The Treasury is the project of Troy Hancock of Richmond, VA. Cutting his teeth initially in the Raleigh NC punk scene, Hancock relocated to Richmond in 2018 and began to focus on experimenting with synths and drum machines. Following a revelatory Richmond show supporting EBM stalwarts Kontravoid and Lunacy, Hancock solidified his new, aggressive sound, combining a love for 1990s techno, post-punk, EBM, and Synth-punk into a unique and hard-hitting whole.

A true road dog who prefers to spend his time playing live and hitting shows up and down the east coast, Hancock still somehow found the time to record his debut EP, Permanent District, featuring four new songs and an updated version of his demo track “Initialized”.

Cassette / Digital Album

Detroit’s dancefloor demolitionist, Comfort Cure, is back with a brand new single and cassette release, “I’m the Drug.” The cassette also contains the new song “Lows” and a new version of “Hands of Stone” along with three remixes of “I’m the Drug” on the b-side. Compared to previous Comfort Cure releases, these new tracks focus on a more synth-pop and dancefloor oriented sound. The three remixes on the B-side consist of a relentless EBM remix by NYC’s Nuxx Vomica, a hard hitting club remix from Kansas City’s Moon 17, and a skeletal minimal synth rework by Atlanta’s Anticipation.

Cassette / Digital Album

Long time collaborators and friends Travis Thatcher and Chris Daresta met many years ago in the underbelly of Atlanta’s noise and experimental music scene. Chris fondly recalls someone saying “hey, you should meet this cool guy who likes drum machines as much as you.” Years later, Chris would go on to co-found DKA records, with Travis mastering many of the releases. The old friends went on to record a couple split cassettes with their solo projects Anticipation and Voice of Saturn, both released on DKA. During this time, a duo named Karger Traum from Oklahoma City sent in a demo to DKA. Their vocalist Taylor McKenzie and Chris immediately hit it off, with many long emails sent back and forth. Karger Traum would go on to release their first album on DKA, and Taylor founded the Oklahoma City dance label Fixed Rhythms. Life was good, bands went on tour, tapes and records flew out the door, and countless alcoholic beverages were spilled on the nation’s dance floors.

But then the pandemic hit. Stuck inside with the monotony of doing nothing, a new project begins to brew. Chris started sending tracks to Travis, who had moved to Charlottesville. Drum machines and synthesizers were dubbed out with echo, reverb, and onto lofi-tape machines. Six mercurial tracks emerged over time, but they needed something… But what? Thinking outside the box, Chris decided to reach out to Taylor to explore what vocals could bring to the music. After recording sessions with Nick Owen from Fixed Rhythms, the new project truly had come together. Taking its name from the influential and beloved cassette release “Domestic Exile” by Daniele Ciullini from 1983, the unworldly sounds of which seemed to so perfectly mirror the sound of the fledgling trio. With a name selected, the band Domestic Exile was now complete.

The music on Domestic Exile’s “self-titled” cassette is influenced by the already mentioned Daniele Ciullini of course, but one can easily hear industrial touchstones DAF and Liaisons Dangereuses, through the experimental filter of adventurous musicians like Drexciya, Cluster, Neu, and even the manic Void side of the Faith/Void lp. This is moody EBM dance music for those who like the darker, murkier, and obscure cassette releases of the eighties. Domestic Exile is a futurist soundtrack for the straggling and obstinate machines, still partying at the end of the world, despite the obvious.

Cassette / Digital Album

Towards the beginning of 2023, we at DKA heard rumblings of a new cold-wave inspired acid performer/producer fogging up Atlanta’s stages. We were excited to learn that it was our friend Peter Roglin, aka Charolastra. Now working under the Fugitive Artifact moniker, DKA is thrilled to present his debut album, “Deferentiator.” Painted with bleak, textured, dystopian backdrops and dark cryptic lyrics, fugitive artifact is a unique exploration of dance music drawing on a breadth of influences from Chicago House, techno, electro, dark pop, and cold-wave.

Designed to be a vehicle to explore his darker, colder side, he wanted to do away with the laptop as much as possible, relying solely on drum machines and synthesizers. For Roglin, this project is about relinquishing control and embracing the ephemeral impermanence of musical ideas.

The theme of relinquishing control is at the centerpiece of Deferentiator in both approach and subject matter. Fitting right at home with local DKA acts TWINS and CRT, the now NYC-based Fugitive Artifact has imagined a sound reminiscent of Suicide and Drexciya combined with a strong appreciation of the cinematic film scores of David Lynch, Angelo Badalamenti, Nicolas Winding Refn, and Cliff Martinez.

Cassette / Digital Album

Toward the end of 2022, always with a finger on the drum-machine pulse of the EBM underground, the DKA collective heard rumors of a new artist crushing dance floors. A mysterious gentleman from Detroit, Michigan was blowing minds and turning heads with a series of singles filled to the brim with heavy sludge and mutoid funk. DKA was soon tasked with finding the man behind Comfort Cure and has now arranged to release Design International on cassette in 2023. Design International builds on the strengths of his previous releases but finds Tyler Baker/Comfort Cure sharpening his hooks and polishing his production for crystal clear destruction of the dance floor.

The A-side features four new tracks of futuristic body music. While four remixes make up the B-side, finding DKA’s own Semantix on remix duty alongside Ye Gods/Antoni Maiovvi and Broodfaye. Make sure you add this one to your collection because we have a feeling it’s going to sell fast!

Cassette / Digital Album

DKA is starting 2023 off with an EBM bang with Violent Protocol by Semantix. The solo-project of Keaton Khonsari (Razorbumps, Narrow Head), Semantix is the result of years in the Texas underground that Khonsari spent learning synthesis and production.

