Coldwave/Synth charts

Review: Sam de la Rosa from the Led Er Est band works here with Karen Sharkey from The Coombe for fours tuning wave tracks on Germany's Mannequin. It's de la Rosa's third release and is driven by a perfectly chilly TR-606, its ice cold sounds making for perfectly futuristic electro. The minimal spoken word beats add layers of allure and a dehumanised vibe that makes it all the more occult. 'Who Are You Today?' is a zoned out opener, while 'Slick People' is more creepy and subversive. The artwork is cool, too, and with mixing done by Marcos Cabral, this really is a wining package.

Review: Haruomi Hosono was a key player int he 80s music scene, often fusing myriad sounds and styles from all over the world into his music. Another of his key album has been reissued by Light In The Attic this month, while this one comes on Sony and is a truly playful electronic pop gem. He may be one of the most revered figures in the Japanese music industry but his record with its playful melodies and shuffling beats, vocal ad libs and pirouetting grooves all prove Hosono doesnt take himself too seriously.

Review: It's no wonder Idee Fixe references Synth Britannia in the notes for this debut album from Sauna. Nodding to a BBC documentary that charts the genesis, and subsequent chart rise of synth pop across the UK, while in many ways what's here feels far removed from the retro-futurism of The Human League and peers, there's a DIY atmosphere that more than bridges the gap. Natural talent making raw ideas sound machine tight.

'Carousel' is the perfect example. Opiate lyrical delivery and loose, low-slung rhythm bely the taught framework holding everything together. 'Over' matches for sharpness, taking the tempo down a notch and upping the glittering effects that make this entire record a kind of rhythm & blues-electronic hybrid, only getting deeper and more engrossing on 'Levitate' and 'Folded Hands', like a much more accessible, poppier offspring of Silver Apples.

Review: Having previously issued Akiko Yano's 1976 debut "Japanese Girl" - an eccentric set of East-West pop fusions marked out by the artist's distinctive vocals - Wewantsounds has returned to raid her vaults once more. "Iroha Ni Konpeitou" first appeared in 1977 and garnered great hype in Japan thanks to the success of its predecessor. It's a similarly eccentric but inspired set, with Yano confidently flitting between synthesizer-heavy instrumental soundscapes (see superb opener "Kawaji"), drowsy country-inspired songs ("A Long Wait"), seductive jazz-funk ("Hourou"), head-nodding reggae-boogie ("Hai Hai Gasa") and breathy, post-soul ballads ("On The Way Home", a song that boasts both pedal steel and synthesizers).

Review: To our ears, 1975's Radioactivity is Kraftwerk's most ghostly and otherworldly album. It was famously their first set made entirely with electronic instruments - some home-made - and now sounds like a bridge between the more krautrock-style hypnotism of the earlier Autobahn and the slicker, more tuneful albums that followed it. In other words, it's as weird, alien and otherworldly as it is ground-breaking and pop-leaning. This 2020 reissue is well worth picking up, not least because it comes pressed on translucent yellow vinyl and comes accompanied by a glossy, 16-page booklet full of iconic Kraftwerk images.

Review: Following on from their compilation EP of last year, Music From Memory return with another six tracks from Dutch musician Hubertus Baars aka Richenel. A somewhat illustrious figure in Dutch pop history with his flamboyant appearance, La Diferencia is a repackaged version of the original cassette release. It's a zeitgeist of the heady punk and squatter scene of Amsterdam in 1982, set against a backdrop of drugs and social unrest. It reflects a unique mix of punk aesthetics, with a synthesized bedroom funkiness. As well as having one of the more exceptional male voices to come out of the country, Richenel would go on to become a successful recording artist in the Netherlands before moving to Spain later in his career.

Review: You'd be forgiven for not knowing much about Plugpoint Music's sole album, Last Chance. It was recorded by German artist Reiner Ossmann in his home studio way back in 1987 and was subsequently released via a private press run of just 200 copies. It is, then, a genuinely little-known and overlooked gem that has been rescued from obscurity via the mighty Minimal Wave label. If you enjoy the more stripped-back and eccentric end of the new wave and cold wave spectrum, we'd definitely recommend it. Ossmann's synthesizer and drum machine arrangements are expertly minimalistic and alien-sounding, with gurgling melodies and spaced-out chords mingling with his own heavily accented vocals over the sparsest of beats. An ultra-rare gem that's well worth your time and money.

