We Have a Technical

It's Pick Five time, folks, and dare we say this one turned out pretty well. The "one hit wonder" moniker can be something of a vague appellation when it comes to a niche scene, but we're not naming those tracks or bands, but instead flagging songs other than the Big Hit (not the Nitzer album) which we enjoy by artists predominantly known for one song.

Alex is back and recharged after his trip to the UK and is recapping all the acts from this year's Infest in Manchester. He's talking festival highlights as well as the larger culture the fest's cultivated across its multiple decades. Which hitherto unknown to us acts made an impression? How did a rubber match performance from IAMX fare? Which members of the British music cognoscenti make cameos? Which acts triggered Bruce's FOMO and which made him recoil instinctively?

The second half of our commentary on Synthetic Symphony's "EBM Club Classics" picks up immediately where Thursday's look at the first disc left off. We're looking at familiar favourites from Nitzer Ebb and the Klinik, flagging the likes of Poesie Noire and Inside Treatment for further research, and scratching our heads at the inclusion of Cancer Barrack on an EBM comp.

Our monthly We Have A Commentary bonus podcast works a bit differently this month; with Alex being off in the UK we've prerecorded a double dose of discussion of Synthetic Symphony's 1998 comp "EBM Club Classics", with the first disc dropping today and the second this coming Sunday. Disc one functioned as a handy DJ tool in the late 90s and early 00s, linking some of the first cuts from the likes of And One, Leaether Strip, and Bigod 20 with contemporary state of the art from Covenant, while also throwing in some left-field choices and proto-EBM cuts which have us speculating about the genre and the idea of an EBM canon at large. Tune back in this Sunday for the second half!

As we've been telling anyone who'll listen, seeing EBM legends Portion Control attack the Terminus stage with unaging menace and aggression was one of the main highlights of our recent trip to Calgary, and we were able to interview John Whybrew and Dean Piavanni about their legacy as electronic pioneers and, perhaps more importantly, what's compelling them to push forward into the present, with much of the strongest Portion Control material having been released in recent years. We're also discussing our showcases at Edmonton's Purple City Festival, as well as a recent Dark Chisme show.

It's a pretty laid back and free form episode of the podcast this week, with each of us tossing a handful of questions or propositions to the other in order to get their takes. Desert island labels, Sophie's choices, and leading questions abound. 

We're happy to present two interviews conducted during Terminus Festival on the podcast this week. We sat down with Justin Chamberlain of Soft Vein to discuss the increasingly melodic and bright sound of that project, his approach to songwriting, and the artistic roots of his new music video. We also grabbed some time with General Dynamics, the collaborative project between Emad Dabiri of SARIN and William Maybelline of Qual and Lebanon Hanover, right after their set and just before Maybelline returned to the stage. 

We're back home and semi-rested after one of if not the best Terminus Festivals yet. Four days of legendary acts delivering, bands just entering their heyday making excellent showings, and a handful of unexpected surprises from hitherto unknown to us acts still has us buzzing, so join us on our day-by-day recap on this week's podcast. 

We turned the selection of this month's commentary podcast over to our Patreon backers and by a strong margin they opted for ¡Chakra : Red!, the 1997 LP by German darkwave-cum-electro-industrial oddballs Project Pitchfork. It's a record which taps into both the band's then established core strengths while also showcasing their increasingly left-field approach to composition and instrumentation. Join us as we go track by track through a record frontloaded with dramatic and human approaches to human-made endtimes...and backloaded with a slew of sex jams.

With one foot out the door for Calgary and Terminus Festival, we're offering up a fairly light and breezy Pick Five episode focusing on sentimental songs. What in particular do we mean by that? Nostalgic? Melancholy? A little cheesy? Personally resonant? Listen and find out.

Our pair of records on the podcast this week tilts towards the Germanic, with Die Krupps' 2013 release The Machinists Of Joy holding up as one of the veterans' strongest efforts upon review, and Oklahoman act Karger Traum's III still shining as an homage to classic NDW experimentation. We're also looking ahead to Terminus next week and playing America's favourite game show, "Giallo or Inkubus Sukkubus?". 

This week we're discussing a pair of darkwave records which both show off the range of the genre and also sit quite far away from especially trendy versions of the style which have perhaps worn out their welcome. Fist up is the classic Gala from Argentinian legends Euroshima, which helped establish the standard for the genre for generations of South American acts to come. Next, the moody but forceful Mire Of Mercury, the most recent LP from Estonia's Bedless Bones, draws links between the dancefloor and pagan ancience.

The very website you're reading this on right now turned fifteen years old on Tuesday, and so we're using this week's episode as an opportunity to look back and the hows and whys of one and a half decades of our work here. We're also talking about our friend Rexx Arkana, and next year's Shadowlands festival in the UK. 

