By now you must be already familiar with Qual being the solo project of William Maybelline, one half of the Lebanon Hanover duo. When William first stepped into the scene as an individual artist back in 2014, he declared the intention to explore the very grimmest areas in synth-based music.
While Sable debut LP was unapologetically gothic in subject matter and sound, Qual’s most recent and uncompromising outputs of Cupio Dissolvi EP and last year’s album The Ultimate Climax merge the despairingly freezing properties of 90s EBM with the more aggressive sensibilities of industrial techno without ever diluting the intensity of either. Brand new 4-track EP Cyber Care is the perfect synthesis of both these aspects. On A side the slither of the title-track and the mechanical assault of Inject Your Mind will make you feel the hardest, most vicious side of Maybelline’s creation. B side’s I Have To Return Some Video Tapes and Motherblood will toss you into a ice-cold galaxy of paranoia and disorientation.
This is not an appealing world, as Qual is impossible to listen to half-heartedly – it will drag you by the jaw and butcher you in a dirty alleyway.
EP / Digital Album
A mere 18 months after the release of 2017′s Chroma, Buzz Kull (real name Marc Dwyer), has returned with his sophomore album. Traversing EBM, darkwave and goth sounds with ease, New Kind Of Cross traverses much darker waters than Dwyer’s last effort.
New Kind Of Cross speaks to the rapid change and tension at play in Dwyer’s own life. Marc spends a good portion of each year in a new city every night – and when settled in Sydney, is constantly between jobs. It makes perfect sense that New Kind Of Cross deals explicitly with themes of isolation, introversion and sometimes anger. The music on this record is heavy and unforgiving.
Throughout the past, Dwyer has refined his sound to a knife’s edge, proving his capabilities within the realm of darker music time and time again. His pursuits are relentless; the last year has seen him tour extensively in Europe, with another run throughout the continent starting in mid-November to coincide with the release of New Kind Of Cross.
LP / Digital Album
HøRD is the solo project of Bordeaux-based synthwave producer Sebastien Carl. Started in 2014, Sebastien has proven himself to be able to gather a cult fan-base around his creation in a short time, collaborating with artists as Hante, Winter Severity Index and Black Bug and performing live in most European countries.
After a first album on Antoni Maiovvi and Vercetti Technicolor’s Giallo Disco and an EP on SNTS’ own label Sacred Court, his second full-length record came out on September 14 on Avant! Records. Parallels features eight new compositions that further focus HøRD’s distinguishing features: abstract almost liquid synth passages, deep analogue beats, veiled vocals. Uptempo or slow, instrumental or sung, danceable or rarefied it doesn’t really matter as the album as a whole ends up resulting in a strong cinematic appeal.
A soundtrack for a journey away from the present time and into an intimate, maybe even nostalgic dimension.
LP / Digital Album
SDH (Semiotics Department of Heteronyms) is the new project of two key figures of the synth-wave/industrial scene of Barcelona. Andrea P. Latorre and Sergi Algiz, founders of the Cønjuntø Vacíø label and also in the post-punk band Wind Atlas, unveil a new act more oriented towards pop music.
SDH is change, alteration, distortion, metamorphosis.
Their synth-pop songs, sprinkled with EBM and techno, are mysterious, obtuse and suggestive.
The project seems to revolve around the idea of fiction.
What is the language of feigned personalities? What is fiction? An individual is one and another, is liquid. It is physical.
Incarnating someone is doing it in a corporeal way: making it flesh. Conceive: everything is real: reality does not exist. How is a fiction embodied?
With only two songs published, they have already supported artists such as Marie Davidson and Merchandise and performed at the Swedish festival Kalabalik På Tyrolen, one of the reference festivals of the darkwave scene.
LP / Digital Album
Fictional larger than life characters come in all forms and ways but no one expected East Rome acid minimal synth-punk duo Holiday Inn to spread their cult in such a distinctive manner, overthrowing all sets of rules in the peninsula’s stuffy DIY circuit and uniting techno-industrial enthusiasts, hardcore noisers and theatrical dark wavers. At some point though someone just had to do it!
Co-released by Avant! and Maple Death, Torbido is Holiday Inn’s debut full-length and by all accounts their strongest manifesto yet. A collaboration between Gabor (Aktion, Metro Crowd) on voice and Frenchman Bob Junior (Trans Upper Egypt, Bobsleigh Baby, Hiss) on synth and drum machine, they leave their best on stage, live shows have cemented their ill reputation: Gabor is a lanky dude and struts onstage with a boxer’s pre match ritual dance, ready to vomit words in your face while Bob’s composure never fails to spread misery and mystery through his vintage noise assault setup.
Torbido kicks off with She, a hallucinogenic dub infused punk anthem, Dirty Town is an industrial boogie for wide eyed dreamers, Feel Free! is an electro jungle b-boys rhythmic speed induced breakbeat tune for the future. The feverish magic happens on No Speaking, where Holiday Inn turns an acid techno tune into a circuit breaking warped frenzy.
Holiday Inn are shaped and scarred by the unauthorized development of buildings once considered a sign of gleaming growth in the Roman suburbs. It’s nostalgic and nasty, and will not have a bright future and let’s not forget that Torbido means murky and sinister, so come on and take a plunge into Tevere’s mudbanks.
LP / Digital Album
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