Review: "NINE INCH NAILS' GROUNDBREAKING DEBUT ALBUM
REMASTERED AND RE-RELEASED

Fans can now revisit the conception of Nine Inch Nails. Trent Reznor's Null Corporation has teamed with UMe/The Bicycle Music Company to release Pretty Hate Machine: 2010 Remaster on November 22, 2010. After completing the score for David Fincher's The Social Network, Reznor oversaw the digital remastering of Pretty Hate Machine from the newly unearthed original tapes with engineer Tom Baker (whose NIN credits include The Downward Spiral, Broken, The Fragile, With Teeth and Ghosts). This remastered version includes an eleventh track, a cover of Queen's ''Get Down Make Love,'' originally the B-side to the ''Sin'' single and produced by Al Jourgensen. Rob Sheridan, NIN's longtime art director, has also re-imagined the packaging of Pretty Hate Machine under Reznor's supervision.

As a young musician in Cleveland, Ohio, Reznor took a job at a local recording studio and employed unused studio time to develop his own material. The nascent album was later recorded with his favorite producers including Flood/Mark Ellis (U2, Depeche Mode, PJ Harvey), John Fryer (Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil), Adrian Sherwood (Ministry, Cabaret Voltaire) and Keith LeBlanc (Tackhead). The result was the first Nine Inch Nails album, 1989's Pretty Hate Machine. All songs were written, arranged, programmed and performed by Reznor. The album featured the breakthrough singles ''Sin,'' ''Down In It'' and ''Head Like A Hole,'' and ultimately sold over 3 million copies, reaching Triple Platinum sales status. In the wake of the album's initial underground success, NIN soon developed a reputation as one of the best live acts in rock and joined the inaugural Lollapalooza tour in 1991. NIN have since sold more than 18 million albums, collected Grammy® Awards and headlined arenas, amphitheaters and festivals worldwide.

The Bicycle Music Company acquired the rights to Pretty Hate Machine from a division of Prudential Securities in the spring of 2010. It was Bicycle's intention from the onset to enable Reznor to regain some control of this lost piece of NIN's legacy, resulting in this artist approved 2010 reissue of one of music's most groundbreaking and influential albums.

Reznor is currently working on new music as a member of the group How To Destroy Angels, continuing his Nine Inch Nails efforts and composing for future film score projects.

TRACK LISTING:
1. Head Like A Hole
2. Terrible Lie
3. Down In It
4. Sanctified
5. Something I Can Never Have
6. Kinda I Want To
7. Sin
8. That's What I Get
9. The Only Time
10. Ringfinger
11. Get Down Make Love"

Review: Now that's what we call an album title 2021. As the name implies, we're skirting the edges of 1980s Japanese pop, opting to explore the strange, sci-fi hued, traditionally rooted noises that weren't necessarily dominant in the Far East country at that time, but certainly found favour with more explorative listeners. And it's not hard to hear why.

Tracks like 'Days Man' by Yoshio Ojima could work well in a slo-mo house or electronica set today. While preceding effort 'Hikari No Ito Kin No Ito' from Mishio Ogawa is like a strangely innocent hybrid of lullaby and pop song. Elsewhere, the twinkling synths and wet snare hits of Naomi Asai's 'Yakan Hikou' further accentuate the surrealism running through so much of what is here. One for the trophy cabinet, collectors take note (and form a queue).

Review: RECOMMENDED
Post punk and dance music can be perfect bedmates simply because they are so often one and the same thing. Or rather the former is a form of the latter, with post punk's audio iconography frequently involving a rolling approach to rhythms, subtleties given room to shine and a sense of constant build about the atmospherics. All of which are also cornerstones of electronic club sounds, too.

Here then Soul Jazz adds to its extensive and consistently-impressive back catalogue of genre-themed compilations with a collection of tracks that take their lead from electro pop, industrial, punk, techno and more. Featuring a host of contemporary artists, including LA DIYers Automatic, German sonic artists Toresch and Philippines-via-California cult hero Vex Ruffin, it's refreshingly modern proof of how vital this stylistic meeting point is.

