We live in a good era: Mixcloud and Bandcamp

I'm going to go against the overall trend of cynicism and gloom that pervades the industrial (and pretty much every other music) community, and say that right now we are living in an extremely good era. Well, definitely a great era for fans / listeners, maybe not such a great one for artists, labels and producers: that's a complex discussion for another day.

There are two well-developed and extremely useful tools around now that make it easy to research, discover and listen to music (new and old, but especially new).

The first of these is Mixcloud. I goddam love Mixcloud so much. I have my own Mixcloud account, and every few months I drag my lazy bum to the decks and record and upload a mix. But more importantly, I follow about 70 DJs / cloudcasters on Mixcloud, and every day or two I listen to a mix they have uploaded. I have discovered an amazing amount of exciting music by doing this, and cannot recommend it enough. If you don't know who to follow or where to start, just type in a genre name and see what comes up, or start clicking on mixes in the main news feed until you find something you like. The refreshing thing about Mixcloud is there is a huge amount of really good mixes and cloudcasters in the non-mainstream end of music, especially in the ambient and experimental area.

The next one is Bandcamp. Digital music distribution has been around for quite a long time, but Bandcamp is a refreshing alternative to the lazy bloated juggernauts that come to mind (Apple, Amazon, Google). There are many things to like about this channel. Firstly, Bandcamp lets you download your music DRM free, in whatever format you like, including FLAC, and we like FLAC because it's lossless, right? Right. Secondly, Bandcamp takes a very small cut: 15% of digital sales, and 10% of merchandise sales. My understanding of the big bastards is that you are lucky to see 50% of your sale price as royalties. Thirdly, and for me most importantly, I really like how Bandcamp strongly supports the concept of labels. If I want to hear some of the music that Ant-Zen put out last year, (because I love Ant-Zen and so should you), I don't have to dig around trying to find 20 websites or bandcamp sites for all these different bands, I can just go to the Ant-Zen Bandcamp site and all of their releases are right there. And not just the new ones; I can find out what that that weird Philip Munch solo album from a few years ago sounded like, or whether Nin Kuji is worth the fuss that's been made over him, or relive the fun of Morgenstern's "Cold" (ah good times). And then of course, if you like them, you can buy, for pretty damn cheap too: usually $10 or $11 per album, much less than the $19 or so that ripoff  iTunes charges Australians, which is a fourth thing to like about Bandcamp.

So if you haven't already, start using these great tools! There is plenty of amazing music out there, despite the predictable cynicism of the boring naysayers and tiresome gloom merchants. In the next week or so I'm going to run through some of the best finds on those two great sites.

Minimal Industrial mix and commentary

I recently recorded and published a mix of Minimal Industrial on my Mixcloud account. This was a mix I did when I supported a Sydney show of one-time Neubauten member Gudrun Gut, on her Australian tour. Here is some commentary on the tracks I chose.

Kirlian Camera: The Unreachable One. This is a band which can be very hit and miss, but when they hit, you know about it. This is the first track off their 2000 album Still Air (which I paid a ridiculous amount of money for at Ripoff I mean Redeye Records). I’ve only heard a small part of their large discography but from what I know, it’s their best track or close to it.

Calva y Nada: Was Ist. I love this band with a burning passion, and put this track’s album (Monologue Eines Baumes) at #2 on my 10 most underrated industrial albums ever. Unique, creepy and completely awesome in every way.

Haus Arafna: Mein Leben. Nicolas Chevreux, manager of the prolific and respected label Ad Noiseam, once called Haus Arafna “the meanest band on the planet”. This track is fairly tame compared to the other brutal material on their first two albums, and actually more resembles their quirky and cool side project Novemeber Noevelet (coming up shortly). Apparently this duo (who run Haus Arafna’s cult record label Galakthorro) are still putting out strong material… I need to catch up! A great minimal track from a great respected band.

November Noevelet: The less prolific project from Mr and Mrs Arafna (that is actually what they refer to themselves as). I was quite excited to dust off my copy of From Heaven on Earth and play a track from it, as it doesn’t get heard anywhere very often. Mrs Arafna does most of the vocals on this project (while Mr Arafna does them on their main project).

F/A/V: Rentnerbunker. F/A/V (aka Feinde Auf Valium, aka Enemies on Valium) put out a few really good and largely overlooked albums around the turn of the century, on Mental Ulcer Forges (yes, the label run by Rudy Ratzinger aka Wumpscut…but we won’t hold that against F/A/V, right?). What I like about F/A/V is that he can do some really good fast tracks, and then pull the tempo way back and do a really good slow one, like this. Probably the best track of his self-titled album or any of his albums, really.

Anaesth: !NnoWwarMmix!. Anaesth are an obscure flash-in-the-pan act that should have got a mention on my “Whatever happened to...?” post. This French solo act did one album also on Mental Ulcer Forges, then promptly disappeared in a cloud of smoke. The album doesn’t hold up well from beginning to end (due to some very long weaker tracks), but this opening track is immensely powerful. Watch for the great transition around halfway through the track (about 24:50) where the tempo jumps up. I figured this transition would serve well as a launch point for the faster electro tracks in the second half of the mix.

Nullgrad: Buran. Nullgrad are a recent discovery (and the most recently released track in this mix, having only come out a few years ago), and have released some nice albums on German power noise label Hands Productions. It’s nicely reminiscent of 80s space exploration videos. The album (The Shepherds Satellite) also has a great longer remix of this track, and is worth checking out.

Nitzer Ebb: Join in the Chant. All that needs to be said here is that this is still one of the best EBM tracks ever recorded by one of the best EBM bands in history. That bassline... unbelievable. That Total Age (which made my top 10 EBM albums list) sounds just as powerful 25 years on as the day it was released.

The Horrorist: 13 Dobermans. I’ll be totally honest: I don’t really love the style and schtick of the Horrorist. I see what he’s doing, and that’s he’s pretty good at it, but a lot of his music doesn’t do much for me (it reminds me too much of crappy late 90s electroclash). But for some reason, I love this track. Something about the combination of the music and the lyrics really works. Putting this Horrorist track right after Nitzer Ebb makes it really clear how influential the latter were…

Front Line Assembly: Mutate. Have I mentioned how much I love early Front Line Assembly? In case I havent’t: I love early Front Line Assembly (I love a lot of their later stuff too, for what it’s worth). Grim, minimal, instrumental EBM by the masters. This is the first track off the Corroded Disorder release, which I thought was just an aggregate of the tracks off the very early Corrosion and Disorder albums, though according to Discogs this track wasn’t on either of those albums. Weird… but oh well, who cares, it rocks! I particularly love the snare drum sound in this track: it is pure 80s EBM.