 The story of Modern Witch began 6 years ago in Denver, Colorado, when graphic artist Mario Zoots, singer Kristy Fenton and house veteran Kamran Khan started recording experimental music together on an old VHS camera. In the space of a few years, a couple of very limited tape and CD/R releases on labels such as Disaro and Clan Destine Records, and a series of spooky performances both in Europe and on the American continent, the trio has become a true underground reference for creepy, ritualistic dance music, in the muddy but oh so fascinating waters between Witchhouse and Minimal Synth.
Treue um Treue is very proud to present a selection of their best tracks for the first time on vinyl, on two twin-LPs of which this is the first. Drunk on 80′s cold wave, bathed in suburbian occult decadence and haunted by dead celebrities, “Hollywood” is a feast of thaumaturgic synth lines, nonchalant but captivating mpc 1000 – sequences, drugged-out spoken words and ghostly voices. American Angst or Minimal Doom electronics at their best!
Listen and order on TuT/RuR shop.
 ADN’ CKRYSTALL aka Erick Moncollin surely does not need much of an introduction. Every self-respecting minimal wave fan and synth nerd will have heard of the French synth-wizard who jammed with Tim Blake and Vangelis on a MS-20 prototype in the late 70s and whose 1982 cult album “Jazz’Mad” is considered a landmark in the history of underground electronic music. After a pause in the 90s (during which Moncollin became active in the trance and ambient-techno scene under the name Dr. STRANGE), several brilliant albums were released in the 2000s on Anna Logue Records, La Forme Lente and Erick’s own ADN and Ysil’Prod labels. Treue um Treue is honoured to present the project’s sixth full-length.
“Musique Atomique Sans Surveillance” is a highly skilful, playful yet authentic blend of 70s prog synth, early 80s minimal electro and 90s techno, flowing with ease from library lounge music to spacey weird-wave to electronic exotica, reminiscent at times of BERNARD SZAJNER and CLAUDE LARSON. The spiciest note of this delicious psychotropic cocktail is of course Erick’s unmistakable, demented yet committed Deutsch-Frenglish lyrics, which make of ADN’ CKRYSTALL such a unique experience.
Listen and order on TuT/RuR shop.
 Mannequin Records is simply elated to present the debut 12” EP from Light House.
Light House have been kicking around Portland for two years. The band contains Chris Relyea, an ex member from The Rapture, Dawn Sharp and Brooks Blackhawk from Atriarch. Excellent dark wave with spacious mixes, minimal synths, reverb drenched guitars and eerie malevolent vocals that either pierces your heart or your spinal cord (I haven’t decided which as yet, but Dawn Sharp is most excellent).
Originally released in United States by Freee record label in 2012 and recorded on pure analog tape, ‘In Their Image’ EP illuminates the romantic and elemental nature of Light House’s dreamlike sound, a moody, theatrical dirge which brings to mind classic 4AD acts such as Dead Can Dance and This Mortal Coil.
To celebrate this relaunch Light House will be touring America and Europe, hitting the West Coast in mid June to coincide with Warm Leatherette in San Francisco, then onto New York and making their way along the East Coast.
Light House is music that lulls the Etheric body awake, in a hypotetical world where Tropic Of Cancer meets Soft Metals.
Listen and order here.
 Here we don’t talk about a music genre but about an attitude, a position. From the beginning in the 50′s withe “Nouvelle vague”, the aim is to find new forms beyond avant-garde and pop culture to express contemporary emotions, to show the diseases of the (post) modern world and to challenge norms and obsolete social orders (like bourgeoisie, religion, work, art..).
French new wave is also a passion for wandering, a general tendency for detachment and it always shared, of course, the DIY spirit. We can find this kind of nonconformism and this common taste for wasted grounds in some movies of Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette or Luis Bunuel as well as in the music of Polyphonic Size, Guerre Froide and Merci la Nuit.
With this first release on vinyl, this young musician from Saint-Etienne offers 6 minimal synth-pop songs filled with great sensibility, commitment and a lot of bitter sweet humor. The music is very personal and digs up very different synth music eras, from the 80′s raw analog sounds (with the famous Russian Polyvoks, the Roland 606/707 drum machines…) to the digital coldness of samples and techno kicks, to the more lo-fi minimal sounds (we can greet the presence of our beloved Casio VL-tone!). All those elements connected together are forming the sound of the nocturnal conspiracy of Merci la Nuit.
So let’s go for this night ballad in the city streets. It’s a bit foggy tonight…
Listen and order on Spielzeug Musak.
From Mannequin Records:
 Mannequin has the dual and parallel aim to unearth hidden or unpublished gems, running along a road that starts from the period of reference for this kind of music (late 70s – mid 80s) and comes to nowdays, with a vision deeply influenced by Factory Records / 4AD labels.
Catching the same spirit of such great labels, we asked to the Italian synth wave princess Mushy to create a compilation starting from a tabula rasa. The mission was hard. Following her tastes and heart, she had to select a dozen of new bands from all over the world with unreleased and unique for this project tracks, picking up the title and realizing the graphic design and artwork. The full process of “The End Of Civilization” took almost 1 year but the result was touching us deep into our soul.
Mushy began her career crafting noise bursts and aggressive oblique instrumentals before, in her newest form, blooming into a beautiful, epic and heart-heavy icy synth sound, having both “Faded Heart” (2011) and “Breathless” (2012) as album of the week at Rough Trade. “The End Of Civilization” perfectly represents her double sided synth-wave / kraut-psychedelic soul. Every track she selected for us is an absolute highlight, moving from the analog minimal / cold wave sounds of Police Des Moeurs, ASSS, The Circa Tapes, TEEEL and Rosemary to the tempestuous post punk and psychedelia of Deathday, The Murder Act, Phosphor and The Strange Forces, ending with spectral cold folk of Tablets and The Long Wives.
LP / Digital Album
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