51 minutes, 16 seconds

Cephalgy
Engel Sterben Nie

Over the course of the five-plus months I've been updating this blog, I've taken a day or two off here and there, but so far not an extended vacation. Well, that changes after today. I'm off to hot and humid New York City to pay a visit to my family, and I won't be back till June 3. Whatever will you do without me? I guess you'll have to find some other blog not to visit.

Also today:

51:16 Irfan, Irfan
51:14 Cesium 137, Luminous
51:14 Estampie, Ludus Danielis
51:13 Angeltheory, Re-Possession
51:13 Apoptose, Nordland
51:13 Impact Pulse, [Pulse]ing Modules
51:12 Hioctan, Headscan
51:12 Le Triste Sire, Exorde

51 minutes, 23 seconds

Die Form
ExHuman

At some point, you have to wonder how long Philippe Fichot can keep it up. And I mean that literally as well as figuratively. The master of fetish music and photography has been at it for close to 30 years now, and he's not getting any younger. Will the whole naked-women-tied-up imagery still excite him when he's in his 70s?

Leaving aside the cover image, ExHuman is a bit of a mixed bag musically. Detouring slightly from its austere predecessors, and even from its sister album, InHuman, it harks back to an earlier, more experimental Die Form, with an approach we haven't really heard since the days of Poupée Mécanique. Éliane P.'s vocals take on a more playful character, and the backbone of the music isn't just EBM or ethereal synth but rather something harder to pin down.

It's great when an artist who's been working for so long can still confuse and possibly even frustrate his listeners. ExHuman isn't my favorite Die Form album, but it's compelling to listen to nonetheless.

Also today:

51:22 Circular, Shaping the Unknown
51:22 Dahlia's Tear, Harmonious Euphonies for Supernatural Traumas Mesmerising Our Existences in Radiant Corpuscle Galaxies
51:22 PAL, Release
51:21 Delerium, Syrophenikan
51:21 Noise Unit, Grinding into Emptiness
51:19 Pygmy Children, Deconstruct
51:18 Of the Wand and the Moon, Nighttime Nightrhymes
51:18 X Marks the Pedwalk, The Killing Had Begun

51 minutes, 32 seconds

Oil in the Eye
The Surgical Fatherland

Part of the reason I'm writing this blog--and maybe when I started it, this was more a subconscious reason than a conscious one--is the imminent death of the compact disc. Of course, people have been talking about the end of the CD era for a while now, and retail sales of CDs have been falling steadily as downloaded music (both stolen and paid for) emerges as the medium of choice in the age of the iPod. And downloaded music tends to mean songs, and not albums or even EPs. And who cares about total time for an individual song? (For that matter, who cares about total time for a CD, besides me?)

So as heavily invested in CDs as I am, there will come a day when I'll have no choice but to download music I want to purchase. And I'll have to figure out some other way to listen to it, because "total time" will become irrelevant. So is this blog an elegy for the compact disc? Maybe, on some small level. It depends on whether you think the CD will limp along, like the LP, as a collector's item. Or whether it'll just disappear, kidnapped from record stores, like the poor, forsaken cassette.

Also today:

51:32 Vinterriket, Winterschatten
51:31 Lupercalia, Soehrimnir
51:31 Unter Null, The Failure Epiphany (CD 2 of 2)
51:30 Institute for the Criminally Insane, Gekippt
51:29 Black Lung, The Grand Chessboard
51:29 Corvus Corax, Venus Vina Musica
51:26 Triarii, Ars Militaria
51:25 Image Transmission, Filth
51:25 Niyaz, Niyaz
51:24 Le Triste Sire, Effusions

51 minutes, 42 seconds

Foundation Hope
A Call to All Redeemers

How often are a group's only two CD releases mastered to the exact same total time? Once, in my experience. Both Foundation Hope's A Call to All Redeemers and The Faded Reveries come to 51 minutes and 42 seconds. Purposefully? Hard to say. The band's Web site offers no clues. Then again, other bands that do interesting (uh, to me, anyway) things with total CD time don't talk about it either. For example, Der Blutharsch masters almost all their CDs to the same number of minutes and seconds--43:43, 51:51, 44:44, etc. And X-Fusion seems to have something against seconds; almost all their CDs are cut to the minute--66:00, 69:00, and so on.