Review: "Tide Life is a fossicked assortment of personal memories surrounding the beach, the ocean and the touristical fantasy world that surround it. A childhood visit to Hamilton island...... watching Home and Away in the 90s.......or shopping in Lakes Entrance..... floating adrift in the flotsam of daily life". Or so says The Person of this startlingly beautiful 2018 release.

There's certainly a lot of audible influences, although it is possible to put a fine point on it - strangely tropical sounding, 1980s movie accidentals and montages, cartridge-era RPG video game soundtracks, and electronic soul, sans lyrics, are all pretty accurate labels. Owing as much to the likes of D?M-FunK as one-man keyboard shows in half-forgotten barrooms and deleted scenes from The Goonies, it's a ride that's brimming with imagination and inspiration for your own waking dreams.

Review: When he ran into the enigmatic Klaus Nomi, David Bowie met his match. At least in so far as wildly extravagant styles and ideas go. That's no discredit to the legacy of Britain's lost icon, more a case that his sometime East German musical partner, who died in1983, was similarly Not Of This World. Find the footage of them performing together on Saturday Night Live if you don't believe us. 29 years later, it's interesting to sit down with Nomi's music alone, sans insane visual stimuli. This, his debut album from 1981, explains why Bowie was so excited at his discovery. A vocal range that can give us something like Ricky Wilson of B52s (albeit singing in German) and epic, symphony hall-filling, countertenor operatic highs with equal skill. A set of tracks that are every bit the instrumental partners to those references. It's fun, wild, weird, theatrical, hugely entertaining and musically impressive.

Review: This is a third hot 7" release in a row for the Knekelhuis label. De Ambassade aka Pascal Pinkert is the man behind the intern, intoxicating music, which pairs a middle eastern sounding lead synth with urgent, hurried cold wave drums and stark synth work that brings more than a hint of industrialism. The sense of uncertainty and paranoia that blights all our daily lives right now certain colours these tracks, too, with anxiousness never far away from the avant-pop sounds. Add in the rolling basslines on the a-side and more mysterious vibe of the flip and you have two vital tunes.

Review: It has been two years since the first 'Sowas Von Egal' compilation arrived courtesy of Hamburg label Bureau B and Hamburg party series Damaged Goods. The world is unrecognisable compared to then, but diving headfirst into a bunch of obscure tracks from one of Europe's countercultural epicentres, recorded during one of the country's most troubled but fascinating and creative periods, is still a wonderful experience. While tracks here veer from having one foot in indie punk to full blown electronic assaults, the energy levels are consistent throughout - in short, they all pack a punch, whether it's the runaway juggernaut of Vono's 'Fred Der Ritter' or the frenzied looped bleeps on 'Steig Den Luis Trenker' by 4712. Similarly, with distortions, fizzes, crackles and all manner of other audible DIY tells, it's hard to argue with the fact that everything here puts artistry first and foremost, giving commerciality short shrift.

Review: A Certain Ratio's core trio of drummer Donald Johnson, bassist/vocalist Jez Kerr, and multi-instrumentalist Martin Moscrop make ACR Loco a perfectly fluid and funk album. In fact, on this, their first album in more than ten years, the Manchester post-punk outfit are as funky as they have ever been. Their tried and tested sound gets nicely updated with modern beat driven sounds and plenty of redefines to today's political strife in the lyrics. There are plenty of smooth and cool synth led grooves like 'Get A Grip' and messages of unity on 'Family' that we can all relate to.

Review: This new record from Automatic Tasty finds him move away from his usual pastoral acid sound and into a more DIY, bedroom pop realm with him on the microphone. It's a melancholic work that draws obvious parallels to Hot Chip, but with an extra air of curiosity and naivety. There is a dreamy vibe to the opener then a gentle party feel to 'A Happy Town,' lovely laziness to the bendy synths of 'Wake Up Dead' and more urgent feel to 'These Days'. This is utterly charming music that could have been released 30 years ago, today, or 20 years hence and still sound fresh.