Back catalogue: Industrial/Noise

Review: Alongside fellow Belgians Front 242, The Neon Judgement are widely regarded as pioneers of electronic body music (EBM), a synthesised slice of underground noise that incorporates elements of electro and industrial to often disorienting and intense effects. Led by Dirk Timmermans and Frank Vloeberghs, the pair combined synth pop and post punk with more abrasive tones, unusually, for EBM, bringing guitar work to the fore. Marking 40th years of the Play It Again Sam (PIAS) imprint, a veritable institution in its own right that has itself influenced many bands and scenes, some of TNJ's most triumphant efforts and attempts at pushing the boundaries of genre and style forward are collected here. A selection of tracks that showcases exactly what they were about very well indeed, and why their legacy is so significant, albeit subtle.

Review: We've extensively covered the work of Greek electronic music project Neural Network for a long time now, thanks to their compelling fusion of experimental techno and industrial music with themes of malevolent AI and/or cyborg takeover. Mostly active during the 1990s, the trio were instrumental in bringing robotic ideas to EU techno. This reissue of 'Cybernetics' is a big curio, with four new alternate takes on classic neuromantic cuts including 'Authentic' and 'Mechanic'. For those who like to sprinkle a bit of dystopianism into their DJ sets, this EP littered with sinister vocal samples scraped from future-facing TV documentaries abut cyborgs.

Review: Fred Shepherd has been laying down thick slabs of electro for the past six years under the No Moon alias, taking in labels like X-Kalay, Echo Vortex, Craigie Knowes and Church. Now he's landing on Mechatronica with five new works, leading in with the compression chamber sonics of 'No Way Back' which doesn't need to roll fast to make its imposing presence felt. 'Small Moves' takes the interstellar elevator in pursuit of its own bruising intentions, while 'Go 2 Bed' locks into a more familiar mode of machine funk for the mid-tempo massive. 'Vegetarian At The BBQ' keeps things pinging and ponging atop those hard-ass drums, and 'All Roads Lead To Hear' winds things up with a rapid, bleepy selection for when the night wants to get a touch more delirious.

Review: We have pure love for the Pure Hate label so far. It's offered up some smart, no frills techno that has really hit the spot. Now it is Green Fetish Records label head Mickey Nox who make this mark a year after we last heard from him on his own imprint. Here he lays down four blistering cuts that brutality mix up industrial, experimental and hard techno. Each tune is overloaded with sonic power, forceful drums and the sort of visceral synths that will smash up any dance floor.

Review: Curses is Berlin-based DJ and producer Luca Venezia, who has proven himself to be a reliable authority on all manner of deviant dancefloor sounds from the recent and distant past. On this compilation for Eskimo he takes up the challenge of spanning four decades of darkwave sounds by bringing seminal classics in line with exclusive new material for an epic 38-track compilation, which gets a thoroughly useful sampler edition for the vinyl DJs out there. The tracks on offer include Nuovo Testament, who get a punchy remix treatment from Curses himself before we can feast on the seductive minimal wave of Mary Moor. Curses also revamps JWB Hits The Beat with a strong Euro slant to the production, while the 12" mix of Sheffield pioneers Cabaret Voltaire's 'Blue Heat' rounds the set off in legendary fashion.

Review: "I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring," David Bowie famously quipped at his 50th Birthday concert in Madison Square Garden. That was 1997, and sadly we can now look back at the years between then and now as the last the icon would enjoy, although given the pantheons of unreleased material, music and other, we still have more than his legacy alone to learn from. He certainly kept his word, then, not least by opting to work with Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, a band that found inspiration in myriad styles and sounds, from Human League to Pink Floyd, carving out a 'industrial electronic rock' niche for themselves. In addition to tours and one-off shows, recordings of their collaborations are remarkable, generating fresh wholes from the enormous sums of these parts.

