Back catalogue: Industrial/Noise

Review: Rampant and 'up for it' as usual, the Cititrax label is back with a new set of wayward technoid experiments for the more trained ears on the dancefloors. This time it's Romania's Borusiade and newcomer The Sixteen Steps who share two sides of a wax plate and, of course, proceed to annihilate any idea of a quiet night in. The former sets off with the mechanical acid bumps of "Infatuation", guided by an eerie set of vocal blurs, and that's followed by the comparatively more beat-centric techno of the apocalyptic "Confutation". On the flip, The Sixteen Steps first lands on "Signals From The South", a house banger with noxious levels of mutant bass at its core, followed by the single-minded industrialism and sheer techno brutality of "Promises On The Run". WOWZAH!

Review: This is the first full-length LP from DJ and producer Tripped, known for his hard, fast, raw experimental techno style. Despite having released his own music since 2004 - mainly on labels such as Industrial Strength, Motormouth Recordz, and PRSPCT - Tripped may never have worked himself this hard. On 'A Thing About Something', he stretches the foundation of genres like hardcore techno, breakcore, gabber and schranz into entirely new reconstitutions. Strange hardstyle kick armaggedons, serene breakbeat floaters turned creepy and pressurized chambers of claustrophobic doom ensue in an overall whirlwind of pure mayhem.

Review: Adding to the seemingly endless pile of reissues/retrospectives that focus on anything remotely related to COUM Transmissions or Throbbing Gristle, here comes 'Dreams Less Suite', which is a compilation album made up entirely of Hafler Trio and Genesis P-Orridge's unused film soundtracks, live shows and versions. Describable perhaps as 'dream noise', this album somehow straddles both the grating and the serene, quickly hopping between everything from industrial techno to glassy hell sounsdcapes.

Review: Rhode Island post-metal avant-garde duo The Body have made a name for themselves due to their caustic maelstrom of harsh, brutalist experimentalism as well as their prolific output and collaborative nature, releasing collab albums with the likes of Full Of Hell, Thou, Uniform, and most recently, Dis Fig. Their latest endeavour sees the pair link up with another duo of musical extremity, Toronto, Canada's recently reformed industrial two-piece Intensive Care. Was I Good Enough? has been on the cards since the artists first began making plans as far back as 2018, trading, warping and ruining mutual sessions with layers of loops, distortion, samples and even dubs, constantly striving to find the ideal haunting balance between both of their sonically hideous, oppressive worlds. For all of our ears' sakes, they just might have succeeded.

Review: Born and raised in Bern, Switzerland, Michael Antener spent most of the 1980s concerned with interpreting the subconsciously and overtly apocalyptic discourse of that time through the medium of industrial-edged, dark feeling music. "I found a niche where I could express myself, along with other people who were not afraid of dark themes," he's quoted as saying in retrospect, before going on to explain that singing about love would have been more difficult than using "cries of pain taken from horror movies". This triple vinyl collector's item celebrates that fertile, if angry and dystopian period in Antener's life. Bringing together work from two of his formative projects, The Stranger of the Swamp and Bande Berne Crematoire, what's here is captivating. Electroclash with groove, distressed collages of noise, a certain sense of sonic expressionism - all brooding shadows, menacing arrangements and deeply unsettling moods.

Review: This reissued gem offers meticulously crafted aural rituals that delve into sensual electronic music and human sexuality. Founded by Adi Newton in 1978 to merge art, science and sonology while embracing innovative, multidisciplinary approaches, The Anti Group served as a platform for exploring psycho-acoustic research and this 1994 album was recorded over three years. It is among their more accessible works - never more so than now when it debuts on vinyl after 30 years. As well as the original pieces, it comes with four bonus tracks including a film soundtrack and a remix.

Review: Blume Records return to the forefront of the contemporary experimental canon with the first ever vinyl edition of (a study of) James Tenney's infamous Fluxus suite, Postal Pieces. The storied composer and music theorist was an alpine fixture of the modern music compositional world, with his various writings - both notated on the stave and prosaically penned in the journal - amounting to exquisitely impenetrable tracts on every isolable facet of music theory from harmonic perception to process music to sound synthesis to spectral music. Originally a set of 11 pieces but truncated to five here, drawing on a set of live recordings laid down in 2003, Postal Pieces is one of many of Tenney's works emphasising process over end result. Perhaps the emphasis on process was an attempt to treat the sufferances of "schizophonia", which had plagued musicologists since the 1930s as one of many fussed-over consequences of recorded music obscuring the original source of the sounds heard through an extended medium. The album's sonic pentagram - of long sequences resembling air-raid sirens, its basal textural swells and backroomed feedback loops - might sound doomy to the glib ear. Ultimately, though, this album could also be read as a simple formal exercise, one intended to divert Tenney's own aversion to writing letters (despite his wont to write music theory). Ironically enough, we're sure that, in the wake of this reissue and its hot demand, the postal system itself will thank Tenney for the boost in revenue.

Review: Shanghai-based, Malaysian-born artist Tzusing offers us a future-facing and experimental techno record that also serves as a meditation on "China's complicated history of patriarchal heteronormativity, and how these archaic double standards continue to dominate the culture in pervasive, often invisible ways." It is packed with dancefloor highlights after a deep-thinking cultural monologue to start with. Hard and funky drums, twisted sonics, manic uptempo bangers and wheezing voices and downtempo rhythms all combine into something utterly unique.