Why?

Maybe I'll get in touch with these bands and ask. It'll be a future project for this as-yet-frightfully-unambitious blog.

Also today:

51:42 Foundation Hope, The Faded Reveries
51:41 A Challenge of Honour, Only Stones Remain
51:41 Narsilion, Arcadia
51:39 Forma Tadre, Navigator
51:39 Toroidh, Europe Is Dead
51:38 Azam Ali, Portals of Grace
51:36 Cesium 137, Intelligent Design
New arrival! 73:26 Polygon, Refuge
New arrival! 72:33 This Morn' Omina, Em Sauf Haa-Heru
51:34 Covenant, Skyshaper (CD 2 of 2)
51:32 Faun, Licht

New arrival! 58 minutes, 52 seconds

Polygon
Images

Catching up with Ingo Lindmeier and his various projects, most notably Polygon. Whose releases are hard to find nowadays, of course. If only I'd bought them back when...eh, what's the use in complaining? Now it's all about the thrill of the hunt, right? And the opportunity to pay triple or quadruple what I could have purchased them for when they were initially released.

Also today:

51:43 Pax, The Power of Pure Intellect
51:43 Suicide Commando, Critical Stage

51 minutes, 47 seconds

Project Pitchfork
Lam-'bras

Like Jean-Luc De Meyer, whom I wrote about the other day, Project Pitchfork's Peter Spilles has one of the more recognizable voices in the industrial genre. Without the use of heavy distortion, he manages a deep yet plaintive growl that suits the lyrics he writes about the environment, war, and the human condition. Pitchfork's songs have individual personalities as a result--they're not just an endless parade of hard beats, horror-movie samples, and scorched-throat vocals.

This album, released back in 1992, was only their second, and it was a huge leap forward from its primitive predecessor, Dhyani. The arrangments are stronger, there's a more varied use of keyboards and pads, and it marks the debut of sometime guest vocalist Patricia Nigiani (Spilles's girlfriend at the time), who'd later go on to form her own band, Aurora.

Project Pitchfork would reach much higher highs than Lam-'bras within a few years, but I like this album. Some of the songs, like "Go Further" and "Storm World," achieve a propulsive and infectious energy that you didn't hear in many releases coming out of Europe in the early '90s.

It'd be awesome to see Pitchfork live, come to think of it. Have they ever come to the West Coast?

Also today:

51:45 Einstürzende Neubauten, Zeichnungen des Patienten OT
51:44 Concrete Nature, Encrusted
New arrival! 69:52 Various artists, Solaris
New arrival! 65:43 Genetic Selection, World of Tomorrow

51 minutes, 55 seconds

:Wumpscut:
Body Census

I could have had just one beer last night at the baseball game. But I decided, Hey, I'm at the game, and how often do I get the chance to shell out $8 for a beer I could pay $4 for at a bar? So I had another. Not a problem in and of itself. However, the shrimp and Chinese broccoli (healthy!) I'd consumed an hour earlier wasn't a sufficient cushion. Beer requires grease--the alcohol needs to adhere to something, and fries would have been the perfect absorbent substance. But that would have been another $8, of course.

So not only did the Mariners lose, 7-3, to the Angels, but my stomach's in turmoil this morning. Sorry if that's too much information, but I felt it fit in with today's Body Census theme. Survey says: nauseated.

Also today:

51:54 Detritus, Origin
51:53 Eonic, Shadows
51:53 Noise Unit, Response Frequency
51:52 Most of the Taciturn, History of Iron & Blood
51:51 Der Blutharsch, The Pleasures Received in Pain
51:51 Cocteau Twins, Head over Heels & Sunburst and Snowblind
51:50 Corvus Corax, Cantus Buranus
51:50 Placebo Effect, Galleries of Pain
51:48 Collection d'Arnell-Andréa, The Bower of Despair
51:48 The Retrosic, Nightcrawler

51 minutes, 59 seconds

C-Tec
Cut

Jean-Luc De Meyer is blessed with one of the more distinctive voices in the industrial genre. You know him, of course, from Front 242, but he's also lent his pipes to Cobalt 60, Bigod 20, Birmingham 6, 32Crash, and a few other bands, some of whom don't even use numbers in their name, such as C-Tec. C-Tec actually began life as the Cyber-Tec Project, which scored a minor club hit with the propulsive "Let Your Body Die" back in 1995.

