raison d'Être
Reflections from the Time of Opening

This apparently represents the earliest material Peter Andersson recorded as Raison d'Être, and it's pretty different from his later work. For one thing, it's a lot more active. The tracks are shorter, and the sounds are more varied, using unconventional (for him) instruments like guitar. But you can also hear the bells, dragging chains, and sampled choirs that would populate later albums like Prospectus I and In Sadness, Silence and Solitude.

You could draw comparisons to early Delerium (which in turn draws comparisons to Zamia Lehmanni-era SPK), but Raison d'Être refined this style of downer New Age music, slowing it down and really teasing out its soundtrackish elements. (Provided the movie in question takes place in a ruined church littered with dead medieval soldiers.)

Also today:

77:11 yelworC, Trinity
77:08 Leæther Strip, Penetrate the Satanic Citizen
76:58 Alien Produkt, Revenge
76:58 Axon Neuron/Vagwa, Documents 1995-2005 (CD 2 of 2)
76:54 Censor, Empire Holds Down
76:52 Pneumatic Detach & C2, Pareses & [CC:]

77 minutes, 24 seconds

Lambwool
Fading Landscapes

Not much time to blog today (busy with work) but I do enjoy this disc. It's on the Divine Comedy label and has some elements in common with labelmates like Fin de Siècle. With its too-active-to-be-ambient sound, it even comes close in parts to early Delerium. Worth checking out, if you haven't already.

Also today:

77:22 Flint Glass, Hierakonpolis
77:22 SKET, Baikonur
77:20 Clock DVA, Collective
77:14 Raison d'Être, Lost Fragments (CD 2 of 2)

78 minutes, 5 seconds

Current 93
Nature Unveiled

Not my favorite C93 album, but then again, is it anyone's? Most would probably cite Thunder Perfect Mind, Of Ruine or Some Blazing Starre, or perhaps another release from David Tibet's folk era. But Nature Unveiled is an interesting artefact, not least because it compiles some of C93's earliest and noisiest recordings, from the days when Tibet was obsessed not with Buddhism, not with Coptic Christianity, but with proto-Satanist Aleister Crowley.

That got me to thinking (I know, I sound like Carrie Bradshaw from Sex in the City...). Will his seemingly deep and genuine Christian beliefs be just another in a long line of Tibet's obsessions? Will he someday disavow the recordings he's making now as being the product of beliefs he no longer holds?

For example, he went through a period where he absolutely loved the paintings of Louis Wain...then a few years later sold almost all of the ones he'd collected. In the '80s, it was runes and pagan mythology, which gave way to Buddhism, which segued to Christianity in the late '90s. And now, with the release of Black Ships Ate the Sky, it's all about Coptic Christianity.

Not complaining, by the way. I've followed Tibet and his loopy music, rococo lyrics, and reedy voice through all his infatuations (and I've paid too much in import prices for the privilege). The journey itself has been interesting and rewarding to the careful listener. And maybe it's the nature of artists to firmly leave behind ideas they used in the past, so as not to keep repeating themselves. But it's hard not to find every new thing Tibet latches on to as mildly amusing, in a here-he-goes-again way.

In that spirit, place your bets: What will Tibet do next? Choose from below or write in your own:

(a) Convert to Orthodox Judaism (bullshit celebrity Kabbalah doesn't count!)
(b) Collaborate with Sha Na Na on his next album
(c) Buy back all those Louis Wain paintings he sold
(d) Reissue the entire library of "Choose Your Own Adventure" books on Durtro Press
(e) _____________________

Also today:

78:03 Laibach, Anthems
78:03 X Marks the Pedwalk, Experiences (CD 2 of 2)
78:00 Beta, Reflections in Darkness
78:00 La Floa Maldita, Salut Jacques
77:55 Hocico, Autoagresión Persistente
77:48 Dead Can Dance, 1981-1998 (CD 2 of 3)
77:37 Numina, Transparent Planet
77:30 Delerium, Semantic Spaces

78 minutes, 26 seconds

Velvet Acid Christ
Between the Eyes, Vol. 1

Kind of a weird thing this band did a few years ago, basically rereleasing their first few CDs (Neuralblastoma, Church of Acid, and some additional singles and rare material) on four volumes, all called Between the Eyes. I think one track from Neuralblastoma didn't make it onto any of the rereleases, which is a bummer, but otherwise these are pretty complete. And I'm nothing if not a completist.

