Kælan Mikla - Mánadans

Tapped by The Cure frontman Robert Smith to play his edition of Meltdown Festival would be a pretty amazing feat, but for Kælan Mikla, it’s just another day. Indeed the death-rock turned post-punk trio from the heart of Reykjavik has been turning heads since they formed five years ago in 2013.

It all started after the three (Margrét Rósa Dóru-Harrysdóttir on bass, Laufey Soffia taking lead vocals, screeches, and devastating death-rock laments, and Sólveig Matthildur Kristjánsdóttir on keys) won a poetry slam competition at the City of Reykjavik library, featuring Sólveig’s writing. Then, in the summer of 2014, before synthesizers, before any electronic instruments really, they cranked out a purely raw bass, drum, and vocals session of death rock gems that are electrifying and, frankly, gorgeous.

With Alison MacNeil (Kimono) producing, the band completed its first album, Mánadans, only to have it shelved. Since then, Kælan Mikla have been invited to Roadburn and Iceland Airwaves. They will soon embark on their first tour of South America. And they’ve been invited to tour with Drab Majesty and King Dude. And then there’s Robert Smith, who came knocking and extolling the band’s youthful energy and poetic darkness.

The band’s long lost death-rock masterpiece Mánadans now gets a deluxe worldwide issue via Toronto-based Artoffact Records. Available on vinyl, CD, and digital formats, the album is fully remastered and includes the bonus track Reykjavík til staðar, as well as the demo version of their hit song Kalt.

LP / CD / Digital Album

Posted on September 24th, 2018 under Releases, ,

Blac Kolor - Sacred

Black is not a color. Black is the mixture of all the colors. The range of the spectrum is set. The emphasis of the tone is uncertain. The inner conflict happens on the ground of an opencast pit. Metal drills into rocks mechanically and bears its own rhythm. What is digged has no color. The energy is black.

12″ / Digital Album

Posted on September 22nd, 2018 under Releases, ,

ADULT. - This Behavior

Over the course of the last two decades, Detroit-based duo ADULT. (Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller) have released six albums and nineteen EPs and singles across some of our favorite labels: Mute, Ghostly International, Thrill Jockey, Clone Records, Third Man Records, and their own label, the revered Ersatz Audio. November 1998 marked their first release: the five-song 12″ “Dispassionate Furniture”. This September, twenty years later, Dais Records is proud to announce ADULT.’s seventh full length album: THIS BEHAVIOR.

The album began as 23 demos written and recorded in a remote cabin in the woods of Northern Michigan during the dead of winter. In total isolation, and with a reduced amount of gear (a modified version of their live setup) on the cabin’s kitchen table, the duo were completely immersed in an incessant inescapable studio of their own making – looping, repetitive analogue sequences grinding away day and night. At the end of the intense demo session, a handful of peers were enlisted by the band for the difficult task of paring down the demos into the final album.

The result is 10 tracks of uncompromising dark electronics, showcasing ADULT.’s return to aggressive and energetic dancefloor mastery. Album opener “This Behavior” alongside the follow-up “Violent Shakes” (which ascends into synths wailing like warning sirens over Kuperus’s commanding vocals) set the stage for an on-edge listen, while the heartbreaking “Silent Exchange” unfolds as a beautiful sad synth dirge. “Perversions of Humankind” breaks the mood – driving the listener into a slow and low groove before the frantic album midpoint of “Irregular Pleasure”. “Does The Body Know?” is the album’s post-punk anthem, with irresistible singalong “we’re out of order – we’re undefined!” The latter half of the album drives forward with “On The Edge (You Put Me…)” and “Lick Out The Content”, refusing rest and demanding movement and response. “Everything & Nothing” emerges slowly from sparkling synth textures, snowballing with nervous energy into an acid techno stomper before the album comes to a close on the icy landscape of “In All The Debris”, a goose-bump inducing slow electronic mantra that closes the curtain on a massive album.

LP / CD / Digital Album

Posted on September 20th, 2018 under Releases, ,

Sarin - Kuleshov-Effect

SΛRIN 1/2 of: KONKURS, Human Performance Lab & Nostromo. Influenced by Terror Against Terror, SPK, Nitzer Ebb, Clock DVA, Portion Control, HUREN, SINS, Vierance.

12″ EP / Digital Album

Posted on September 18th, 2018 under Releases, ,

Crystalline Stricture - Contaminant

Colder edge electronic music – a celebration of what has gone before and what may come.

Digital Album

Posted on September 16th, 2018 under Releases, ,