New Arrival! 67 minutes, 5 seconds

Fïx8:Sëd8
Humanophobia

As close readers (ha!) will have surmised by now, the way it works is that when I receive a new CD whose total time is greater than that of the CD I'm currently listening to, it gets slotted in next in the queue. Since I buy a lot of CDs, this is wont to happen on at least a weekly basis, if not more often.

One more bit of housekeeping before I'm forced to head out to work: There will be a few days of no Total Time! I know, I know--try to curb your enthusiasm. I'm off to San Francisco with Mrs. Total Time for the weekend. It promises to be sunny, and certainly warmer than it is here. With a 90% chance of better Mexican, Italian, and Chinese food than we get in Seattle.

Back on Monday. Try to behave in the meantime.

Also today:

New arrival! 60:09 Tau Factor, Second Stage Ignition
59:38 Tannhauser & Event, Fuel
59:37 Caul, Muein
59:35 Caul, Hidden
59:35 Dernière Volonté, Le Feu Sacré
59:35 Dither, Apogee
New arrival! 74:33 Death of Dawn, Daylight Extinction Programme

59 minutes, 50 seconds

Mortiis
The Stargate

This was the last album Mortiis did in his "classic" (there's that word again) style, before he shifted gears and turned into a Trent Reznor industrial-rock wannabe. And just what is Mortiis's "classic" style? In a word, overly dramatic synth-generated bombast. Oh, wait, that's actually five words. See, you can't even describe Mortiis's music without going over the top.

I once described Mortiis as a laugh-out-loud parody of all things goth. And, well, he is: the prosthetic ears and nose, the batcave outfit, the makeup...he looks like a vampire zombie after a particularly long day at work. But the first three albums he recorded (two of them for Cold Meat Industry) force you to literally look past his appearance and appreciate the deceptively simple sonic landscapes he creates. With what sounds like just a cheap synth, he conjures up images of Scandinavian landscapes run amok with Vikings raping and pillaging and looting and loitering and littering...you know, all the scofflaw things Vikings enjoy doing.

The Stargate is easily the most rococo album of his career. Much more so than on the previous four discs, he really dials up the Sturm und Drang here: The faux strings swell and ebb wildly, cymbals crash like thunder, and he adds female vocals to give the proceedings an ethereal Ring Cycle atmosphere. (Close your eyes and imagine her wearing a horned helmet.)

I can see why he stopped making this kind of music, and I applaud him for switching gears, even if I can't go with him to his new musical place. I'll content myself with the old stuff and imagine I'm Mortiis hiking through the fjords, adjusting my pointy plastic nose, and trying not to sweat through my fake-leather bodysuit.

Also today:

59:47 Noise Unit, Voyeur
59:47 Photophob, Still Warm
59:47 Second Disease, Flame the Dark True
59:44 Narsilion, Nerbeleth
59:43 Digital Poodle, Work Terminal
59:41 Scrap.edx, The Latitude Zero Project (CD 2 of 2)
59:39 Manufactura, Presence: Into the Here and the Now
New arrival! 78:00 Noise Process, Ground Zero
New arrival! 73:03 Total Pain Kollapz, Hell Is Not Heaven
New arrival! 68:45 Dolls of Pain, Dec[a]dance

59 minutes, 57 seconds

Inure
Seemless

Industrial music in the "classic" mold (their word, not mine) from Los Angeles. I suppose. If by "classic" you mean "generic." I shouldn't be so mean. This is actually not bad. It's competently put together and produced. I just can't get all that excited about Inure. They don't seem to add much value to a genre that's already drowning in bands that do very similar things.

And yet I still must buy every single CD they put out. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...

Also today:

59:57 Stark, Brave New Desire
59:56 Elijah's Mantle, Remedies in Heresies
59:56 Funker Vogt, We Came to Kill
59:56 Synaesthesia, Ephemeral
59:54 Delerium, Spheres II
59:54 Reversal Penetrations, Generation Mindwar
59:52 Angels & Agony, Unison
59:51 Massiv in Mensch & Negative Format, An Exploration in Trance
59:51 Stereotaxic Device, 100 Per Day Extinct
59:50 Frequency Construct, Deviant Behaviour

60 minutes, 2 seconds

Heid
Pilgrim of the Sublunary World

Cold Meat Industry is the 4AD of industrial music. I'm hard-pressed to think of another example of a label with such a recognizable look and feel, and even sound. "Brand," as the corporate types like to say. Just like 4AD, CMI manages to confer a certain quality on the artists it chooses to release. You may not always like the music they put out, but you respect it. You'll give it a listen, because it comes with a pedigree. And just like 4AD's elegant CD artwork by Vaughan Oliver and his 23 Envelope design studio, CMI wraps its releases in the brooding layouts designed by the label head himself, Roger Karmanik.

The Hands and Prikosnovénie labels come close to achieving this synergy of sound and design--a total vision for what they want their label to be--but for some reason they don't strike the same chord in me. The overall quality just isn't quite there, especially in comparison to 4AD and CMI.