The Star Trek samples on the first couple of tracks on Vol. 1 are pretty cheesy and obvious, but it gets interesting on Track 4, an alternate mix of the "Decypher" single. Someone who sounds an awful lot like Ronald Reagan (perhaps when he was governor of California, perhaps earlier?) rants against lascivious dancing and drugs at the University of California. I know, shocking, right?

It reminded me of the old Skinny Puppy song "Far Too Frail," from 1984's Remission. "For years, some people have argued that this kind of pornography is a matter of artistic creativity," Reagan says in the sample they used. (Apparently this was taken from remarks he made on child pornography.) Of course, Reagan was still president when Skinny Puppy recorded that album. That's what makes VAC's use of the sample a little more interesting and obscure, especially if you weren't alive then or you don't remember Reagan's presidency. (For the record, I was and I do--I'm old.)

And damn if it doesn't make you somehow nostalgic for the Gipper. Despite all the bad stuff he did (invade Grenada, authorize the Iran-Contra program, ignore the emerging AIDS pandemic, etc.), he was a gentleman and a scholar compared with President Monkey-Boy. Sheesh.

Also today:

78:22 Various artists, Metro Tekno
78:18 Terrorfakt, Reconstruction

78 minutes, 49 seconds

Rajna
Black Tears

Wow, how much do you think the medieval-instrument makers owe Lisa Gerrard for inspiring countless Dead Can Dance wanna-bes and helping to revive hammered-dulcimer sales?

Also today:

78:42 Laibach, Kapital
78:35 Morrissey, You Are the Quarry
78:31 In Strict Confidence, Seven Lives
78:29 Wynardtage, Evil Mind
78:28 Cruciform Injection, Epilogue

79 minutes, 10 seconds

PAL
Retro

Televangelists are an easy target, and bands have been sampling their overheated speechifying since the days of Front 242's "Welcome to Paradise," and probably before. This compilation of rare tracks from PAL opens with an extended intro featuring a preacher (the same one who ranted about Jonestown to chilling effect on Phallus Dei's Pontifex Maximus CD) complaining that "we got time for wedding showers but no time to pray." The sermon goes on for longer than you'd expect--several minutes, with no accompaniment--and yet your attention doesn't wander.

When I was in college, I remember there was a preacher who used to practice his craft at a small amphitheater on campus. You'd walk by him practically every day, rain or shine, and he'd hold (imaginary) court there on the grass, hair shellacked, hands holding the lapels of his three-piece suit. He'd do the whole fire-and-brimstone thing, about how we were all going to hell unless we accepted Jesus Christ as our lord and savior. Handfuls of students would sit for a few minutes on the amphitheater steps and listen to him, or just heckle him, but he never paid them any attention. Just kept on preaching, sometimes quietly, other times more passionately. It was as if he were rehearsing the crescendoes and cadences of preaching that he'd learned by watching guys like Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker on TV. He was like Robert De Niro in The King of Comedy, pretending he had a church and a large, rapt congregation.

And in a way he did. I thought he was a very compelling and charismatic speaker, and sometimes I'd find myself sitting there for 30 minutes at a time before realizing I was late for class. He had a grand theatricality to him that was sort of made tragic by the fact that he was reduced to sweating out the Virginia heat by exhorting a bunch of atheist students to get religion.

All this is just a long-winded way of explaining that I'm a sucker for a good sample from an evangelist preacher. There are lots of other good, original samples on Retro, but this one on the intro is the best. PAL also pays homage to Phallus Dei by sampling a snippet from one of the other tracks on Pontifex Maximus, a sly way perhaps of acknowledging where the inspiration to quote the preacher came from.

Bonus question: I've heard competing theories about the identity of the preacher being quoted. Is it Farrell Griswold (he's allegedly the guy on Front 242's "Welcome to Paradise"), is it Jimmy Swaggart, or is it someone else?

