Australian band Pleasure Symbols enter a new phase in 2019, physically and stylistically with the forthcoming release of their first full length record Closer And Closer Apart. Three years have passed since the release of their debut, self-titled EP through Avant!. The time away being a necessary moment of reflection and regeneration for singer, songwriter and bassist Jasmine Dunn. Joined by fellow musician Steven Schnorrer, the duo began the push towards a more 80’s inspired post-punk sound with a ‘pop noir’ twist.
Deciding to record and produce the album themselves, gave the freedom to take time to grow and explore their new direction as a song writing duo. Despite current trends in popular music, Pleasure Symbols continues to focus on a more guitar based post punk, dream-pop sound, while slowly diverging from a previous minimal wave, synth based musical output. With themes of desire for desires sake and self confrontation, the new musical direction may seem initially harrowing, but look closer and you will see vulnerability and tenderness triumph over the struggle of the human experience.
LP / Digital Album
Transforming from a blunt object into a smoldering saint, just another day thought on the never ending collage of life, a pattern that continuously evolves like Grotto Terrazza, the Munich based art/music/life project of Thomas Schamann.
‘Stumpfer Gegenstand’ (Blunt Object) is his musical debut for Cut Surface and Maple Death, a beautiful intimate album of translucent dark beat poetry, that flickers between rhythmical murder ballads, Neue Deutsche Welle, the early experiments of Palais Schaumburg and the industrial malaise of Cabaret Voltaire; this is art-punk that plays with musique concrete and finds it’s pop sensibility rooted in EBM and folk noir.
Schamann started collecting bits and pieces of this and that in order to use them for a cut-up of some sort in 2015. Slowly two distinct and cohesive pieces came to life, his editorial debut, “Trattoria Nihil”, a 250 page collection of beat poetry in German & drawings, and this album ‘Stumpfer Gegenstand’, started roughly in 2017 in Paris, France. Thomas was on tour with his other band, darkwave Berlin project Bleib Modern, with a few days off, and decided to split from his bandmates and embark on an odyssey through Pigalle and other parts of the city; this is where the seeds of the album were firmly planted.
Cassette / Digital Album
Hailing from different places in western Europe, Luc Bersier, Low Bat, Leonard Prochazka and Ariel Garcia created this vibrant EP. Their synergy tells a story of creativity, freedom in sound and, above all, playfulness. Serious music while similarly not being to earnest.
Their venture evolved into a very original blend of cosmic music, utilizing instruments that fit into the neofolk Krautrock domain, vocal experiments into French chanson territory, infused in Berlinian cosmopolitanism. Expect an exciting minimal wave synth punk orgy, punk definitely being the defining trait underneath these layers of sound.
This is boundless music with attitude, capable of making us drift off and disrupt us in equal measure.
EP / Digital Album
It’s January 2018, between the four walls of a one roomed, east facing apartment, on the banks of the Saone river, in Vieux-Lyon. Night has fallen on town and seems to be never ending. The sun has been hidden for weeks. All is grey, dull and flavourless. In the evening, the river cruise ships pass alongside the windows. Their green and blue neon lights reflect off the water and brighten up the atmosphere. The room is lit by candles pressed into the necks of dusty wine bottles, emitting an orange glow on the walls. An old amp bought at a bargain price, a guitar offered from a distant Christmas, a bass guitar generously lent, a synthesizer generously given, a broken microphone and a cheap sound card fill the room amidst the minimum required in furniture.
All elements are here. The result is intense cold- wave music with hypnotic, half recognisable riffs and loops. The main influences are familiar. Occasionally we can hear Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Bauhaus or YTPo, all mixed up with inwardness and a bedroom lo-fi impression. It’s like waking from a coma after 36 years. Meager Benefits is a one man band, created by Theo Parlier. Theo composes and records each and every part by himself, most often in a one shot process – from nothing, to a finished song in a single day whilst chasing from his mind the fiends that live inside him.
CD / Digital Album
Drawing from the grittiness of early industrial & EBM, Statiqbloom combine hard beats & haunting electronics with disorienting vocals to create pulsing raw Post-Industrial. The new album, Asphyxia, intricately weaves a dark, hallucinogenic path of intricate and grim electronics. Uncompromising, layered, and brilliant, a benchmark for the future of dark electronics.
LP / CD / Digital Album
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