The now-defunct Heid is perhaps not the best example of CMI's music (or CD design, for that matter), but it's a representative example: just-this-side-of-melodic ambient industrial. But if Cocteau Twins were the emblematic band of the 4AD label at its height, Raison d'Être has to be the CMI equivalent. The oppressive sonic coupling of creeping, clanking noises with synth-based strings and ghostly Gregorian chants owed a debt to early Delerium, to be sure, but Raison d'Être pushed the sound to a higher emotional plane, investing it with a bit more heaviness, a bit more sorrow. (Titles like "Ordeal in Chapel" certainly helped.)

All this is to say that CMI has created something lasting and recognizable, and I guess I've always aspired to do something like that. Judging by the number of readers, it, uh, probably won't be this blog...

Also today:

60:01 Vidna Obmana, Shadowing in Sorrow
60:00 Noisuf-X, Tinnitus
60:00 Phallus Dei, Nature Mortes
60:00 Sol Invictus, The Devil's Steed
59:59 Amygdala, Memento Mori
59:59 Delerium, Faces, Forms, and Illusions
59:59 Stahlfrequenz, Coma Themes
New arrival! 76:55 Peter Andersson, Music for Film and Exhibition (CD 2 of 2)
New arrival! 74:08 Peter Andersson, Music for Film and Exhibition (CD 1 of 2)
New arrival! 61:11 Black Lung, The Great Architect
New arrival! 60:23 Black Lung, Extraordinary Popular Delusions
59:59 Suicide Commando, Bind, Torture, Kill

60 minutes, 13 seconds

In the Nursery
Hindle Wakes (CD 1 of 2)

I've always been a huge sucker for the musical charms of the Humberstone twins, ever since picking up a copy of their Counterpoint collection in a small record shop in Charlottesville, Virginia, while in college, back in the days of yore: 1989. The cover was what initially grabbed my attention, but then the band's name was striking too--a bit strange, but it held the promise of telling a story. And the song titles: "Arm Me Audacity," "Elegy," "Workcorps"...they sounded like chapters of a book I really wanted to read.

Expecting something experimental or industrial, I was surprised when I got the CD home and began listening to it. Strings? Military snare drum? French vocals? Tympani? It was like nothing else I'd heard before--or since, really--and at that moment I knew I had to listen to everything they'd ever released.

Well, good luck trying to do that in Charlottesville in the days before the Internet. I'd find CDs piecemeal when I traveled home to New York on holidays, and I'd study mail-order catalogs from places like KK/Cargo (remember them?), Rough Trade, and Dutch East India in the hopes of finding something, anything new from this strange band.

Twenty-odd CDs later, that all seems like (and, let's admit it, was) a long time ago. ITN have gotten better with age--can't say that about too many bands--and yet they've stuck to their guns in many ways. Much has changed about their sound, but it's remained true to itself. The things I used to like about ITN are still there, but it would be hard to reconcile the band that produced 1988's Köda with the band that produced 2000's Groundloop.

Hindle Wakes, if you were wondering when I'd get to that, is part of their occasional Optical Music series--soundtracks they do for silent films. Often they're recycled instrumental bits and pieces from previous albums, with some new compositions sprinkled in. But since a good deal of their music is soundtrackish to begin with, it's a natural fit to have them add a score, "original" or not, to silent films from the '20s. I haven't seen the film in this case, but ITN's involvement certainly makes me want to. (It's available on DVD, so I don't know what I'm waiting for, exactly.)

To my knowledge, ITN have never played live in the U.S. They remain the one band (perhaps aside from Current 93) that I really, desperately want to see in person.

Also today:

60:12 Dernière Volonté, Les Blessures de l'Ombre
60:12 Phallus Dei, Pontifex Maximus
60:08 Liquid Divine, Interface
60:08 Lycia, The Burning Circle and Then Dust (CD 1 of 2)
60:06 Vidna Obmana, Ending Mirage
60:05 God Module, Perception
60:03 Elijah's Mantle, Betrayals and Ecstasies
60:03 SKET, Aktivist

60 minutes, 33 seconds

Andraculoid
Imbalance

All I really know about this band is that they're from Jenkintown, Pennsylvania (the onetime location of Isolation Tank Records), that one of their collaborators is a member of This Morn' Omina, and that the main guy behind Andraculoid is named, rather unfortunately, John Thomas.

And now, because I lead a dual life, I must turn my full attention to my fantasy baseball draft. More pointless musings about music tomorrow, OK?

Also today:

60:20 John Foxx, Cathedral Oceans II
60:20 Toroidh, Those Who Do Not Remember the Past Are Condemned to Repeat It
60:19 Project Pitchfork, Chakra:Red
60:16 In Slaughter Natives, Sacrosancts Bleed
60:15 Current 93, Dawn

60 minutes, 52 seconds

Calva y Nada
Monologue Eines Baumes

A Spanish band that sometimes sang in German, Calva y Nada appears to be sadly no more. I always thought they had a fairly unique sound, and not just because of the mixing of language. They had a sense of humor (check out "Calva Polka" at the end of this disc), and their juxtaposition of bouncy synths and bombastic rhythms with Laibach-esque vocals set them apart from the typical early-'90s Skinny Puppy clones.

Unfortunately, they never really grew as a band--each album pretty much sounded like the one that came before it. I guess you could say that about a lot of bands, especially in the electro/EBM genre, but because Calva y Nada's sound was so distinctive, it only magnified the sense of repetition. Ironic, if you think about it.