This album, C-Tec's second and, to date, last release, came out in 2000, and it has its moments. The chief reason to listen to it, though, is De Meyer. He's one of the rare examples of an "industrial" vocalist who benefits from less distortion added to his voice. (Assemblage 23's Tom Shear is another example.) He manages to be expressive without being "soulful," which to me always ends up sounding fake when coming from a white singer. (See VNV Nation's Ronan Harris.)

And De Meyer is a skilled lyricist. You could argue that a lot of Front 242's lyrics were reduced to ironic sloganeering, and you'd be right, but they never sounded cynical. And that's largely thanks to De Meyer's transfixing delivery. He made even the most banal lines sound urgent and fraught with hidden meaning.

Hard to believe the other members of Front 242 sent him packing for a brief period around the release of 06:21:03:11 Up Evil and 05:22:09:12 Off. He was the best part of the band.

Also today:

51:58 Non-Aggression Pact, Gesticulate
51:58 Thymikon, Nipsis
51:57 Data-Bank-A, The Death Burlesque
51:57 Dead Can Dance, Spiritchaser
51:57 Speaking Silence, The Twilight World
51:56 Corvus Corax, Inter Deum et Diabolum Semper Musica Est
51:56 Vox, Diadema
51:55 Mellonta Tauta, Sun Fell

52 minutes, 8 seconds

Front Line Assembly
Caustic Grip

Sometimes I wonder what younger listeners today think of so-called classics of the industrial genre. Do they sound dull and dated? Or still vibrant and exciting? Caustic Grip was the then-current Front Line Assembly album when I began listening to industrial music back in college. It wasn't the first FLA tape (yes, cassette tape--stop your snickering) I purchased--that would have been State of Mind--but it was considered state of the art back in those days. And I thought it was the shit.

Still do, in some ways. I can't listen to "Overkill," for example, without the hair on the back of my neck going up, especially when the sample kicks in: "The first jolt of electricity was sent through his body at..." And without being overly distorted, Bill Leeb's vocals pack a lot of punch, not just in "Overkill" but also in songs like "Iceolate" and "Mental Distortion."

But how would a 21-year-old today, one who'd been raised on Agonoize, Hocico, and the rest of the modern "hellektro" cabal, hear Caustic Grip? Would it be like a young Snoop Dogg fan hearing Run-DMC for the first time? Or am I exaggerating the musical distance between 1990 and 2007?

Also today:

52:07 Current 93, Live at Bar Maldoror
52:06 PAL, Modus
52:05 Einstürzende Neubauten, Strategies Against Architecture II (CD 2 of 2)
52:05 Rajna, The Door of Serenity
52:03 VNV Nation, Judgement
52:02 Ophelia's Dream, Not a Second Time
New arrival! 56:42 Grimbergen, A Lonely Place
52:02 Raison d'Être, Within the Depths of Silence and Phormations
52:02 Single Gun Theory, Exorcise This Wasteland
52:01 Gjallarhorn, Sjofn
52:01 :Wumpscut:, Evoke

52 minutes, 24 seconds

Tribe of Circle
Children of a Weakened God

Unusual for bands of any kind these days not to have at least some sort of Web presence. And yet Tribe of Circle doesn't seem to have even the usual desultory MySpace property. The HauRuck label site mentions this album, but doesn't seem to provide any other info about TOC.

On the one hand, that's sort of frustrating, especially to a blogger looking for a nice place to link. On the other hand, it's sort of refreshing. In a time when bands that used to be shrouded in exciting mystery (Current 93, Death in June) are now broadcasting their every thought and fart on the Internet, here's an exciting and mysterious band that remains truly mysterious. They've seen this World Wide Web thing and declined, thank you very much, to take part in it.

