The NE-21 return to She Lost Kontrol after their first pitch-perfect 80s dark wave release in 2016. After releasing a collaboration with Donato Dozzy with the project ‘Men with Secrets’ at the beginning of the year, the duo lands on the label with their new work “In The Realm of Electricity”. The album is a collection of 8 tracks composed and recorded between 2012 and 2020 at the Sy6 studio in Boscoreale. The outcome is a perfect blend of synth pop and minimal wave, filled with icy synths, shuddering bass, and anthemic vocals, ranging from mumbled vocoder to arch talk-singing.
While diverse in atmospheric scope, swells of ghostly synths circle the driving beat throughout, producing a haunting totality drenched in an ethereal midnight trance; the submerge of cold, spectral vocals sing within the darkest depths of a starry soundscape – the gloomy romanticism of low, distant vocals bursting with post-punk melancholia.
The track’s unease between purpose and utility create a discrete synthesis, and, like a piece of speculative fiction, the memory of the body and its coalescence with the future become prime motives for this liquid age. Akin to Ballard or Philipp K. Dick, the work is not only dreamlike and surreal, but vocally sinister, as if this spectrum of LUSH new wave ‘80s pop and Almond-style weirdness hides a truth waiting to be grasped. , the work is not only dreamlike and surreal, but vocally sinister, as if this spectrum of lush new wave ‘80s pop and Almond-style weirdness hides a truth waiting to be grasped.
The album in essence sounds unashamedly distinctive, unique and charming. Whether you fall in love with the whole act or you’re just stunned by the bizarreness of it all, one thing’s for sure – you’ll be compelled and gripped right to the infectiously smutty end.
12″ / Digital Album
Behind shuttered windows and closed doors, our distant memories are slowly drifting into the void of reality. Thrown upside down in the air, we are floating between rational thinking and chaos. There is no present, past, or future, just this elusive feeling of eternal loneliness. The flowers bloom and fade away an infinite number of times, across infinite time and space. The end is the beginning and the beginning is the end. Our attempts to break the circle bring us to the place where it all started. Forever lost in the maze of life, unseen and unknown, this very moment is already forgotten.
“The End Is the Beginning” is the debut album of post-punk/gothic rock project Mirror of Haze from Oslo, Norway. Recorded in isolation during the pandemic months of 2020, it captures the mood of this strange and unprecedented time of modern history. From the first song Mirror of Haze sets up both anxious and ethereal atmosphere, filled with reverb-drenched dreamy guitars, driving bass lines, rhythmic drum machine beats, and commanding vocals. In the guitar driven sound of the record you can hear musical textures reminiscent of acts from previous decades such as The Chameleons and The Fields Of The Nephilim, and modern artists like Drab Majesty and Then Comes Silence.
Lyrically, the album builds on eternal philosophical questions of life and death in the dystopian post apocalyptic setting, taking inspiration from the striking imagery of “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot.
CD / Digital Album
Under exhausted lights of civil discontent the count has just began. What you parodied, what you scrutinised rears its pure gaze when punctured beyond performance. We cried for justice but instead found order, and now we face the chain.
PC World comes through with a haunting EP on She Lost Kontrol to distort the view and warp the vision of industrial addicts and mutant punks with their second release “Order”, a discursive counterattack on four distinct forms of command. The South London duo disfigures the unconscious reduction of pleasure and fetish, the connective tissue between privatisation and violence, the seduction of societal norms, and the neurotic tendencies of self-defeat. Like the surrender to a future shock, these four interwoven tracks are produced for the recognition of restraint and the demand for wanting more.
B-side remixes of the title track “Order” come from Physical Wash (former member of High-Functioning Flesh) and Aktion Mutante (featuring members of Violent Poison and Unhuman), two additional perversions of protocol from synth-punk veterans on both sides of the Atlantic. So initiate these six cries of havoc in solidarity with this wasted world, a world of precarious necessity and incessant definition. A world whose shape and conscience will forever be satisfied by order.
EP / Digital Album
We’re proud to announce a new release by the UK duo The KVB via our sub-label Cititrax. Combining shoegaze guitars, minimal synth melodies, hypnotic drum machine rhythms and reverb drenched vocals, The KVB was first formed in 2010 as the solo project of Klaus Von Barrel. He was later joined by his girlfriend Kat Day, who added synthesizers and abstract visual elements. Their sound can be described as dark, layered, complex and moody – an icy atmosphere juxtaposed by the warmth of distorted guitars. The record is pressed on 180 gram ultra clear vinyl, housed in a high gloss printed heavy sleeve, limited to 999 copies.
“A pulsing, dark, and complex album, “Immaterial Visions” has the slick production and modern new wave styling of the “Drive” OST, with the vaguely disconcerting sensuality of a Swans LP. The droning and distorted guitars, completely unintelligible vocals, and throbbing drum sound combine here to make a feverish listening experience. These tracks leave you somewhere between uneasy and turned on.”
LP / Digital Album
Recorded during the unyielding haze of the pandemic, Control Room’s new EP “OPTIONS” features dark, propulsive synth melodies and haunting vocals that evoke the masters of early post-punk and new wave. The opening track, We’ve Been Here Before is a laser-guided missile of love and hopelessness that will be lodged in the brain for weeks after a few listens. Are We All Alone is the perfect anthem for the isolated and paranoid. Other tracks, Encounter and Balance, highlight Control Room’s successful combination of brooding vocals and gloomy pop instrumentation. Fans of Tubeway Army, Wire and Ultravox will find much to like in this EP.
Digital Album
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