Also today:

60:52 Project-X, Forbidden Desires
60:49 Leæther Strip, Solitary Confinement
60:48 Arbre Noir, Beyond
60:47 Vinterriket, Der Letzte Winter: Der Ewigkeit Entgegen
60:46 Front 242, Official Version
60:42 Numina, The Haunting Silence
60:40 Ab Ovo, Mouvements
60:40 Dioxyde, Torschlüsspanik
60:40 Einstürzende Neubauten, Strategies Against Architecture III (CD 2 of 2)
60:36 Sleeping Dogs Wake, Sugar Kisses
60:34 Psyclon Nine, INRI

60 minutes, 57 seconds

Majestic
No Words, No Misunderstandings

Ah, the late, great Celtic Circle Productions label. So many now-forgotten bands, including this one-off East German project. Funny thing is, despite this CD's title, there are words, and, growled and distorted as they are, they're liable to be misunderstood.

Anyway, if you're keeping score at home, you'll have noticed that I'm close to reaching the 60-minute mark. Momentous occasion, obviously. (Uh, if you're a total weirdo, that is.) I still think it's ambitious to think I'm going to make it all the way through the collection by June 15, which would be six months after I started. But I'm going to try. You know for the fans.

Fan.

OK, well, just for myself, then.

Also today:

60:57 Project Pitchfork, Io
60:56 Heimatærde, Gotteskrieger
60:56 Various artists, Classica
60:55 Brian Eno, Thursday Afternoon
60:54 Atrium Carceri, Seishinbyouin
60:54 Cdatakill, Brazilian Nightmare
60:54 Haujobb, Homes & Gardens

61 minutes, 6 seconds

Helium Vola
Helium Vola

Helium Vola is principally the project of Ernst Horn, a onetime member of the medieval-revival band Qntal. The two projects are very similar in approach: Take traditional music from the middle ages and update it with modern electronic instrumentation, changing the phrasing and cadence to give the songs new life.

Now, this isn't necessarily new--Dead Can Dance, for one, used to do the same thing, perhaps most memorably with "Saltarello," from their 1990 album Aion. But with Qntal, Horn added a skewed, experimental, avant-garde sound to the stately old songs. It was beautiful, but weird, and a little scary. (Check out the first two Qntal albums to see what I mean.)

He tones that down a little here, but this disc, his debut as Helium Vola, retains an experimental spirit--the songs may be old and hallowed, but nothing is sacred to Horn, and he twists and bends them with abandon. For example, "Omnis Mundi Creatura," by the 12th-century French theologian and poet Alain de Lille, becomes a stomping electro anthem. And "Do Tagte Ez" veers from heavy metal to classical and back again.

Sprinkled throughout the disc are the unmistakable sounds of submarine sonar equipment. And fittingly so: The album is dedicated to the Russian sailors who died aboard the Kursk submarine when it sank in Arctic waters in 2000. So there's an elegiac sadness that hangs over the songs, but probably among the most beautiful sadness you'll ever hear. Yet it ends on an optimistic note: the traditional song "Selig," a hymn to spring and rebirth. Helium Vola's version is insistently energetic and pretty, and it makes for an intensely emotional release point for all the songs that came before it.

A remarkable album that deserves a wider audience.

Also today:

61:05 DavaNtage, Unholy
61:04 His Divine Grace, His Divine Grace
61:04 Skinny Puppy, VIVIsectVI
61:02 Karin Höghielm, Apocryphal
61:01 Moon Far Away, Sator
61:01 Vidna Obmana, Gathering in Frozen Beauty
61:01 VNV Nation, Praise the Fallen
61:00 Skinny Puppy, Rabies
60:59 Mortal Constraint, The Legend of Deformation
60:57 Harold Budd & Hector Zazou, Glyph

61 minutes, 15 seconds

Gods Die later
Delirium

It's one thing to sound like early Delerium. It's probably even OK to title your album Delirium. But to actually spell the word correctly? Man, that's got to piss off Bill Leeb. I mean, the shock of seeing the word with an "i" instead of the "e"...it must have been devastating.

I keed, as Triumph would say.

But as much as I like this album, I have to admit (and I think the band members would too) that it's basically a knock-off. And the album title, well, let's just say it's the rough equivalent of the guys selling counterfeit Louis Vuitton purses on Canal Street in New York. Excuse me, "Louis Vutton," as the label might say.

I think Gods Die Later died, in fact, sooner. This release, from 2000, is the only thing they ever put out. Too bad. I was looking forward to their follow-up, Front Line Assemblage.

Also today:

61:14 Love Is Colder Than Death, Time (CD 1 of 2)
61:13 Agonoize, Assimilation: Chapter Two (CD 1 of 2)
61:13 Les Jumeaux, Cobalt
61:13 Stahlwerk 9, Vaterland (CD 1 of 2)
61:12 Vidna Obmana & Bass Communion, Continuum
61:10 Robert Davies, Garden of Twilight
61:10 Rena Jones, Transmigration
61:08 Andrew Szava-Kovats, Distant Shores
61:07 Nostalgia, Arcana Publicata Vilescunt
61:06 Current 93 & HÖH, Island

61 minutes, 27 seconds

Of the Wand and the Moon
Emptiness Emptiness Emptiness

You could be forgiven if you listened to this and mistook it for Death in June. Kim Larsen, the Dane behind OTWATM (as the kids call this project), sounds an awful lot like Doug Pearce, and even the strummed acoustic guitar and chimey background effects have a certain Rose Clouds-era DIJ atmosphere.

