The Frozen Autumn – Pale Awakening (2 × Vinyl, Blue) Label: Avantgarde Music / AV447LP Format: 2 × Vinyl, Album, Reissue, Blue Country: Italy Released: 2022 Style: New Wave, Synth-pop, Darkwave
Pale Awakening is the debut album by The Frozen Autumn, which originally saw the light in 1995 following the demotape Oblivion and various live gigs in Italy and abroad. These led to the CD release of this concept album with crepuscular sounds, at times inspired by the sound of 4AD and Projekt Records, that unfold between reflective and atmospheric moments, imbued with melancholy with more rhythmic openings, yet always characterized by a common feature: the oniric plane, the certainty of the existence of parallel realities, the escape from everyday life to embark on an inner journey, aware that «there is something beyond».
27 years after the first edition, Avantgarde Music re-releases Pale Awakening in two valuable collectible formats: 12 «colored double vinyl in a gatefold cover with lyrics.
Wind Atlas – An Edible Body Label: Gradual Hate Records – GH 137 CD Format: CD, Album, Digipak Country: Spain Released: 26 Jan 2018 Style: Dark wave, Cold Wave, Post-Punk,Experimental
An Edible Body, Wind Atlas’ new album, marks a turning point in the band’s trajectory. Their third record builds a new space for the band to experiment and play with new sounds and electronic rhythms. Strangely, An Edible Body is the band’s most experimental album and at the same time the most accessible.
After a change in the band’s formation at the end of the Lingua Ignota (BFE, 2015) tour, Wind Atlas take a break from performing as to discover new sounds and work on a new album. Without a bass player, the band turns to electronic music as an answer for mixing their ritual ways with new intensities and rhythms never explored by them before. If their first albums, the EP Fen Fire (BPR, 2012) and The Not Found (BPR, 2013), were essentially influenced by 4AD’s eighties bands like Cocteau Twins or Dead Can Dance, with Lingua Ignota, Wind Atlas discover an array of possibilities beyond the bands initial reverb-pumped folk songs. Opening up to post-punk, primitive sounds and spiritual chants, they begin to include post-industrial hints that would later crystallize in the form of this new album, An Edible Body.
In search of this new sound, the band decide to record the album in New York with Sean Ragon, main figure of the current post-industrial scene, leader of the band Cult of Youth -whom they meet after performing together in Barcelona- and occasional guitarist of Psychic TV, seminal band of the industrial music scene: the chemistry in the studio was immediate. An Edible Body was recorded in just two weeks, one freezing month of February in 2017, at Sean Ragon’s basement studio in Maspeth, Queens, New York.
The album experiments not only with new sounds but also with new forms of speech. That’s why “Desertor»opens the album, a crude and simple song, in which the voice finds itself almost alone, in the aridity of a desert, threatened by a noise in the background. Interferences interrupt the words and the voice goes out of tune due to tape manipulation.
That interference foretells what is to come, the anticipation of a new affirmation called “Shedding Light”. The drum machine blends with the acoustic drums and metal plates, the synthesizers stand out and the voice sings ironically to a new reality, built in a more assertive and cruder way than in previous albums.
Despite the apparent distance between songs, An Edible Body sounds oddly solid. The dark ambient sound of “Camino de la cruz” is far from “How to Liquify” or “Ruins”, the most unabashed pop song the band has composed to date. In a way, Sean Ragons production gives unity to an eminently heterogenous album. The eastern influences of Lingua Ignota reappear in “Herencia de Jade”, with a danceable industrial beat that takes on more significance when performed live.
“En la cruz” is a techno tribute to San Juan de la Cruz and probably, one of the central tracks on the album. The new version of some of the verses from his Cántico espiritual combined with a dense rhythm that culminates in a polifony of voices affirming the existence of the force of the invisible, product of Sean Ragon’s magic in the studio thanks to the sound processors used on bands like Coil or Chris and Cosey.
On the other extreme we find “Under these Waters”, a sound poem that sings to a theme present in the band’s imaginary from the start: the uncanniness of water. “Under these Waters” is a song with a strong sexual component built through hipnotic cadences and suggestive synthesizers.
“To Clarice” is a post-industrial ballad, fundamental to understand Wind Atlas’ new vibe. Again, the influence of poet Leopoldo María Panero is reflected in the lyrics, which speak of a cathartic encounter. “To Clarice” is also an offering to writer Clarice Lispector, as well as a recognition of one’s body and the foreign body, its senses and its meanings.
The album is out on January 26 through labels BFE Records and Hidden Track on vinyl, and GH Records on CD
Label: Wave Records – W067 Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Limited Edition, Numbered, Picture Disc Country: Brazil Released: 27 Dec 2017 Style: Darkwave, Coldwave, New Wave, Minimal, Synthwave, Synth-pop
Réminiscences is a selection of 8 standards of the band revisited in a more punchy and electro style compared to the original versions but preserving what made the specificity of the Opera Multi Steel sound. Indeed, on boosted rhythms and fully re-recorded vocals, those new versions use sounds and “historical” instruments cherished by the band since its beginnings: TR 808, TR 606, TB 303, Elex, Casio VL-1, recorders, medieval choirs and various samples. The texts have been preserved in their entirety. The tracks are taken from albums such as Cathedral (Un Froid seul, Du Son des Cloches…) A Contresens (Les Sens, Las), Les Douleurs de l’Ennui, La Légende dorée (Fureur en Asie) and even from the very first vinyl EP of the band (Massabielle). The artworks of the disc and sleeve, as well as the video clip coming together, have been realized by Alan Cassiano, who based his graphic work on visual atmospheres inherited from the very first vinyl EP of the band, using images taken from the Encyclopedia (XVIIIth century) and Perspectives by Jan Vredeman de Vries (XVIth century).
Finally, Reminiscences is not a simple compilation of tracks, but rather a kind of travel through the different ages of Opéra Multi Steel’s music rearranging/revisiting classic songs and images through nowadays eyes and ears. * picture vinyl + incard with credits and copy number LTD EDITION 250 COPIES
Bleib Modern – Vale Of Tears Label: Wave Records – W059 Format: CD, Album, Limited Edition Country: Brazil Released: 15 Feb 2016 Style: Post-Punk, Coldwave, Shoegaze
Limited edition of 500 hand-numbered/stickered copies Digifile packaging Artwork is different from the vinyl edition Track 6: Vale (exclusive instrumental to the CD version)
The german post punk band Bleib Modern doesn’t sleep. after the first album ‘all is fair in love and war’. Bleib Modern became a band. Those five boys playing music together for many years – and that is what you will definitely hear in their new album ‘vale of tears’. It’s a mixture of the old style and many new influences like cold wave, shoegaze, noise rock and synth sounds. in the end, their music stays melancholic and psychedelic. The whole album was produced by theirselves.