Review: If you like dense, challenging and austere industrial noise then read on: French sound curator and in situ artist Jerome Noetinger is a master of that who has proven himself over more than 30 albums. Sur Quelques Mondes Etranges is another one of his avant guard outings with electroacoustic designs at its core. The album is divided up into two sides of shorter tracks, then one 18-minute piece that takes up a whole side, and then one side of 21-second locked grooves for you to mix up however you see fit. The whole record was made in three days in a Hamburg studio and is a fine showcase of his ability to make palpable metal texture and real-world dirt out of sound waves.

Review: Lisbon has a lot to answer for in electronic music. Not just a great city to party in (and we mean great), the Portuguese capital has, for a very long time now, been responsible for some of the most cutting edge beats and pieces being made in Europe as a whole. More impressive still, it has managed to build this reputation due to the predominance of location-specific noises. The country's colonialist history means the population is hugely diverse, resulting in a real cultural melting pot, and tunes are a major outlet through which people can express their identity.
A place packed with characters as big as the impact of their respective sounds, Teteu, AKA Normal Nada the Krakmaxter, AKA Qraqmaxter,AKA CiclOFF, AKA Erre Mente, certainly accounts for a good number of those personalities on monikers alone. And, as Tribal Progressive Heavy Metal shows, his tunes are also hard not to notice. At once harsh and yet also delicate, or at least spatial, we run from a plain evil gabber-chip music-fairground ride oddity ('Alive'), to dubby proggy techno ('Da Gamer'), off-kilter pianos and UK funky drums ('Batida 2 Dance'), and snare-bass minimalism ('Nai Na Chi (Na China)'), among other adventures.

Review: Steven Stapleton is Nurse With Wound. Originally a band, sometimes abbreviated to NWW, since 1978 the English act has explored a range of dark and brooding styles, including industrial, dark ambient, drone, and noise. Well known for sound collages - usually pretty intense in nature - influences come from the dada and surrealist art schools, cabaret music, John Cage, The Beach Boys, Krautrock, and Musique Concrete. She & Me Fall Together In Free Death is, in this instance at least, the highly anticipated reissue of the landmark album which proved just how good NWW is at all forms of song craft. Work here edges into the eerier end of Liars collaborating with Tom Waits' at his most experimental and that's really clutching for reference points. Quite unlike anything else you'll buy today, we promise.

Review: There has been a steady stream of Nurse With Wound material released and reissued recently, with the fathomless creaks of Salt Marie Celeste still looming in our lower registers. Now Dirter are digging right back to the start to present a definitive version of the very first Nurse With Wound venture, originally recorded back in 1980 with a line-up of Steven Stapleton, Jim Thirlwell and William Bennett. Although it wasn't released until 10 years later, this amalgam of tape cut ups, sludge and noise make for a compelling time capsule on the various extremes of sonic exploration that were to come from all three. As you might well expect, there are additional tracks included here you would never have heard before, making this one for long time fans as well as those just beginning their NWW journey.

Review: The latest Nurse With Wound release takes a deep dive into Stephen Stapleton's arhives and returns with a radically expanded version of 1990 set The Ladies Home Tickler, a typically eccentric and out-there blast of sonic surrealism crafted from tape loops, spoken word samples, weird noises, fractured electronics, and shards of bass, synth and guitar. In this edition, the original album's two lengthy tracks ('Duelling Banjos' and 'Registered Nurse') come accompanied by six previously unreleased cuts recorded during the same sessions, but previously unreleased. While one of these is an alternative take on 'Registered Nurse', the rest are increasingly wild and pleasingly freeform soundscapes in Stepleton's distinctive style. An essential purchase for dedicated NWW fans.

Review: Do we really want to know What You Should Know About Yourself? There's a high chance we find out something we don't want to hear but alas, the NX1 duo poses the question anyway across a broad selection of techno sounds on 11 different tracks. The moods are often introspective and provide an opportunity to get lost in deep thought and challenge yourself. The dramatic ambient start makes way for crunchy drums and fizzing synth disruption on 'Based In Lies', then dark and hard drums define the monstrous menace of Polarized Soul' and industrial clatter brings the heat on the militant and marching grooves of 'Cosmos Inside You.' A fierce album of uncompromising techno.