But unlike other pale imitators, Larsen wins you over with quality. He's capable of writing a memorable melody. Just like Pearce. He underplays his voice, keeping it at a quiet intensity that directs the focus to his darkly poetic lyrics. Just like Pearce. And the overall sound is handsomely produced, rich and full yet at the same time clear and sharp. Just like Pearce's.

If the Grammys® had a Satanic Folk category, Larsen would so be the winner every year.

Also today:

61:26 Ignis Fatuus, In Our Mad Bliss
61:24 Data-Bank-A, Bipolar
61:22 Decoded Feedback, Combustion
61:21 Dawn of Ashes, In the Acts of Violence
61:20 Cyborg Attack, Stoerf***tor
61:20 Dioxyde, Social Phobia
61:20 Xorcist, Insects & Angels: Differences & Indifferences
61:19 Ophir, Eiserne Ernte (CD 2 of 2)
61:18 Beamship, Big Brother
61:18 Front Line Assembly, [FLA]vour of the Weak
61:16 Bleak, Vane
61:16 Prager Handgriff, Arglistige Täuschung

61 minutes, 29 seconds

Siva Six
Black Will

Beware of Greeks bearing synths? Seems like only a few days ago that I wrote about Siva Six's compatriots Lexincrypt. (Uh, turns out that's because it was literally just the other day.) But before you go thinking there's some sort of Greek invasion afoot, remember that this stuff is, as I mentioned before, pretty indistinguishable from the electro being made in Central Europe. Or America. Or Antarctica, for that matter.

Which is to say, plenty of horror-movie samples and the usual assortment of monstrous beats and ominous synths. Proves there's still plenty of terror in industrial music. Just no terroir.

Also today:

61:28 Cocteau Twins, Lullabies to Violaine (CD 4 of 4)

61 minutes, 34 seconds

Vidna Obmana
Monument of Empty Colours

Early Vidna Obmana, a.k.a. Dirk Serries, Belgian ambient composer of some renown. (Um, at least among people who like ambient music from Belgium.) These particular pieces, assembled on the first disc of the Memories Compiled compilation for the Projekt label, were recorded with American expermentalist PBK.

They're quiet, floating pieces, to be sure, but they contain a bit of a burr. This isn't quite the soothing, almost medicinal ambient music Obmana would later create for his three-disc Trilogy release. In fact, you can hear the transition here from some of the more industrial, noisy work captured on his Anthology 1984-2004 compilation.

In any case, why am I telling you all this before 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning? (Yes, check the time stamp below.) I couldn't sleep, that's why. Ever since the stupid daylight saving time change, my sleeping habits have been off-kilter. But we moved the clocks ahead, so you'd think I'd sleep later, not wake up earlier. Weird. And the real bummer is that daylight itself (that phenomenon we're supposed to be saving) is still more than an hour away.

Also today:

61:33 Misericordia & Gaïta, Eschewynge of Ydlenesse
61:33 Mortiis, Crypt of the Wizard
61:31 Fin de Siècle, Présences
61:31 Suicide Commando, Chromdioxyde 1
61:31 Television Overdose, Terrestrial Broadcast
New arrival! 68:36 Skadi, Eliwagar
61:31 Various artists, Hopes Die in Winter
61:29 Project Pitchfork, Inferno

61 minutes, 41 seconds

Lexincrypt
This Descent

From the folks behind Boundless and Symbiont comes Lexincrypt, another aggressive electro project that's done well enough but fails to linger in the mind. So let's talk about something else today.

Namely, that it's been three months since I started this blog, and I'm only at the 61-minute mark. It's possible that this project will take close to a year to complete. I'd figured on about six months. And who knows? Maybe it'll fall somewhere in between. The trouble is, I keep acquiring new CDs. If only I knew how to stop...

And then there's the issue of traffic to this blog. Uh, there isn't any. Turns out I'm pretty clueless about how to drive eyeballs (barf) to my site, and I have trouble even convincing myself that this is something even fans of this kind of music would be interested in reading. So I've come to the realization that I may be doing this just for myself. Just for the simple exercise of writing every day. Forcing myself to do so. And maybe that's OK. Maybe attracting a large audience isn't the sole reason you do something.

After all, how many copies of This Descent do you think Lexincrypt sold?

Also today:

61:41 Various artists, The Oran Môr Trilogy
61:40 Bahntier, Revulsive
61:40 Divine Muzak, Dialogue
61:38 Dive, First Album
61:38 Zentriert ins Antlitz, Genozid
61:37 Combichrist, The Joy of Gunz
61:36 Run Level Zero, Walk the Psycho[path]
61:35 La Floa Maldita, Dedication! Separation!
61:34 Collection d'Arnell-Andréa, Un Automne à Loroy

61 minutes, 46 seconds

Dulce Liquido
Shock Therapy

A Hocico side project, or, more specifically, a chance to hear what Hocico might have sounded like if they'd signed to the Hands label. It's heavy and noisy and sweaty and energetic and...pretty damn good, if not exactly groundbreaking.