The only clues to TOC's beliefs come in the difficult-to-read red-type-on-black-background liner notes, in which TOC give a big "fuck off" to everyone from Weight Watchers addicts (?) and Fox News to Woody Allen (?) and Mickey Mouse.

I've heard of misanthropy, but mouse-anthropy?

Also today:

52:23 Bahntier, Blindoom
52:23 Lush, Split
52:21 Les Joyaux de la Princesse, Une Voix Française
52:17 Kattoo, Hang On to a Dream
52:16 Cyanide Regime, Visions of Order
New arrival! 65:20 Stendeck, Faces
52:15 Project Pitchfork, Alpha Omega
52:13 Tau Factor, Prototype
52:12 Kirlian Camera, Schmerz

52 minutes, 31 seconds

John Foxx & Harold Budd
Drift Music

Harold Budd has probably made more albums in collaboration with other artists than he has on his own. Yet whether he's recording with Brian Eno, Robin Guthrie, Hector Zazou, or here with John Foxx, you can always identify his unmistakable piano sound. Which makes me wonder about the creative process when two artists with well-defined careers work together on a given piece of music. Do they compose together, blending (and perhaps bending) their sound to match the other's? Or do they work independently, then try to patch together their ideas in the studio?

I remember reading somewhere about two ambient artists who'd collaborated by mail. I guess one would send the other his recordings, and that artist would in turn "manipulate" them and, I assume, augment them with his own music. It's an interesting way to create music, and perhaps it's a good deal more common than I think. And I'd imagine it depends on both artists not being too possessive of their music. In other words, being OK with someone taking what you've created and then turning it into quite possibly something else entirely.

Also today:

52:30 Ab Ovo, Triode
52:30 Azam Ali, Elysium for the Brave
52:30 Caustic, Booze Up and Riot (CD 1 of 2)
52:30 Tribe of Circle, The Advent of Redemption
52:28 Morthound, Spindrift
52:28 Ulf Söderberg, Vindarnas Hus
52:25 Corvus Corax, Tritonus

52 minutes, 52 seconds

X-Fusion
Bloody Pictures

So X-Fusion's new Rotten to the Core box set arrived yesterday, and this is one of the two bonus discs included. A handful of new songs, a handful of remixes. The usual how-can-we-maximize-our-revenue-from-this-release approach. But the funniest thing about the box is that it comes with a metallic X-Fusion dog tag on a chain. Why? So they can identify you as a fan of German EBM when you inevitably OD on meth in the bathroom of a dingy club in Chemnitz?

Also today:

52:51 Assemblage 23, Storm
52:50 Current 93, Imperium
52:46 Neotek, Brain over Muscle
52:41 Lamia, Dark Angel
52:39 Robin Guthrie, Imperial
52:39 NVMPH, Nuclear 45 Is Dead
52:38 Tony Wakeford, La Croix
52:37 Mortiis, Keiser av en Dimension Ukjent
52:35 Infekktion, Virus of Time
52:33 Les Chasseurs de la Nuit, Homo Homini Lupus
52:32 God Module, Viscera (CD 1 of 2)

52 minutes, 56 seconds

Matt Howden & Tony Wakeford
Three Nine

Serendipity: It's not just an ice-cream parlor on the Upper East Side or a gloppy romantic comedy starring the very lovely Kate Beckinsale. Sometimes it happens right here on this very blog. Take yesterday, for example: I just received a new Flëur CD in the mail, titled Everything Is out of Control. The very next CD on the list to play? Death in June's Take Care & Control. Almost a conversation there between the two, with DIJ's Douglas Pearce in the hard-to-imagine role of reassuring advice giver to the two blond Russian women in Flëur. Way to talk them down, Doug.

And then on the 9th, DIJ's Cathedral of Tears was followed shortly after by John Foxx's Cathedral Oceans I. An ocean of tears? Cathedrals? It's almost too poetic.

On the 7th, Infekktion's New Virus was immediately followed by Pail's Epidemic. Stands to reason, I guess. And finally, the day before that, Narr!'s Souls Are Flying Now! preceded Angels & Agony's Salvation. Glad those souls are flying somewhere nice.

These are all within just the past week. There are probably tons of these coincidences throughout the list. I'll try to pay closer attention from now on.

