Here we go. I’ve been a long time Industrial music nut. Been listening to this stuff for over 20 years now. Figure I’ve got some opinions on all sorts of things about the scene.
I’m going to start posting reviews of both new and old. What I like, what I don’t, and what I’m looking forward to. I aim to keep up on release dates as well. If somehow I actually get to see a show I’ll try and post about that to.
That’s about it. See how this one goes.
Rob
Earlier this month the most important compilation of the year for electronic music was released. Jim Semonik’s massive labour of love; Electronic Saviors Volume II : Recurrence.
Cover Electronic Saviors Vol 2
This collection of Electronic music is massive. It’s six, yes six Cd’s full of great music. There is just a ton of music here. Most of the artists who participated on Electronic Saviors, have returned and a whole ton of new artists pitched in this time. There is a premium edition that has two more disks worth of digital music included…yea that’s right six plus two equals eight! disks of music. I should mention that at this time I believe the premium is no longer available. Guess you should have jumped on that when I told you first time.
Electronic Saviors 2 Inside the box.
Trying to review this much music is pointless. There’s a ton of it. Let’s be real here. There are six Cd’s. There will be songs you love, songs you go meh, and songs you run for the skip button. It’s the nature of the beast, when you have a collection this big. I find I like a lot more than I don’t. Electronic music is so varied in what it can sound like. This collection reminds me of why I like this whole genre so much.
This is a very special collection as it is a benefit CD. The proceeds of this collection will be going to Gilda’s Club and The Bone Marrow Foundation. These are both great charities that directly benefit those suffering from cancer. Really that’s all I should have to say about this…go buy it now.
Electronic Saviors 2 Under the Cover
Links
Official page: http://www.electronicsaviors.com/Electronic_Saviors__Recurrence/News.html
Buy CD: http://www.metropolis-mailorder.com/product.php?prodnum=MET+777
http://www.stormingthebase.com/various-electronic-saviors-2-recurrence-6cd-boxset/
Buy Digital: http://www.metropolis-mailorder.com/digital.php?id=10952
Gilda’s Club: http://www.gildasclubwesternpa.org/
The Bone Marrow Foundation: http://www.bonemarrow.org/
Alright I’ve been thinking about writing about the dreaded piracy issues for a long time. I can’t really write this music blog without coming out and saying something about where I stand and what I’ve been doing to get all this amazing music.
Whatever reasons or excuses a person may have for pirating music are going by the wayside. People pirate for tons of reasons…The main one has to be price. People want music. Lot’s of it. So much so that you would go broke trying to buy all the albums you want. Hell there are 13 albums on the June releases list I made alone that I want. Assuming the old model of $20 for a CD. (Yes that whats it ‘s been in Canada.) That would be $260 bucks. Ya I don’t have that to spend on music every month. It’s damn near impossible to find a price point that allows fans to buy everything and still have bands make any money.
So people make all sorts of excuses about it being overpriced or that the money doesn’t get to the artists just the label execs. Saying stuff like “I’ll pay to see them live”, or “I bought the t-shirt”. While there is some truth to this I’ve begun to think it’s wrong.
Simply put there are new options out there. Finally the labels have started to come to terms with the digital age. What I’ve been doing since i started this blog is using Rdio. What it lets me do it is have access to their library of over 12 million legally licensed songs. They don’t play like a radio station. Although you can make it act like that. I can just search for a band and listen to what they have when I want as much as I wan’t. The best part is that they almost always have new releases the day they come out.
For example while I’ve been waiting for Storming the Base to send my physical copy of Electronic Saviors 2:Recurrence to arrive I’ve been able to listen to it right away on Rdio without having to pirate a “trial” as some people like to say. Ever do that by the way? Pirate something and say to yourself, “Self I’m gonna pirate this and if I like it I’ll buy it”…how often do you actually buy it?
Now the thing is this service is only $5 bucks a month for just on my computer or $10 to have on my droid so I can have all my music everywhere I go. So now for $120 for a year I get pretty much everything that comes out. All of it.
What I’ve been impressed with is how much actual industrial/electronic music they have access too. I’ve found some things I’ve been looking for for years on here. It’s not all roses though. I have come across those nasty unavailable in my region messages. Which does suck when it’s something like Nitzer Ebb. Seriously I can’t live without Nitzer Ebb.
Enter Deezer. It works the same but has a kick ass feature of allowing you to upload digital music you own that they don’t have a license for so that you can still use it with their player. YAY! now I have my Nitzer EBB back even though Deezer has a limited selection. This keeps all your music in one place, and has been my biggest pet peeve with Rdio. Deezer just launched this weekend in Canada so I’m still playing with it. Not sure if Deezer or Rdio will be the one I stick with.
There are other services like these two, but since I live in Canada not all of them are available to me. Spotify I’m looking at you. Let’s be honest though they are not perfect. They are however a huge step forward. I can now use one of these and buy the odd album that for whatever reason they don’t have access to. Since so far this is very rare, it’s perfectly reasonable to be 100% legal with music now at a fair price. No excuses.
So do I need physical disks? For me … no I don’t. Where ever possible I’m a digital boy. Let me buy the digital copy. It’s far more convenient for me. Download and done. As I said before, I’m still waiting for Storming the Base to send Electronic Saviors 2: Recurrence, even though I pre-ordered it months ago. (Still missing the Saltillo poster I was promised too.) Where as Rdio and Deezer had it on the release date. Collector and special disk sets are a nice exception but otherwise gimme the digital.