I'm off to the Eastside now, where I have to spend my Thursdays cranking out the world's most boring business-to-business (that's B2B for you lovers of chat-room shorthand) copy for the world's most boring Web site from the world's most boring software company.

Ciao for niao.

Also today:

61:46 Lisa Gerrard, The Silver Tree
61:45 Umwelt, Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation
61:44 Informätik, Syntax
61:44 Pentitent, A Shapeless Beauty
61:42 Rabia Sorda, Métodos del Caos
61:42 Second Disease, Am I God?
New arrival! 76:35 Black Lung, The Coming Dark Age
New arrival! 72:54 :Wumpscut:, Born Again

62 minutes

Die Form
Extremum

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether Die Form frontman Philippe Fichot is a thoughtful connoisseur of highbrow erotica or just a kinky creep. In any case, his long-suffering (and I mean that literally) photography model and co-vocalist Éliane P. invariably appears nude on the CD-jacket covers and is frequently depicted hooked up to some particularly painful-looking contraption. Or just tied up uncomfortably. It's a wonder she still has enough energy to sing.

Oh, well. Chacun à son goût.

I had the opportunity to interview Fichot for Side-Line magazine a few years ago. It was all done via e-mail, so I didn't get a chance to meet him personally and see if he wears latex and leather as his casual, everyday getup. But I did get to ask him a few questions that had been on my mind about Die Form. You can read the interview here.

It's been interesting to watch this project grow from a rather experimental group to something a bit poppy to something more austere and elegant, yet still edgy. They have a recognizable sound and even a recognizable look, thanks to Fichot's unique photographic aesthetic. They have, as the suits say, a brand.

A very perverted brand.

Also today:

61:56 HERR, Es Regnet das Leben Heraus
61:56 Misericordia, Robins M'Aime
61:55 Lumin, Hadra
61:54 Ulrich Schnauss, A Strangely Isolated Place
61:53 Hocico, Sangre Hirviente
61:53 Mike VanPortfleet, Beyond the Horizon Line
61:49 Vinterriket & Northaunt, Vinterriket & Northaunt
61:47 Brain Leisure, Mindfire

62 minutes, 14 seconds

PreEmptive Strike 0.1
Lethal Defence Systems

Industrial music made by cretins! Uh, make that Cretans. You know, Greeks who live on the island of Crete. There's actually a growing cadre of electro bands from Greece (Iambia, Siva Six, and a few others--who knew?) who make competent, if not exactly innovative, EBM. PreEmptive Strike 0.1 (what's with the intra-cap "E"?) are in the paint-by-numbers Agonoize category of ultra-distorted vocals, melodic synths, and movie samples. And that's about all I need to say about them.

A word about the Raison d'Être CD below: The title is actually--and it pains me to even type this--Enthraled by the Wind of Lonelienes. The editor in me simply couldn't let that stand, so I not-so-silently corrected it for the purposes of this blog. I understand that Peter Andersson is Swedish, and hence English is not his native language. So, on the one hand, perhaps I ought to be forgiving. On the other hand, if English isn't his native language, why didn't he title the album in his native Swedish instead? Or, here's a thought: Ask a native English speaker how to spell the words you want to use. Harumph.

Also today:

62:13 Raison d'Être, Enthralled by the Wind of Loneliness
62:12 The Glimmer Room, Tomorrow's Tuesday
62:12 O Quam Tristis, Méditations Ultimes
62:11 Beefcake, Coincidentia Oppositorum
62:11 Para, Zentese
62:10 Tumor, Welcome Back, Asshole!
62:08 Helga Pogatschar, Mars: Requiem
62:08 Die Sektor, To Be Fed Upon
62:07 Run Level Zero, Symbol of Submission
62:03 Data-Bank-A, The Deconstruction
62:02 In the Nursery, Duality

62 minutes, 27 seconds

VNV Nation
Futureperfect

Listening to VNV Nation feels like a guilty pleasure. The songs are either ridiculously anthemic or just-this-side-of-embarrassing sentimental. They use swelling strings that not even In the Nursery would have touched 15 years ago, and the optimistic, bubbly keyboards almost make Ronan Harris's minor-key vocal lines sound cheery and uplifting. But damn--some of the songs are great. Even on this album, which initially struck me as a bit overripe compared with Empires or Praise the Fallen.

I saw them live in Seattle a few years ago. Harris was a huge ham on stage--way more personable than any "industrial" musician has any right to be--but the show was energetic and alive in a way that many other bands in the genre can't match. Most of it was played from DAT, but percussionist Mark Jackson still exuded a convincing physicality, and Harris's strong voice came through clearly even in the murky acoustics of the smallish club.

There's a part of me that doesn't want to like VNV Nation, but there's a larger part of me that can't help it.

