Neu-Romancer is the solo venture of Australian musician Laura Bailey, who’s razor sharp Italo production shines bright in her debut EP on Fleisch. Titled ‘Neue Romantika’, a nod to her Berlin relocation, these four tracks entangle the nostalgia of the New Romantics and the heartbreak of a not-so-far-off digital dystopia. ‘Neue Romantika’ brings oneself into the now, for a brief moment of synthesized beauty. The EP is closed out with an ethereal remix of the title track by ongoing collaborator and Fleisch custodian Zanias.
Fleisch welcomes Restive Plaggona into the fold with eight tracks of rhythmic tension and raw industrial elegance, replete with an atmosphere of the ominous drama that makes this Greek producer’s sound unmistakably his own. Blakk Harbor dives deeper into his homeland roots with this EBM-influenced EP drawing imagery from driving around the notorious dark industrial port of Pireus in the heart of Athens. Petite Mort, literally translated as a “little death”, is a brief loss of self-consciousness and in modern slang refers specifically to “the sensation of post orgasm as likened to death”. Steel-tipped Electro beats and clenched metallic snares lead the way to raging, distorted, EBM-influenced basslines through commanding night-vision drone textures, in arrangements ready to explore the borders between death and lust. Co-founder and label custodian Zanias makes her debut on Fleisch with a journey through climate catastrophe. Composed in Berlin and mixed in Queensland with the smell of bushfire smoke in the air, she addresses the primary anxiety of our time with four tracks designed to draw the body into movement and the mind into action. Body music elements are wrought with mournful melodies and studded with samples recorded from the fast-disappearing natural world, while her voice guides the way through the darkness. ‘Todo Avaricia’ by Reka and the duo Imperial Black Unit is the result of an immediate and natural connection forged between the three artists, through a jam session that swiftly and intuitively yielded three tracks of stylistically diverse yet demonstrably cohesive sounds. Featuring the sampled voices of Che Cuevara, Pablo Neruda and original vocals by Reka herself, the EP plays the role of an urgent call to action against political and environmental injustice, conveyed via the musical substrate of new beat, industrial and EBM, fused into a landscape of techno and undeniably constructed for the dancefloor. The EP is rounded off with a heavy-hitting remix of the title track by the prolific Umwelt, in his signature dramatic style.
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