Violent Protocol contains 5 originals and three remixes from DKA alumni Balvanera and Autumns along with Orlando’s Mother Juno. Violent Protocol’s catchy, rhythmic basslines, tense atmosphere, and old-school EBM samples confronting despair, violence, and power structures will surely appeal to long time followers of DKA and new fans alike. We here at DKA loved Semantix’s first release Mania in the Psychosphere and feel that this sophomore release will place Semantix amongst EBM’s elite dance floor destructors in 2023.

Cassette / Digital Album

DKA is elated to welcome TWINS & Rom, two of the Atlantic Seaboard’s most mysterious, prolific and quietly lauded legends of uniquely challenging music. CH Rom is the impish conductor responsible for a content universe under his primary handle as well as among myriad collaborations such as Pump Media Unlimited, Spam, Wharp & Rom, Crustacean Committee, and of course his decades-long co-venture with TWINS, covering everything from 22nd century dance music to noir detective funk. The magnetic and majestic TWINS needs no introduction here at DKA, a member of the family and 15 illustrious years in as the man, body, and spirit behind TWINS, and a key member of other celebrated collaborative projects including the industrial bang and bash of Pyramid Club, with Chris Daresta, and the mutant new-new beat of Free Range with Ernestas Sadau.

R U Dreamy? Part II is the long-awaited to sequel to 2010’s cinemacore classic Part I. It is the culmination of years of cultivating a terrifying portfolio of new-age horror meditations, a scare-centered micro-symphony written and conducted by Hans Zimmer in a mummy costume, or Rugrats Halloween special directed and scored by Wes Carpenter, slowed to 0.75x playback speed.

In the self-contained para-cinematic universe of R U Dreamy? Part II, the listener is treated to a bounty of treats both terrifying and enchanting. Experience the simultaneous melancholic dread and sweeping grandeur of “Melodrama Arp” and “Dark Judgement”, or find yourself gently carried aloft the clouds of an imagined utopian Earth, healthy and in harmony with its inhabitants. Adding further depth to the Dreamyscape is the power poetics of Wait and Purple Max, who elevate “Museum Boss”, “The Zoos Are Forgotten” and “Noah’s World” with imagery of youthful whimsy and canine astral projection. The two round out a cast of illustrious guests that also includes Ryan Parks (aka DKA alum Fit of Body) and Joyous JL, contributing very scary synth bass and paranoid plastic guitar, respectively. “The zoos are forgotten, eyes are forgotten. I know no bounds.”

Cassette / Digital Album

The Book of Flowers is the new project of singer/songwriter and DKA co-founder J.A. Ford. Long-time DKA fans will be familiar with Ford’s work with the EBM/synthpop project Tifaret which featured on the first and second volumes of the DKA label compilations “Strategies Against the Body”. Ford struggled writing songs for a proposed full-length Tifaret record, and felt unable to fully express himself through traditional sequencer-based electronic music. Out of frustration, Ford taught himself acoustic guitar fingerpicking as a new songwriting tool during the initial COVID lockdown and focused on the more traditional songwriting forms present in American folk and country music. The resulting album, “Pastels”, was recorded in Fall 2021 in Ford’s home studio, and furthered the folk connection with inspiration from British folklore and horror films such as The Wicker Man and Midsommar.

Ford envisioned “Pastels” as feeling pastoral yet menacing, exploring themes of the supernatural and the strange as well as the natural and sensual. Pastels features Ford stretching out beyond the confines of Tifaret to incorporate elements of American and British folk, psychedelia, dreampop, post-punk, and krautrock.

The Book of Flowers’ debut album “Pastels” draws from Ford’s love of acid folk, mellotrons, and modular synthesizers to create a shifting tapestry of sounds evocative of a diverse set of artists including Current 93, Nick Cave, Amon Düül, Espers, Magnetic Fields, Silver Apples, Brian Eno, and Young Marble Giants.

Cassette / Digital Album

David J Bull is a Cardiff based DJ and producer. He has been a key player in the Welsh underground scene for the last 10 years co-running the TEAK and Studio 89 parties which have gained a cult following over the years. As a DJ, David has honed his sets around his obsession with rough and ready 80s electronic music mixed with contemporary sounds that also tap into this nostalgia – in particular the sounds of industrial, new wave, synth pop and new beat.

For his debut EP ‘Body & Beat’, David nods in particular towards the New Beat sounds that emerged and vanished between ’88-’90. Tapping into the brash production style and old school cut and paste sampling, this EP takes inspiration from artists like Fatal Error and Shakti. David pulls together a collage of sound sources and mixes it in with FM synths, bass guitar and Cheetah drum samples (a budget drum machine made in Cardiff back in the 80s) – the result is a dark and somewhat wacky electronic record ready for an alternative dancefloor.

Cassette / Digital Album

Lower Tar is the experimental techno project of Los Angeles-based musician and visual artist, Ori Ofir. Formed in 2016, Lower Tar has released albums on Ascetic House, Ecstatic Recordings, and Night Gaunt Recordings. Ori has collaborated with Silent Servant on a duo project called Sterile Hand. Ori also co-runs the party/label L.A.U.R.A. as a new avenue that focuses on bringing the Los Angeles electronic community together. As an Israeli-American of Arabic descent, Lower Tar is a project that explores the complex power structures that revolve around identity and what it means to be critical of a society while still maintaining a sense of self.

“Abstract Parasite” is Lower Tar’s debut for DKA. Recorded between 2018-2020, it combines 8 tracks of Ofir’s mix of hard hitting EBM, industrial, and spaced out electro. Inspired by the works of Mark Fisher, each track explores the systems that hold us back while trying to envision a way to rupture this omnipresent hold and cyclical complacency.

Cassette / Digital Album