Pure Ground is a minimal industrial/wave duo formed in Los Angeles in the Spring of 2012. Members G. Holger and J. Short have over a decade of experience in both pop and experimental traditions. Making use exclusively of classic analog equipment, Pure Ground build a sonic template incorporating equal share of harmonious and discordant elements to drive their strain of rhythmic electronics. Present day dystopian realities and contemporary warfare influence the bands lyrical themes, with reference to 20th century science fiction and horror.
Not limited to music composition, the band also makes forays into analog video work, much of which can be seen projected behind them at performances and in album art. The band became a presence in Los Angeles playing shows with bands such as Martial Canterel, High-Functioning Flesh, Lust for Youth and Pharmakon.
Listen and order here.
“Regeneration” Weird Candles debut LP was made in frenzy of excitment begining with the tracks “Regeneration” and “Science”. They had found their sound through months of co-producing and writing together, traditionaly with Blag begining with drum beats and lead synth, and katerwol on the bass synth and vocals. They drew inspiration from 80s industrial, and darkwave, as well as from playing with admired locals like //zoo, koban and animal bodies.
Katerwols lyrics are dark and abrasive, and are delivered through sharp rythmic bursts, rather than sung. He tells a story through his words, an intimate reveal of his own personal deaths and rebirths, ups and downs, it’s a story of hardship, tragic love, and of ongoing mental turbulence in relation to the world around him.
Listen and order here.
All Your Sisters take on the post-punk paradigm is decidedly non-retro. The basic building blocks are there; heavy drum machine rhythms, pumping melodic bass lines, swaths of atmospheric guitars and cold synth melodies, but where many bands are content to wallow in the shadows of their influences, All Your Sisters sounds like the future.
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“At Temple Gate” immerses you in a kind of shamanism of which the echo has long since been lost. It is an interstitial album which marries a modal ancestrality with the power of electronic soundscapes, revealing a duality, an incantation at the threshold of death. The Sound is what immediately strikes the listener, even before the Logos, the word, the music itself: “at Temple Gate” is an experience a kind of sonic ritual.
It is not the dead, these deities, who are terrifying, but the living and their ever more ardent desires to communicate with those whose bodies have spread throughout the cosmos into a billion particles of stardust; where we come from and where we end up, ashes to dust. “At Temple Gate” is evocative of all of this: the bait of Time, Cruelty, the bite of Sound.
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Koban is a storm that has been gathering over the Pacific Northwest since 2011. After an EP and full length recording behind them, the Vancouver-based duo is striking out again with a new 6-song EP on Weyrd Son Records this time, gaining sound and fury in these brooding new tracks.
Koban naturally and seamlessly genre bend, their punk roots buried deep under layers of melded synth, goth and post-punk. This creates a unique sound which is simultaneously full and sparse, atmospheric and uneasy. A drum machine creates a baseline over which moody interchanging vocals and blown-out guitar noise quickly and organically oscillates. Their lyrics give a wink and nod to their influences and feature songs sung in French for an icy touch. Koban leave you with a feeling of being utterly new and a sense of déjà vu.
Listen and order here.
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