SDH return with the Against Strong Thinking EP, which follows its 2018 self-titled album. Although six songs may be insufficient, their new tracks highlight the strengths of their debut. The beats are deeper, the atmospheres sadder.
The band continues to explore the musical language as a poetic form and trying to discover new questions that allow the great categories of thinking to be undone. Against Strong Thinking talks about the importance of facing all that categorical, dogmatic and conclusive thinking. There is a need for dialogue with everything that seems unquestionable. Again, the questions guide all the songs and, again, there is no single answer. Sometimes this doubt is fertile, sometimes it is painful and involves a total and profound loss.
The album begins with Suffer, a perfect song to cry in late night clubs, dancing with tears in your eyes. But SDH know how to make a crowd dance too. No Miracles is an instant banger and Your Next Story sounds cruelly sexy. Poem Against Strong Thinking and Four Arms have that melancholic trademark sound with interesting musical progressions that we discovered in their first album and there’s also a good surprise: the inclusion of a re-recorded version of You Pt. 12, the first song released by SDH in 2016, this time with a better production that makes it easily one of their best tracks.
The importance of the body, the senses, the dance and the dialectic is present in each theme as a form of struggle of a voice that dialogues with itself against the firmness of its own strong thoughts.
12″ EP / Digital Album
M!R!M is the solo project of Jack Milwaukee, italian multi-instrumentalist based in London since 2011. Inspired by early 80s synth pop, cold and dark wave, M!R!M has been releasing on labels as Fabrika and Manic Depression. Since his debut album, he’s been touring and playing shows all around Europe building an important following and a significant name within the scene.
Still featuring Milwaukee at the helm along with selected collaborators as supplementation, The Visionary is a further evolution in M!R!M sound, which showcases how the musician’s vision has evolved throughout the years. Holding firmly to the vibes that recall the most dreaming 80’s, Jack Milwaukee this time blends together that typical FM synth timbre, which has always characterized the artist, with deeper and sumptuous sounds found within the notes of mellotron and sax; overcoming previous Lo-Fi approaches to undertake a solid, prominent and more mature path. Pulling from the ‘pop’ approach of mid 80′s synth-pop pioneers like New Order, The Wake, Tears For Fears to most iconic figures of the Italian 80’s era, M!R!M dialed in on a clear understanding of its own specific sound, which has since evolved.
The Visionary is the ultimate unified vision of M!R!M’s work, it’s the sweetest transition of the most nostalgic daydream.
LP / Digital Album
Nuovo Testamento is a new half-American half-Italian trio featuring members from Horror Vacui, Sheer Mag, Tørsö, Terremoto and Crimson Scarlet. With such references you wouldn’t expect this to be any less good than it actually is.
Exposure is their very first recording and its 6 songs perfectly blend coldwave bass lines, minimal electro beats, synthpop melodies, ethereal female vocals. That’s why we decided to give this its well-deserved vinyl run after the first band-released tape limited edition.
12″ / Digital Album
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
Exactly two years after their latest Front Teeth LP, the Zürich-based duo VEIL OF LIGHT is back with a new album called Inflict which will be out May 10 on Avant! Records.
This is their fourth full-length and their industrial-tinged synth-based post-punk keeps on getting better, making Inflict their strongest release to date. In these eight new cuts you’ll hear how their sound has gotten heavier, bulkier, even more beat-driven. Tracks like So Hard and Holy Wars display drums pounding like noises from a rusty machinery, synths on You Done Me Wrong and Fact2019 they’re so sharp they can slice through your skin, Europe and Animal Instinct feature melodies from the abandoned industrial district of your ghost town.
We could go on but you are probably aware of what these two Swiss are all about, and if you are not you’ll know the Veil Of Light when you face it.
LP / Digital Album
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