We're flashing back to 2005 for a discussion of Ladytron's Witching Hour, the record that saw the British quartet fully break out of the electro-pop terrain (and electro-clash pigeonholing) of their early work with a record that was inescapable in goth clubs far beyond. From indie and shoegaze ambitions to the oddly prevalent Suicide-styled electro grooves which ride through it, we're looking at a record which captured a moment where electro was simply everywhere.

A classic two album format episode of the podcast has us revisiting a couple of eras in which "darkwave" meant something profoundly different from what it does today. First up is Bay Area act The Razor Skyline's rough and tumble and broad reaching 1996 debut, "Journal Of Trauma", followed by the slick NDH-leaning ambitions of In Strict Confidence's 2010 LP "La Parade Monstrueuse".

We're each picking five needledrops on this week's episode of We Have A Technical. A little bit different from discussion of soundtrack originals, we're talking about the use of existing songs in film and television, often for the purposes of a particular effect (and hopefully more than just the cheap recognition pop of "Hey, I know and like that song!").

Two bands each linked closely to their own time and place are the subject of this week's podcast, but that's where the similarities between Fiendflug and Tearist end. The debate and controversy surrounding the former's tapping of Nazi history and aesthetics invariably overshadowed their music, though we make an effort to discuss both aspects of Fiendflug's 1996 self-titled LP, while Tearist's 2010 debut pointed towards a changing of the guard in North American dark music which their vocal charisma and mix of styles primed them to lead, yet that was not to be.

The tenth instalment of Vancouver's own Verboden festival is in the books, and as we've done for years we're here to break the whole affair down and talk about the live sets we caught from a slew of acts across a wide spread of dark genres, originating both from the fest's home in the Pacific Northwest and abroad.

This month's commentary podcast makes a detour into the cryptic world of minimal synth with the 1982 debut of Die Form. A far cry from the lush and dramatic club darkwave the French act would go on to be known for throughout the 1990s, Die Puppe is instead an exercise in atmosphere and an at times infuriating absence of formal composition. We discuss the nascent themes of perversion and transgression in Philippe Fichot's work, as well as the project's thought-provoking connections to classic industrial soundscapes. 

Scene producer extraordinaire and Inhalt mastermind Matia Simovich joins us for a lengthy discussion of the role of the producer, his philosophies of record production, and of a couple of specific landmark scene records he's helped bring to fruition.

Inspired by this past weekend's site anniversary DJ set, we're delving into the somewhat arbitrary dichotomy between jams and vibes as it pertains to nightclubs in Our Thing. Are people seeking a particular mood or expecting specific tracks when they head out to goth night? How do the different genres bundled into the goth-industrial format vary in terms of prioritizing atmosphere versus hooks? It's one of those round-about conversational episodes of We Have A Technical where you can't necessarily expect clear answers to the above, but you can expect a whole lot of hair-splitting.

It's a punk-flavoured side-project twofer on this week's episode of the podcast, as we discuss industrial-punk supergroup Lard's The Last Temptation Of Reid as well as the only record from Spetsnaz side project Turnbull A.C.'s. We're also talking about the long, long, LONG awaited announcement of a Tear Garden tour, and a fantastic Cabaret Voltaire show.

The latest album from Slovenian old gods Laibach is an abrupt shift from the sterner and harsher work they've been releasing for the past half decade or so, and turns to the recent history of pop music to comment on, well, pop music. Musick bears many of the hallmarks of Laibach's satirizing of popular culture and its intersection with politics and the world at large, but what precisely are they saying this time out? That's the question we delve into on this week's podcast.

A week later than usual we're back with the latest iteration of our Patreon supported We Have A Commentary series, this time looking at Minuit Machine's second LP, 2015's "Violent Rains". We're talking about the record's connections to preceding and future generations' visions of darkwave, what has and hasn't changed about Minuit Machine over the past decade-plus, and the emotional tenor of Amandine Stioui's vocals which has only become clearer in retrospect.

It's a hopefully affable and easy-listening Pick Five formatted episode we have for you this week folks, as we each choose some second LPs we enjoy. From records which consolidate a band's aesthetic to those which point to career-long versatility, we're kicking across a pretty wide range of all the sub-genres we cover on the site if we do say so ourselves.

One half of the Senior Staff took in the four days of rivethead festivities in the Windy City this past weekend, Cold Waves Chicago! We have a full report on all the goings on from both the main stage and the after parties, and best of all we have interviews with the likes of Bootblacks, Chemlab, Twin Tribes, Andi Harriman, and Sean Payne. Whether you're looking to catch up on what you missed out on or are looking to relive all the Wax Traxy fun, this week's episode of We Have A Technical has you covered.