Also today:

52:54 Cdatakill, The Cursed Species
52:54 Combichrist, Get Your Body Beat
52:54 Stin Scatzor, Industrology
52:53 Carphax Files, Vengeance
52:53 Din Fiv, Escape to Reality
52:53 David Tibet & Steven Stapleton, The Sadness of Things
New arrival! 61:00 X-Fusion, Rotten to the Core
52:52 Serpents, What Is Fear?

53 minutes, 2 seconds

Skinny Puppy
Last Rights

Later-era Skinny Puppy. Which is OK, but it doesn't do it for me the way Bites- and Remission-era Puppy does. There's something rawer and more urgent about the old recordings, plus a sense that they weren't trying to cram a thousand different sounds into the mix. I feel the same way about Front Line Assembly's earlier work. I'll take State of Mind over, say, Hard Wired any day.

One thing I do appreciate about this period of Puppy's existence is the wordplay of the album as well as the song titles: "Love in Vein," "Knowhere?," etc. It's a theme they'd continue on subsequent releases, notably on Ogre's two solo albums. SunnyPsyOp was particularly inspired.

By the way, picking up the thread from yesterday's post, "Skinny Puppy" might fit into the category of unusual names for industrial bands. For one thing, it doesn't contain numbers or the words "dead," "front," or "digital."

Also today:

53:00 Monolith, Labyrinth
52:59 Museum of Transient Lights, Dream a Little Dream
52:58 Front 242, No Comment
52:58 KIFOTH, Fundamentum Divisionis
52:57 Digital Factor, One More Piece
52:57 Funker Vogt, Thanks for Nothing
New arrival! 71:00 Flëur, Everything Is out of Control
52:56 Death in June, Take Care & Control

53 minutes, 6 seconds

Necro Facility
The Black Paintings

Naming your band "Necro Facility" pretty much limits you to either the industrial, goth, or death metal genre. It's kind of like naming your daughter "Amber"--she's pretty much destined to be a porn star. I mean, how about an industrial band called the Tennessee Boys or Bill Leeb and His Vancouver Trio?

Which makes me think that it's been a long time since a band in the industrial realm has really played around with our expectations, visually if not sonically. In fact, the only example I can really think of offhand is Throbbing Gristle, with the 20 Jazz Funk Greats album. The cover showed them all dressed in white sweaters, posing on a hillside, as though they were a vaguely hippie-ish '60s singing group, perhaps late-period Mamas and the Papas.

It was such a cool idea, and to my recollection it hasn't been repeated. Can you imagine, for example, the guys from Funker Vogt dressing up like Garth Brooks and Billy Ray Cyrus, with checkered shirts and cowboy hats, on the cover of their next album? It would completely confound expectations. Very high-concept.

OK, on second thought, it's possible I've had too much caffeine today.

Also today:

53:06 This Morn' Omina, Les Passages Jumeaux: Le 25ième Degré
53:04 Bio-Tek, The Ceremony of Innocence
53:04 Caul, The Golden Section
53:04 Mortiis, Født til å Herske
53:03 Out Out, Virtual Sound Images
53:02 Electro Assassin, Jamming the Voice of the Universe
53:02 Klinik, Face to Face & Fever

53 minutes, 19 seconds

Current 93
In Menstrual Night

Nowadays, it's hard to imagine David Tibet and Boyd Rice inhabiting the same room, much less recording music together. But it happened in the '80s, and this disc (along with one or two others) is living proof. It's a relic from that magical time when everyone in what was to become the World Serpent scene got along: Tibet, Rice, Douglas Pearce, Steven Stapleton, Tony Wakeford, John Murphy, Rose McDowall, John Balance, et al. Before it all seemed to fracture in the '90s.

And then the other day a funny thing happened: Someone posted on the c93 Yahoo! Groups list that there's to be some sort of "reconciliation" concert by Current 93 and Death in June--sometime in June, perhaps in France. It's got to be a joke, but it's entertaining to think about.

Certainly beats a reunion tour by the freakin' Police.

