Brooklyn post-punk/dream pop band The Harrow walk a fine line between the alluring and the surreal. Driving, club-centric electronics nestle against lush organic instrumentation, woven with vivid songcraft. The result is a hauntingly familiar sound that is never complacent in scope.
Cold Showers, a band formed in Highland Park, California in 2010, fuses the brash power of their shoegaze pedigree with the smokey compulsions of post-punk / no-wave ancestors. Cold Showers would fit in well amongst their idols on the Factory or early Rough Trade back catalog, but blend in perfectly amongst the unique foliage of the Dais Records roster. Cold Showers sophomore album out sees the band step up to the plate with more pop sensibility under their belt. This is the pervasive pop mode against which Cold Showers cast themselves, but haven’t fully relinquished themselves from their signature piston-precision rhythms and anthem laden synthesizer illuminations that came about within the band’s formation. Limited edition of 300 hand numbered copies, white vinyl. FFFC (Florence Foster Fan Club) are no strangers in our world of electronic music. Besides releases on their own the musicians behind this project are involved in numerous other projects… like Sumerian Fleet, Zarkoff and Le Chocolat Noir to name just a few. Recently they started operating out of an abandoned factory situated behind the (former) iron curtain… at this place they have collected all their synthesizers and started jamming… this 12″ EP is a selection from recordings from these sessions… throbbing techno and EBM beats are used as a basis for synth tapestries…resulting sometimes in trance indulging dance tracks but also in spacey soundtrack kind of pieces… a true trip! Listen here and order here. FOQL is belonging to the same Polish electronic music collective as Marburg (see Gooiland 10: V/A – Club Funny Horse) but the sound of this project is truly different… in a way the Hypatia EP is delicate and even fragile maybe… it has the ritual feeling like some of the music by Coil has… next to that it has textures reminiscent of The Future Sound Of London… and in some ways FOQL fuses ambient, electronix and techno in the same way Kobosil sometimes does… in short.. this is a record for well informed and well educated music lovers… Listen here and order here. Hailing from Holland Monocorpse serves dark electronix/techno… extremely minimal, raw and primitive in sound and the tracks are ritual and occult in orientation and mood… think of the previous Gooiland Elektro releases by Drvg Cvltvre and Ekman but stripped down to the essence and pitch black… also comparisons with Ancient Methods have already been made… but these tracks have a nasty and dirty sound of their own… this 12″EP is something for the real freaks out there… Listen here and order here. |