Also today:

62:26 Dense Vision Shrine, A Voyage of Imagination
62:24 Clock DVA, Buried Dreams
62:23 Land, 1988-1997
62:22 Vidna Obmana, Passage in Beauty
62:21 Infact, Fatal Error
62:21 Object, The Reflecting Skin
62:19 Front Line Assembly, Hard Wired
62:19 Hocico, Wrack and Ruin (CD 1 of 2)

New Arrival! 71 minutes, 51 seconds

Architect
I Went Out Shopping to Get Some Noise

As you can see, yesterday and today have been about catching up with Daniel Myer, the Belgian dude behind Haujobb and now the architect of Architect. I fell off the Haujobb wagon sometime around the release of Solutions for a Small Planet--I think it just got too poppy for me. And then I just ignored the rest of Myer's stuff, thinking I wouldn't like it anyway.

Mistake.

Architect is spectacular, deserving of its spot on the excellent Hymen label roster. This is inventive instrumental industrial IDM, by turns noisy and aggressive and melancholy and melodic. Piano and strings take the edge off harsh synthetic beats, and an underlying song-structure sensibility keeps the experimentation within limits.

If, like me, you've failed to keep up with Myer, go out shopping to get some noise.

Also today:

62:29 Instans, Common Ground
62:28 Splatter Squall, Transcendence
62:27 Various artists, Music for Films III

62 minutes, 32 seconds

Harold Budd
Luxa

A few elements you could call "jazz" peek out from time to time on Luxa, but otherwise this album shares many textural traits with Budd's much-loved 1988 release The White Arcades: a moody, melancholy sustained piano phrasing; sparse keyboard atmospherics; and Budd's ever-present inscrutable song titles.

It's nearly spring, but this album just has a way of making everything feel autumnal.

Also today:

62:29 Dark Sanctuary, Exaudi Vocem Meam, Part I
62:29 Front Line Assembly, State of Mind
New arrival! 79:03 Architect, Lower Lip Interface
New arrival! 75:10 Architect, The Analysis of Noise Trading

62 minutes, 40 seconds

Amduscia
Melodies for the Devil

Just as in the 19th century, when German emigres brought their beer-making techniques to Mexico, so it appears in the 1990s they exported harsh industrial music to the land of ranchera and salsa. And like Corona, Bohemia, Tecate, and other light lagers that imitate the German style, Hocico, Cenobita, Amduscia, and others pound and growl (and, um, program the presets on their synths) just as well as their Teutonic forefathers.

But if it's possible to distinguish a Mexican beer's flavor from that of a German or American lager--and I think it is--it's not always possible to do so with Mexican industrial music and its counterpart in Europe. I'm not sure, for example, that I could tell you what the difference is between Amduscia and Agonoize.

Which is a little depressing but also a little fascinating. I'm continually amazed at how global this music has become. No matter where he's from, the singer in these bands always sounds like he's swallowed a handful of thumbtacks and chased them with a shot glass full of iron filings. He might sing in his native language once in a while, but it hardly matters--it's not like you can pick out the lyrics amid the extreme vocal distortion.

Maybe the internationalization of industrial music is still too new to have developed distinct regional styles. Or maybe the problem lies with me--I haven't trained my ears well enough to decipher the subtle differences between Psyclon Nine and Aslan Faction. But I like to think I can recognize new and groundbreaking "industrial" music when I hear it, and I don't hear it in these bands. Instead, I hear something frozen in time (Leæther Strip, circa Solitary Confinement) and as moribund as blues music.

Hate to end on a downer note, especially on a Friday. So I'll leave you with this.

Also today:

62:39 Aslan Faction, Blunt Force Trauma
62:39 Beefcake, ¥003 + ¥024 + 2X = ¥727
62:38 Mnemonic, Konstruktive Vergangenheitsbewältigung (CD 2 of 2)
62:37 Vas, In the Garden of Souls
62:35 In the Nursery, Anatomy of a Poet
62:34 Toroidh, Testament
62:33 Les Joyaux de la Princesse, Aux Volontaires Croix de Sang
62:33 Project Pitchfork, Entities

62 minutes, 50 seconds

Current 93
Thunder Perfect Mind (CD 2 of 2)

If, like me, you spent the dough to get the reissued two-disc version of Thunder Perfect Mind, you probably felt like it was only marginally worth it. (Unless you're one of those crazed collectors who go out and buy literally everything David Tibet poops out.) Bottom line, there are only a few extra tracks here that either weren't on the original release or can't be found on the Emblems collection.

Still, I don't mind listening to "They Return to Their Earth" (two versions here!) yet again, and all 12 minutes of "Maldoror Is Ded Ded Ded Ded."

I'm sure I've said this before, but it's high time Tibet released a catch-all rarities collection--preferably one that includes "Happy Birthday Pigface Christus" and "Holy Holy Holy." Oh, and "Jesus Wants Me for a Moonbeam." Can't forget that one.

Maybe they'll be on the companion disc that's allegedly going to be part of the elaborate book of lyrics Tibet's been working on for years? And, I might add, that I paid for in advance nearly three years ago?

What was it I was saying earlier? Something about crazed collectors buying everything Tibet poops out? Never mind.