Also today:

53:19 Oil in the Eye, Cockeyed
53:18 DavaNtage, Split and Shatter
53:17 Dargaard, The Dissolution of Eternity
53:14 Cranes, Future Songs
53:12 Massiv in Mensch, Clubber Lang
53:11 Death in June, The Cathedral of Tears
53:10 Absurd Minds, The Focus
53:09 John Foxx, Cathedral Oceans I
53:09 Punto Omega, Nostalgias del Origen
53:07 Trauma, Fractal I

53 minutes, 40 seconds

Decoded Feedback
Technophoby

Things pop up where you least expect them. Take, for example, this listing I read last night in the "Goings On About Town" section of the May 7, 2007, issue of The New Yorker:

B. B. King Blues Club & Grill
237 W. 42nd St. (212) 997-4144)--May 3: Front Line Assembly, made up of veterans of the industrial scene that gave birth to bands like Nine Inch Nails, specializes in mechanized beats brimming with cacophonous clangs and malevolent, robotic vocals. Despite having never achieved the same level of success as N.I.N., this Vancouver outfit continues its relentless, electronic march as if the nineties had never ended.

Ha! Exactly what I'd expect The New Yorker to say about FLA--or any other industrial band, for that matter. Slightly arch tone, somewhat dismissive without being entirely disrespectful. It's an art. And it's one of the many reasons I love that magazine.

Also surprised to see FLA play a place like the B.B. King Blues Club. I mean, look at their upcoming shows: Billy Ocean, Boyz II Men, Air Supply, and--and Donny Osmond, for Christ's sake! My head is spinning.

At the risk of giving away my age, the first time I saw FLA live was in New York, back in 1991 during the Tactical Neural Implant tour. Amazing show. It was at the Limelight, a grand old church that had been converted into a club. An elaborate gothic cathedral seems a much more appropriate venue for FLA than a blues club. But that's the youthful Romantic in me talking. Now I'm a cynical old curmudgeon who wouldn't be surprised to see Der Blutharsch play at Chuck E. Cheese.

Actually, that would be an awesome show.

Also today:

53:39 Eurocide, Europe in Dust
53:36 Will, Pearl of Great Price
53:32 Morthond, This Crying Age
53:31 In the Nursery, Hindle Wakes (CD 2 of 2)
53:31 Klinik, Contrast
53:31 Raison d'Être, The Empty Hollow Unfolds
53:30 Derma-Tek, Corpus Technological
53:29 Lumin, Datura
53:25 Dulce Liquido, Disolución
53:25 Xmal Deutschland, Fetisch
53:24 In Slaughter Natives, Resurrection
53:21 Covenant, Skyshaper (CD 1 of 2)
53:20 Qntal, V: Silver Swan

53 minutes, 52 seconds

Evil's Toy
Morbid Mind

The humble possessive apostrophe. Such a small mark of punctuation, yet the cause of so many misunderstandings, especially for non-native speakers of English, like our friends Evil's Toy here. As you might notice, I've taken the liberty of inserting an apostrophe into the band's name, even though it doesn't seem to appear on any of their album artwork. (They do use it, however, in both the English and German versions of the biography section of their Web site.)

A similar phenomenon occurs with another German band, Die Verbannten Kinder Evas. Shouldn't it be "Eva's"? It was written that way on their first album, but not on the subsequent three. I omitted the possessive apostrophe in this blog because they do, but perhaps I should have silently corrected it.

These are the kinds of things I think about on a Monday, when what I really should be doing is writing even more boring material for the World's Dullest Software Company.

Also today:

53:51 Matt Howden, Voyager
53:48 Die Form, Photogrammes
53:48 Infekktion, New Virus
53:47 Pail, Epidemic
53:46 In Slaughter Natives, Purgate My Stain
53:45 Current 93, Soft Black Stars
53:43 Tamtrum & Lok-8, Versus
53:42 Penitent, Deserted Dreams
53:41 Corvus Corax, Mille Anni Passi Sunt
53:41 Dryft, Cell
53:40 C/A/T, The Rogue Pair

53 minutes, 58 seconds

Qntal
II

This one dates back to when Ernst Horn was still a part of Qntal, before he left and formed Helium Vola. And not coincidentally, it's the last Qntal album with any sort of experimental edge to it--strange sounds weave themselves in and out of the mix, really pushing the limit of the marriage between the medieval traditional songs and the electronic arrangements. (For example, check out the Led Zeppelin drum samples--or at least I think they are--in "Palestinalied.") I still like Qntal these days, but it's a bit of a shame they didn't retain some of the oddness of these earlier recordings.