Also today:

79:07 The Unquiet Void, The Shadow-Haunted Outside
78:54 Current 93, Thunder Perfect Mind (CD 1 of 2)

79 minutes, 29 seconds

Uruk-Hai
Tawantinsuyu

Yes, Uruk-Hai. And, no, I'm not a Lord of the Rings fan. But credit this Tolkien-obsessed band (it's probably just one poor slob in his bedroom studio) with coining the term battle ambient. This type of music hits that somewhere-between-peaceful-and-ominous sweet spot in my ear. It doesn't really make me think of orcs, though. Is it supposed to?

Uruk-Hai joins a small fraternity of bands that seem to wear their LOTR geekdom on their sleeves. There's also Caprice, one of the dozens of fairy-voiced groups on the Prikosnovénie label, who sing (in an irritatingly sharp voice, if you ask me) about elves and forests and moss and...elves. And even progressive electronic bands like Squaremeter have released CDs laced with LOTR samples.

I won't hold my breath for a band to name itself after this movie.

Also today:

79:26 In Strict Confidence, Face the Fear (CD 2 of 2)
79:21 Front Line Assembly, Corroded Disorder
79:11 Keef Baker, The Widnes Years

79 minutes, 54 seconds

X Marks the Pedwalk
Experiences (CD 2 of 2)

I speak a little French. I took it all through high school and my first year of college, and even though that seems like (and, um, actually is) a long time ago, I was surprised at how much I'd managed to retain when we went to Paris for a vacation a few years ago. I felt sophisticated. Worldly. Dashing. But who was I kidding? Whatever cobwebby words and phrases I was able to pull out of my ass ended up not being sufficient to hold a conversation--hell, I could barely ask directions and order food.

So naturally, I came home and began writing song lyrics in French.

No, not really. But why not? European electronic bands (particularly the Germans) seem to do it all the time. No doubt their English is better than my French (and certainly better than my German), but we're talking about lyrics here--poetry, when they're done right. Sure, the words are supposed to flow with the music, but shouldn't they also mean something?

X Marks the Pedwalk is a really good example. André Schmechta (a.k.a. Sevren Ni-Arb) is German, and I'm sure his English is really great. I imagine him having no trouble at all buying a train ticket at Grand Central Station or even making his breakfast order more or less understood at a Waffle House somewhere outside Charlotte. ("I am a Bert's Chili having, mit onions und cheese.") But his song lyrics? It's like he's working from one of those magnetic poetry sets, and it's missing a bunch of key pieces. Here's a sample, from the song "Drawback":

I locate a place that will mirror my face
And inquire into the mash of myself
There's a wish-wash in my head
A wit in my mind
I don't think that's real a drawback of time

Here's another head-scratcher, this time from "The Trap":

Try more a hand can hold
The taste of self-confidence so far
But don't realize
You remove to wrap--the trap

Don't get me wrong--I really enjoy XMTP's music. They started out as a Skinny Puppy clone and evolved into a poppier but more interesting outfit later in their career. The propulsive synth sequences move elegantly with the programmed beats, and Ni-Arb has a distinctive voice that works well without too much distortion. So what's with the pidgin English lyrics? Why not sing in his native German and make himself sound at least halfway coherent to the people who, after all, make up the bulk of his audience--namely, drugged-out gothy club kids in Frankfurt? Furthermore, bands like Rammstein and Einstürzende Neubauten both did well auf Deutsch, even in the U.S. market.

This got me to thinking about a larger question. Is English, already perhaps the lingua franca of European diplomacy, now also the common denominator of song lyrics for industrial bands? Does it help your sales in the Portuguese record shops if you sing in English as opposed to German? Are club kids in Bratislava actually singing along to lines like "I sweep my rising quiet for imposing lights"? What the hell does that even mean? (And are there even club kids in Bratislava?)

Harumph. If you're taking the trouble to write lyrics and you're not a fluent English speaker, please write them in your native language. If you must, provide an English translation in the CD booklet. Really, we can handle the German--half the time your voice is so distorted anyway that we wouldn't be able to make out the words no matter what language you used. So say what you mean, and mean what you say. Gute Nacht, und gutes Glueck.

Also today:

79:51 Clear Stream Temple, XVI
79:31 BlutEngel, Angel Dust
79:30 Laibach, Recapitulacija 1980-84
79:29 In Strict Confidence, Face the Fear (CD 1 of 2)