Also today:

62:46 Some More Crime, Ohnmacht
62:45 Auto Aggression, Artefacts
62:45 Disharmony, X-Frames
62:43 Gjallarhorn, Ranarop
62:43 Silk Saw, 4th Dividers

62 minutes, 59 seconds

X Marks the Pedwalk
Freaks

Back when I was working as an editor and music reviewer for a large online retailer, here's what I wrote about this album:

Despite a silly name that conjures up images of a pirate narrating a drivers' ed film, Germany's X Marks the Pedwalk construct some rather serious music (let's face it, with song titles like "Swastika" and "Battered Babies," they're not exactly in line to play the Catskills). This U.S. reissue of their 1991 debut, previously available only as an import, was long overdue, and those familiar with the smoother industrial techno-pop of more recent XMTP discs like Drawback are in for a surprise: This band used to scream and pound and pummel as competently as any other group brought up on a steady diet of Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly. Yeah, sure, some of the material may sound dated, but tracks like "Church for Snow White," with its Klinik-like percussive assault, and the atmospheric "Repression," with its looped samples of Martin Luther King Jr., are industrial classics. Sadly, their early club hit "Abbatoir" is missing from this reissue, but those who already own the import will want this disc for the four bonus tracks Metropolis Records so generously tacked on.

Hey, it's not plagiarism if you wrote it yourself! Besides, I'm too lazy to post something original this morning. Is it lunchtime yet?

Also today:

62:58 Sleepwalk, Torture Chamber
62:57 Gridlock, Formless
62:57 Pail, Towards Nowhere
62:56 Aslan Faction, Widow Chamber
62:53 Forced, Cherophobia
62:52 Front Line Assembly, The Initial Command
New arrival! 74:59 Reaper, Hell Starts with an H
New arrival! 72:51 Combichrist, What the F**k Is Wrong with You People? (CD 1 of 2)

63 minutes, 8 seconds

Harold Budd
The Serpent (In Quicksilver) & Abandoned Cities

I'm not normally one for twangy guitars, but Harold Budd could probably play the kazoo and chances are I'd listen rapturously. There's a desolate, lonely, spaghetti-Western-on-Quaaludes quality to the first few tracks on this disc, and then it shifts into two longer pieces (the Abandoned Cities portion of the CD), both of which considerably amp up the foreboding, dark-ambient quotient. Probably some of the darkest material Budd ever recorded.

Which is noteworthy, because of all the serious ambient composers I've come across, he's typically the most romantic-sounding. His piano-based pieces are rich with sustained chords and fortified with violins, guitars, and other instruments you can actually pick out--unlike, say, the studio-effects-laden work of Brian Eno.

This CD is worth seeking out, along with the rest of Budd's back catalog. It's rare for ambient music to tell a good story (Budd is a master at song titles too), and his music speaks volumes.

Also today:

63:07 Terror Against Terror, Psychological Warfare Technology Systems
63:06 Current 93, Sleep Has His House
63:06 Hocico, Odio Bajo el Alma
63:05 Allied Vision, MMBO
63:05 Die Form, Archives & Documents (CD 1 of 2)
63:05 Nullvektor, Stromaufwärts
63:03 Die Form, Die Puppe
63:01 Accessory, Jukka2147.de
63:00 In Strict Confidence, Exile Paradise (CD 1 of 2)
62:59 Ah Cama-Sotz, Terra Infernalis

63 minutes, 30 seconds

amGod
Half Rotten and Decayed

Dominik van Reich was one half of the late-'80s/early '90s cult German electro duo yelworC. (Uh, read it backwards to get an idea of what they were interested in.) amGod is (was, at this point) his solo project, not dissimilar in style to yelworC.

The high point of this disc, recently rereleased as part of an overly ambitious four-CD box set--especially for a band that only ever put out two albums--is van Reich's rollicking cover of Arthur Brown's "Fire." You know, the song that begins "I am the god of hellfire / And I bring you..." It's been covered a thousand times, but amGod speed it up and add a healthy dose of electronic evil to an already devilish song. Sure, it's cheesy, but in an exhilarating way.

Also today:

63:27 Neuroactive, Morphology
63:21 Gaiden, Walking on Wires
63:21 Television Overdose, A Turing Test
63:20 Laibach, Laibach
63:19 Je$us Loves Amerika, Advanced Burial Technology
63:16 PAL, Signum
New arrival! 72:41 Ah Cama-Sotz, Épithaphe
New arrival! 66:06 Stahlwerk 9, Vaterland (CD 2 of 2)
63:15 Plastic Noise Experience, -196°C
63:14 :Wumpscut:, BloodChild (CD 2 of 2)
63:09 C-Drone-Defect, Nemesis

63 minutes, 41 seconds

Conscientia Peccati
Morbus Temporis

A little hung over, but how can that be? All I had was one martini and a glass of white wine. Sucks getting old.

Speaking of things getting old, this is, like, the third time in the past week Conscientia Peccati has been featured. It gives me yet another opportunity to complain about the proliferation of odd-sized CD packaging--this one comes in a large (what they call A5-size in the U.K.) booklet, with the disc itself nestled inside a sleeve on the next to last page. I do like the cover art on this release, but the whole package is so obviously (and cheaply) photocopied that it makes you feel as though you're listening to something illicit.

Maybe that's the point? Part of Conscientia Peccati's charm?

Nah. They're probably just cheap.

