Here's what has been on the decks at n0teeth HQ of late...
New release: Zanias - Serpentskin
This is a very welcome sound to these ears at a time when n0teeth has been rediscovering the joys of pure unbridled trance euphoria. Alison Lewis's progression from darkly twinkling coldwave to floor-pounding techno body music to ethereal trance is not without precedent - "dark" electronic musicians have been finding their own way to Goa since a rather refreshed Sven Väth was still miming to newbeat on Italian television.
Zanias, of course, charts her own course there, with infrequent hints in her track titles as to what chemical experiences paved her journey. For anyone expecting the Berlin-based synthesist's foray into trance to be a doom-laden, dungeon-friendly affair, however, take note that this release is far more Delerium than Drax. There is nothing dark or menacing about Serpentskin's approach; it's all soaring melodies, cascading synths and charmingly, knowingly dated world music-isms.
And thank fuck for that: in recent years many of the "dark" techno acts emerging from Berlin have been so banal, unimaginative and virtually indistinguishable from each other they've done a great job of replacing psytrance as the sound I imagine my parents hear when they listen to any kind of dance music. Sod that for a game of soldiers - Summer will soon be here. Peel off your black nipple tape, swap your New Rocks for a comfy set of flip flops and let's speed along some beautiful stretch of Balkan coastline in a rented Golf cabriolet with the wind in our hair.
Reissued: Greater Than One - Index B (among others)
I'm not saying these deep cuts only got a reissue thanks to n0teeth suggesting to Mr Wells that a banger like "Storm The Dancefloor" deserved more love, but, well, this lil blog of ours is becoming a big noise on the scene these days, so why not? Wells himself describes this latest smattering of rereleasde tracks - previously only available as downloads from Brainwashed.com - as "a missing link" between the nightmarish, sample-heavy experimentation of London and GTO's later forays into hardcore techno.
New love for old jams
A recent rash of fiery, new guitar-thrashing industrial acts have prompted us to revist a few old favourite sounds from what the Americans curiously decided to call "coldwave" way back in the 90s.
Chemlab's Rivet Head (from their untouchable debut album Burn Out At The Hydrogen Bar) still feels like the definitive statement on the subculture it (inadvertently?) christened. Pure crunching whiplash cyberpunk fury based on drum programming that sounds like it tore a burnt, bloody exit wound on its way out of the sequencer, riffs that cut like lasers on a circuit board, and the hyper real feeling of going out of your head while lying on your back in the dark listening to the hum of the machine.
What set Chemlab well apart from many of their peers was the sense that you were dealing with dangerous rock n roll disruptors in a sea of nerdy, clinical, industrial metal fork & spoon operators. At the other extreme, I also enjoy the weirder, more experimental moments in Chemlab's work where you can really hear them paying their dues to the early industrial pioneers like Cabs or TG. Such as Pink from East Side Militia - a gloriously eclectic mess of an album where no two tracks sound alike.