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Vile visions, despaired in a frowning black tower of pain. Concealed yearns of a desolate heart, trying to scratch that unscratchable rotting itch from within. Centuries of sorrow drenched in gloomy electronics that palpitate like human passions. A call for help,
‘Glam Is Gone’ is the vinyl debut of the French multi-instrumentalist Venin Carmin. She wrote all songs, lyrics and played all instruments by herself. Apparantly for a good reason she recorded the album at ‘Death To Majors Studio’, for this lady is averse to conventions. Venin Carmin has clear references in the New Wave and Post-punk of the eighties but manages to transfer this just as well with a modern twist. That makes “Glam Is Gone” into a contemporary album. The lyrics, written from a female perspective, are about relationships, boredom, sex and violence. Sung in a naive kind of way they are occasionally caustic in its observations. Venin Carmin comes with an album full of goodies that changes flavor before you have in mind. It easily can put you on the wrong track. This moreish!
»Against Modern Disease« exclaims the verso of the J-card, and this odd juxtaposition of an entirely modern, electronic language, and an inward search for the atavistic purpose of man is the key to understanding the particular magick workings of Grand Mal x. But even with this realization, it isn’t a lesson easily fathomed. With Before Life GMx return to Beläten with the chronological successor, and thematic precursor to last years Life EP. Where that work seemed to try to lure the listener onto a dimly lit physical dancefloor, Before Life beacons you towards an equally obscure, though entirely metaphysical one. GMx stumble through alternately illuminated and occulted back alley roads, in search of their own personal catharsis. Grand Mal x are here to go. Deeper.
Det Stora Alvaret is a particularly barren plain situated on Öland off the eastcoast of Sweden, from which arid soils the mysterious spectre of Alvar has risen. On Deceivers, the duo’s debut, we’re treated to some grade a horror electronics, formed by equal measures of hook-laden minimal synth and arafna cultura steeped technoire. Add a healthy does of the windswept gloom endemic to these parts of Sweden, and you get this: seriously apocal-hypnotic dance music, guaranteed to leave you dancing all the way to Ragnarök.
Next up on Creme Organization is accomplished American producer Marcos Cabral. He has been known to make everything from abrasive noise to disco edits via all sorts of house and techno on labels like L.I.E.S. and The Trilogy Tapes (as the noisy Chemotex). Once again the New Yorker impresses here with another original offering featuring four standout tracks. Up first is the slow and slithering techno workout that is ‘Nearly Run Over’. With frazzled synths and plenty of beeps, it’s a real brain fryer. ‘Jumping Beans’ is another all analogue work out with loopy sine waves, distorted percussion and nasty drums that all come at you through a wall of fuzzy, broken and whirring machines. It’s dystopian music for hellishly dark back rooms before ‘Man’s Job’ gets a little more colourful. This one sounds like a burnt down disco track with distant synth patterns and metallic drums all fighting for your attention in a lurching fashion, then ‘The Conversation’ is the most upbeat of them all but is still a whacked out, degraded and compressed house tune with undulating synths and frosty percussion. Few people do damaged sounding tracks as well as this man and this EP highlights that fact once again. |
