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Side-Line presents you “Electronic Resistance”, a 55-track compilation featuring darkwave / post-punk acts from the Ukrainian underground scene only. Compiled in the past few weeks in – extremely – difficult conditions it offers you an insight into the Ukrainian dark underground and also reflects what all of them are going through. It suffices to see some of the titles to understand what we mean. The compilation features artists from allover Ukraine, from Odesa, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Mariupol, etc.. Many of them are right now in the frontline, or help in all kind of services from the fire departement to field hospitals. Others are distributing food, others have been forced out of their destroyed homes. All donations will go to the bands involved and/or a humanitarian project of their choice. Now it is up to us to support them. Although this is a free compilation, we do encourage everyone to be very generous. The release goes hand in hand with a photo book which will act as a testimonial of every band participating in this compilation. The release of this book is planned for early May as everyone pre-ordering the photo book by mid-April will be added in the credits as sponsor. You can also support the artists by getting your ‘Electronic Resistance’ T-shirt, or a packet holding both the photo book and the T-shirt. Bernard Van Isacker: “It has been a very confronting job to compile this release. Here I was sitting at home replying to messages from musicians who were at the frontline … I knew things were bad, but being confronted in direct with this horror is a punch in the face. We all complain about high prices at the gas station, me included, but that’s really nothing compared to what the Ukrainian people are going through right now. The book that we will publish will even be a bigger confrontation for many. There you will see the musicians whose music you listen to. You will see how they are just like you and me. With this difference, they live in a country invaded by an agressor and they live in constant fear. Some of the material has been recorded in pretty hefty conditions, including at least one during bombardments on Kiev. Other musicians lost all of their gear and files and only had rough material left which Erlend Eilertsen (Lights A.M, Essence Of Mind) worked on to restore to the best sound possible.” Digital Album [free download]
Rio’s debut album is the next to come raw gem, enlighted & enshaped by Teenage Menopause Records for your ears only. Dark and luminous, naive and serious, Rio mixes opposites. Duo formed during confinement by these two cuties : Maxime (Pilori Prod) and Lio (Le Prince Harry, Komplikations…), Rio deploys a soundscape that is disturbing like the mist and bewitching like the song of the sirens. Reminding the best french associations, naïve as Elie et Jacno, depth dwelling as Ruth, Rio is a path.
The latest by Andrew Clinco’s acid punk alias VR SEX takes its title from an architectural phrase but more importantly refers to the warped, wicked underworld the songs both chronicle and condemn. Donning the moniker Noel Skum – an acerbic anagram of Elon Musk – Clinco vents his scorn for and fascination with the seedy, surreal margins of low-life Los Angeles, doomed to dead ends of vanity, lust, and technology. Although initially launched as an outlet for “heavier sounds” beyond Clinco’s duties in new wave fantasists Drab Majesty, the project has ripened into a compelling exercise in world building, weaving themes of gritty city neo-futurist sleaze within a framework of driving, distorted guitars and cathode-blasted synths. Echoes of Chrome, Wire, Minimal Man, and Sisters Of Mercy ripple through the collection but ultimately Rough Dimension charts its own twisted vision of “our unforgiving reality.” Written and demoed across two weeks alone in a Marseille flat using his prized 1980’s Gibson “Invader” and a laptop, Clinco then took the tracks to Strange Weather studios in Brooklyn to record with Ben Greenberg (Uniform, The Men) who helmed 2019’s debut, Human Traffic Jam. The results are notably ripping, refined, and riveting. Riffs in alternate tunings chug and churn over mid-tempo drums punctuated by spikes of sci-fi electronics while the vocals swagger and spit venom (“where we walk is also where we shit / but if we bark at our reflections are we hypocrites? / impulses bleed right into our seed / where hate culminates the apple rotted on the tree”). It’s a bristling mix of the melodic and the macabre, absurdist observations of fast living and desperate measures, the clock of youth ticking towards midnight as dreams unravel in Babylon. VR SEX’s specialty is making these cautionary tales of psychic decay and tainted love a thrill rather than a drag. There’s a sunglasses at night glamor to Clinco’s choruses and solos, a wit to his black leather judgements (“what is the answer / to cancerous people / walking in my line of sight?”). The music’s milieu tends towards parasites and predators but its mood skews refreshingly accelerated and amused, cruising the strip with a cigarette, watching goths and limousines crawl in gridlock beneath digital billboards. The Rough Dimension may be a cesspool, but it’s home.
Zombie Zombie are a French electropop duo. Their work includes re-interpretations of the music of John Carpenter and Sun Ra. Their performances include classic electronic instruments such as the Theremin. [Wikipedia] |