I'll tell you what else is a bit of a shame: that I can't seem to sleep past 7 a.m. anymore. And believe me, as much as I love you, dear reader, it's not because I'm excited to get up and write the day's blog entry.

Time for coffee.

Also today:

53:57 Of the Wand and the Moon, Sonnenheim
53:56 Am'Ganesha'n, Somnia
53:56 Din Fiv, Infinity
53:55 Hocico, Signos de Aberracion
53:54 Narr!, Souls Are Flying Now!
53:53 Angels & Agony, Salvation

54 minutes, 8 seconds

Lost Signal
Eviscerate

It's not for lack of talent or songwriting ability, but I guess you'd have to call Lost Signal a second-tier futurepop band, if only because they don't quite get the publicity or fan mania that surrounds every new release by, say, VNV Nation, Apoptygma Berzerk, or Covenant. That, plus the fact that the vocalist sounds an awful lot like VNV Nation's Ronan Harris, if Harris smoked more and were a little wimpier.

Is that unkind? I'm just trying to paint a complete picture, and, well, when you do that sometimes paint gets splattered on the floor.

One more thing: How do you feel about the word "futurepop"? It's never really stuck with me, for some reason. Maybe because it fails to describe the music--"future" is too vague. And who really knows what pop music will sound like in the future, anyway? Probably still like Britney Spears. So I haven't seen this term used yet, but how about "emodustrial"? Have I coined it, or am I late to the party?

Also today:

54:08 Prager Handgriff, 1000 Feuer
54:05 Qntal, Qntal
54:05 Vox, From Spain to Spain
54:04 DavaNtage, Global Badlands
54:04 Dense Vision Shrine, Unwinding the Inside
54:01 DF Sadist School, Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome
53:59 Vanishing Point, The Shaman Calls

54 minutes, 19 seconds

Siechtum
Gesellschaft: Mord

Have you ever liked an artist's side project, but not the artist's main project? I can't think of too many examples in my own listening preferences, but, for example: Love Black Lung, hate Snog. And that's exactly how I feel about L'Âme Immortelle and Siechtum. LAI's Thomas Rainer created this aggressive industrial side project back in 2000, and it appeals to me so much more than the overwrought goth excess of LAI.

And yes, I fully realize that "overwrought," "goth," and "excess" are redundant.

Also today:

54:19 Vox, Divine Rites
54:18 Harold Budd, By the Dawn's Early Light
54:16 Pygmy Children, Low Life Dream
54:15 John Foxx, Cathedral Oceans III
54:15 In the Nursery, Sense
54:15 Manufacture, Terrorvision
54:14 Project Pitchfork, Dhyani
54:12 In the Nursery, Engel
54:11 Regenerator, Debugged
54:10 Einstürzende Neubauten, Kalte Sterne

54 minutes, 29 seconds

Eden Synthetic Corps
Matte

"Hellektro" is apparently what they're calling the subgenre of industrial music that features ridiculously distorted vocals, obscenely harsh beats, and, um, let's say monstrous horror-movie samples. Oh, wait, didn't Skinny Puppy do this sort of thing 20 years ago? Never mind, it's been reinvented by Hocico, Amduscia, Agonoize, and Eden Synthetic Corps.

ESC is apparently a four-man project from Portugal whose previous incarnation was as a heavy-metal band. Makes sense, in many ways, although I hate heavy metal and get uncomfortable when I'm forced to face the fact that a lot of industrial (particularly "hellektro," if that's what you want to call it) shares a good deal in common with metal. The instrumentation may be different, but the end result often isn't. And that's a bit depressing to admit.