Also today:

63:40 Soma, The Inner Cinema
63:39 Kattoo, Places
63:38 Apoptygma Berzerk, 7
63:36 Sol Invictus, Sol Veritas Lux

63 minutes, 57 seconds

Gridlock
Further

Have you tried the no-knead bread recipe that Mark Bittman wrote about in The New York Times a while back? Damn, it's good. And so fucking easy. I know, baking bread isn't very industrial. Or goth, for that matter. And it has nothing to do with Gridlock.

Speaking of which, too bad they're not around anymore. They were a great example of a band that started out making nightmarish industrial music and segued into IDM--but IDM that was clearly informed by the industrial elements from their early days. Further was the transitional album, so you can really hear the cracks beginning to form in their sound.

The closest analogy I can think of is the direction Haujobb took on Solutions for a Small Planet. But in the end, it was Daniel Myer's Architect project, and not Haujobb's subsequent albums, that ended up displaying the full promise of his talents.

I'm rambling today. Sorry, it's early and I have a bunch of cooking to do for a friend who's coming over for dinner. I know, having a dinner party isn't very industrial either.

Also today:

63:53 The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud, The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud
63:53 Xorcist, Damned Souls
63:52 Dark Sanctuary, Exaudi Vocem Meam, Part II
63:52 The Unquiet Void, Between the Twilights
63:50 Tumor, Seelenfresser
63:44 Lost Signal, Catharsis
63:42 S:Cage, Remote

64 minutes, 8 seconds

Conscientia Peccati
Draco Rex

I have a surfeit of vaguely medieval, vaguely ritualistic, vaguely symphonic music. Let's just call it vague music. ("Come on, vague. Let your body move to the music...")

Conscientia Peccati ("the awareness of sin" is how the band chooses to translate the name) seem to dabble in occult themes, or at least try to by spelling "of" in one song title as "ov," in the affected manner of Genesis P-Orridge. Draco Rex has a lighter touch and a greater emphasis on song structure than much of their previous work, and is hence more accessible to the listener. The problem is when one of the band members (the only one?) tries to talk/sing over the music and ends up ruining the mood.

Let's just say it's a sin they need to become aware of.

Also today:

64:07 Fusspils 11, Elektro-Polizei: Alarm für Fusspils 11
64:07 Obszön Geschöpf, Tomb of the Dead
64:05 Aghast View, Nitrovisceral
64:04 amGod, Crime!
64:04 Estampie, Ave Maris Stella
New arrival! 69:48 Numina, Shift to the Ghost
64:03 Les Joyaux de la Princesse, Paris 1937
64:01 O Quam Tristis, Le Rituel Sacré
63:59 Velvet Acid Christ, Calling ov the Dead
63:58 Dunkelwerk, Troops (CD 1 of 2)

64 minutes, 23 seconds

Death in June
The Corn Years

This was the first Death in June album I ever bought. I can't remember the name of the store, but it was a decrepit-looking place somewhere in the East Village, sometime around 1990 or 1991. Something about the cover grabbed my attention. Maybe it was the camouflage print (I trooped around in an old drab olive army jacket at the time) or maybe it was just the name of the group.

Not knowing anything about DIJ, I was half-expecting this to be an industrial album. And, well, it is, in some sense, but it's mostly folk, and that threw me a bit. I didn't like folk, but I didn't know about this kind of folk--an intense, aggressive, and strange music that inverted the traditional Arlo Guthrie/Bob Dylan image of the genre. It was subversive, if only because it didn't seem to espouse the same hippie ideals as other kinds of folk music. It was using the hippies' chief weapon ("This machine kills fascists," as Woody Guthrie famously scratched into his acoustic guitar) against them.

And while that's an interesting idea, it's also somewhat troubling, because the opposite of hippie, if that's what Doug Pearce and friends are aiming for, is not especially palatable to people with more or less liberal political sensibilities.

I wrote about issues related to alleged crypto-fascism in neofolk and industrial music in previous posts, and what I wrote about Allerseelen and other artists could certainly apply here. Suffice it to say that Pearce is a groundbreaking and very talented artist who has actually been forced by German authorities to explain his music and deny any fascist or Nazi agenda in his lyrics. That doesn't make him guilty of anything; rather, it points up how difficult it is for many people--myself included--to understand what he's truly getting at in his art.

That said, The Corn Years, a compilation of material released originally on the Brown Book and World That Summer LPs, is one of my favorite recordings, despite its poor sound quality. I'd be tempted to buy the original recordings (since reissued on CD) if they contained the extra tracks this CD and its companion, The Cathedral of Tears, feature. But alas, they don't. So I won't.

I'll just turn up the volume on The Corn Years, drink a German wine, and drift to dreams of better lives and greater times.

Also today:

64:22 Zentriert ins Antlitz, Prozium
64:21 Mordacious, This Emptiness
64:17 Misericordia, English Mediæval Song
64:16 God Module, Artificial (CD 1 of 2)
64:16 The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud, The Smell of Blood but Victory
64:15 Fin de Siècle, Patagonie
64:12 Der Blaue Reiter, Le Paradise Funèbre, l'Envers du Tristesse
64:11 Black Lung, The Psychocivilised Society
64:10 This Morn' Omina, Le Serpent Blanc