It’s taken along time for the industry to figure out the answer to all these issues. I think with services like Rdio,Deezer, and Spotify were on the right track. Hell I’m legal and buying more music now then at any other point in my life. No more excuses, people. Go the legal road you’ll be glad you did.
June already looming. Time flies. Lots of new stuff to kick off summer this year. How am I going to fit it all in? A lot of my old favourites have been busy again. Good times.
Release Dates for June 2012
Bit later on this post…oops. Can’t say it enough Electronic Saviours 2 drops next month.
The first big album of the what I think could be a very good month. There are quite a few that I’m interested in hearing.
Saying that :Wumpscut: is a big name in our little musical world is a bit of an understatement so I always look forward to hearing what Ratzinger will do next. Women and Satan First for me starts real strong, drags a bit in the middle then gets in one more nice “O I love this shit!” before going out rather lamely.
The nice thing is to me this sounds like the :Wumpscut: that I like. Solid hard beats. Harsh lyrics…on Kill That Little fuck he has a line that says, “Hitler would have melted you for soap.” and its delivered rather matter-of-factly. So Rudy doesn’t hold things back even though it’s maybe a dancier album than some would like.
I think there are 4 solid tracks here that I will be going for when I think of putting :Wumpscut: on my playlists. Hallelujah, Women and Satan First, Burial on Demand and the fantastic Blutsturtz, Baby. The rest are ok or more low key stuff. You have to remember though… ok for :Wumpscut: is still better than some ever do.
Well see what the DJ Dwarf XII sounds like on the tenth.
Links
Buy CD http://www.stormingthebase.com/wumpscut-women-and-satan-first-cd/
Buy Digital http://www.metropolis-mailorder.com/digital.php?prodnum=MET+793D
April is looking like a good month. There are a couple heavy hitters on the list.
It’s kinda cheesy to make a big deal about a Friday the 13th release date. I haven’t kept up on the Goth Rock scene as much as maybe I should so I hadn’t heard The Beauty of Gemina before. So I didn’t have high expectations about what looked like a cheesy act…Opps…
I finally listened to Iscariot Blues earlier this week and haven’t been able to listen to anything else since it seems. I mean it this album has taken over. It starts strong and ends strong. Not a bad track on this album.
They really flex their musical muscle on this album. While the vocals mostly stay dark and brooding the instruments run all over the place. Badlands which is probably my favourite track has a wicked fun acoustic blues rift. It somehow mixes this seamlessly with distorted electric guitar, organs and great drum beats. If you only listen to one track make it Badlands. Seven-Day Wonder on the other hand sounds like it got lost in time. It makes you dance and comes off as almost new-wave goth from the 80’s..just a fun song.
I have to say that I’m blown away by this one. I didn’t expect anything other than another cheesy Goth band but these guys are the real deal. They know how to make great music and did so in spades with Iscariot Blues.
Links
Official Video for Stairs – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0Ai0bh9sTg
Buy Digital – http://www.metropolis-mailorder.com/digital.php?prodnum=MET+776D
Buy CD – http://www.stormingthebase.com/the-beauty-of-gemina-iscariot-blues-cd/
Ok so I got the shirt that I ordered from Aimonia the other day! I really like their stuff and do recommend that you check it out for yourself. Just thought I’d share some pics of what they sent with the order.
Well this one is a bit different than some of the other albums I’ve talked about so far. It falls more into I guess what people want to tag as neo-classical. Have I mentioned yet how much I hate tagging every little difference in sound down to a whole new sub genre? K then, just did.
My first thought on hearing it was that somewhere there’s a movie missing its soundtrack. This album works very very hard at building tension. Picture every horror/sci-fi movie where your hero is either being stalked or about to make an ominous find. It sounds like that.
I guess that’s both this albums strength and weakness all rolled into one. It’s full of powerful drums and strings. Haunting and ominous. Orchestral music with very sparse spoken lines. It’s fantastic. Just that 11 songs straight of that scary unknown thing around the corner is gonna get you! Gets to be a bit too much.
I think that I can see grabbing a song here and there and mixing it in with some of my random mixes. The drums on some of the tracks could blend well. If your a fan of classical sounding music and are looking for something a bit darker then this its probably a good idea to check this out.
Links
Buy CD http://www.stormingthebase.com/the-protagonist-songs-of-experience-re-issue-cd/
You know those times when for whatever reason you miss hearing an artist. Then one day you hear them and you can’t imaging not knowing their work. This falls in that category for me.
I’ve just recently discovered Saltillo. Was scouring for new music when I kept seeing things about Saltillo. Found a copy of Ganglion and fell in love with it. So I was very excited to see that he was coming out with a new album.
The new album is called Monocyte. It’s a actually a soundtrack for a comic book by the same name. I didn’t even know you could make a soundtrack for a comic? So it has a definite theme. The comic (from the synopses) I’ve read tells the story of two immortal races locked in a never ending war with humans stuck in the undesirable middle.
I think that the album absolutely paints a picture of a world that is quite dark and somber. This doesn’t mean the album doesn’t move. Quite the contrary. Saltillo primarily mixes the violin and cello with break beats and samples to make some very beautiful music. There’s a lot of life in this album. I thinks because it’s driven by the strings first and the electronic as a mood filler. The samples used are thought provoking and exactly the kind of thing I’m a big sucker for.
I like to listen to music when I read books. Always have. I think that this music would lend itself quite nicely to curling up to a nice novel, a cup of tea and the rain. If you like things like Delerium, Portishead, or Haujobb, then I think you’ll love this. Very solid album and hope to hear more from this project in the future.
Links
Buy CD http://www.stormingthebase.com/saltillo-monocyte-cd/
Darkgrove 