I guess I cling to the notion that electronic music is more about what you can do with your brain and not what you can do with your hands. In other words, it takes virtuosity out of the picture--you don't need to be a musician, per se, to create this kind of music. It helps to understand musical composition, of course, but industrial has never produced an electronic equivalent to, say, Eddie Van Halen or Eric Clapton. And thank God it hasn't. There's nothing more boring than a guitar solo. Except maybe a drum-machine solo.

And that seems to be where metal and industrial part ways--metal is basically rock music, played with rock instruments. Industrial is...well, I don't really know what it is, and I think that's why I like it. It opens up more possibilities. It's like the difference between live theater and film. Both are important, but film just expands the known universe so much more.

I'm getting philosophical, I know. It's because I'm bored at work.

Also today:

54:28 Sol Invictus, All Things Strange and Rare
54:27 Hedningarna, Hippjokk
54:23 Bio-Tek, Darkness My Name Is
54:23 Non-Aggression Pact, Broadcast-Quality Belligerence
54:23 Stella Maris, Stella Maris
54:21 Triarii, Pièce Héroique
54:20 In Strict Confidence, Where Sun and Moon Unite
New arrival! 63:13 Soman, Mask

54 minutes, 43 seconds

Gaë Bolg and the Church of Fand
Tintagel

You might know Gaë Bolg alter ego Eric Roger from his fine trumpet work on several Sol Invictus recordings. This is his main project, however, and it's radically different. In fact, it's radically different from almost anything else you've ever heard. I don't even really know what to call it. Folk-medieval-martial? Neoclassical-militaristic-operatic? Drunken French marching music?

In spirit, the closest band I can think of is Corvus Corax, but even that analogy is wildly off the mark. GaëBolg may also plunder the traditional early-music songbook, they may at times evoke the kind of down-and-dirty medieval minstrelsy of Corvus Corax, and they certainly share a sense of humor and a tongue-firmly-in-cheek approach to their music. But Corvus Corax, for all its shaggy pretense, doesn't begin to approach the Python-esque faux grandiosity of Gaë Bolg's music.

Pounding drums and blasting horns underpin incredibly pompous French or Latin vocals, often sung in a strange half-falsetto. It's exhilarating, inspiring, and hilarious. It can be chaotic (like Corvus Corax) or a bit somber (more like their countrymen Dernière Volonté, perhaps), but even when the music turns somewhat sad or muted you know you can't take it too seriously.

Also today:

54:43 Trauma, Construct
54:36 Arbre Noir & Polygon, Traveller
54:36 La Floa Maldita, The Concealed Spell
54:36 Ginormous, Our Ancestors' Intense Love Affair
54:36 Nebula-H, H2O
54:36 Synta[xe]rror, Abyad
54:36 Tumor, Zombienation
54:34 Gjallarhorn, Grimborg
54:33 Cephalgy, Feinde Deinen Dämon
54:33 The Pain Machinery, The Venom Is Going Global
54:32 Gaë Bolg, Requiem
54:31 Raison d'Être, Prospectus I

54 minutes, 54 seconds

Eco
Das Album

Talk about a guilty pleasure. This is electro music, sung mostly in German, with a distinct sense of humor. Shocked? I was when I first heard it. Who knew Germans had a sense of humor? Das Album is fun and bouncy, even silly at times, but it never gets on your nerves. It's also tuneful and catchy, with a wealth of good musical ideas that you rarely hear on most "serious" conventional recordings in this genre.

I don't know what happened to Eco. They released two albums and a couple of EPs, then disappeared. Too bad. This was their debut, and if for no other reason, it's worth seeking out purely for "Rotkäppchen," a frenetically paced mash up of early-'90s techno and some vaguely classical-sounding piece that I know I've heard before--probably in some cheesy daytime-TV commercial for one of those art schools you get into by copying a drawing of a pirate or a turtle.

Also today:

54:53 Cronos Titan, Brides of Christ
54:52 Front 242, Tyranny for You
54:51 Klinik, Black Leather
54:49 Digital Factor, Relationchips
54:49 Endif, Meta
54:46 Pulse Legion, One Thing
New arrival! 76:14 Funker Vogt, Aviator
New arrival! 55:42 Liholesie, Videniya
54:45 Decoded Feedback, Bio-Vital
54:45 Suicide Commando, Construct-Destruct