My Review: TORCH - A Familiar Lie

 

TORCH - A Familiar Lie

May you be blessed, Denmark: how you can be so versatile, in all the arts, is truly a mystery, but with this generosity enjoying it becomes a privilege and it would be a shame not to take advantage of it. The trio from Aarhus play hardball, rummage and conquer new proselytes, lower their gaze and find in semi-darkness their favourite ally to flood our babblings with dark and gloomy satisfaction. But where are we? Really in the north of Europe? And if so, are we sure it is music published in our time? The answer is always yes, confirming the fact that we are inattentive and do not follow well the movements of bands that know how to have the same right and ability as many others to honour genres which are still able to stimulate curiosity and the rightful contribution of discomfort.

After the first extraordinary and delirious seconds, where we can already sense that we are in front of something that will grip us, the electronic part, the Darkwave, the most scholastic and effective Synthwave stun us and they do so with the favours of darkness, becoming an angry pagan rite without having to explode in rage. We stocked up on beauty in a few minutes....

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

2nd April 2023

https://torchh.bandcamp.com/track/a-familiar-lie

La mia Recensione: TORCH - A Familiar Lie

 

TORCH - A Familiar Lie

Benedetta Danimarca: come tu faccia a essere così polivalente, in tutte le arti, è davvero un mistero, ma con questa generosità godere diventa un privilegio e sarebbe un peccato non approfittarne. Il trio di Aarhus gioca pesante, rovista e conquista nuovi proseliti, abbassa lo sguardo e trova nella semioscurità l’alleata prediletta per inondare, con cupa e tenebrosa soddisfazione, i nostri balbettamenti. Ma dove siamo? Davvero nel nord d’Europa? E se sì, siamo sicuri che sia musica pubblicata in questo nostro tempo? Sempre sì la risposta, confermando il fatto che siamo disattenti e non seguiamo bene i movimenti di band che sanno avere lo stesso diritto e la stessa capacità di tante altre di onorare generi che sanno ancora stimolare curiosità e il doveroso contributo di disagio.

Dopo i primi straordinari e deliranti secondi, dove già si intuisce che siamo davanti a qualcosa che ci avvinghierà, la parte elettronica, la Darkwave, la Synthwave più scolastica e efficace stordiscono e lo fanno con i favori della tenebra, divenendo un rito pagano inferocito senza dover esplodere nella rabbia. Abbiamo fatto scorta di bellezza in pochi minuti…

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

2 Aprile 2023

https://torchh.bandcamp.com/track/a-familiar-lie

My Review: Nightbus - Mirrors

 

Nightbus - Mirrors

Where were we? In the middle of a city, waiting.

From that waiting, the Mancunian band takes Shadowplay, by Joy Division, and wanders into the new artistic movements of this urban agglomeration that is desperately searching for new realities which can recall the glories of the past.

But the trio, musically at least, from the outset appear to be a blimp trying to look down on history. It is rather the vocal part that gives references, it almost seems to be close to plagiarism, but then we realise the magic, the youthful brilliance and the spectacular work on melody and interpretation. 

We thus find ourselves in a universe that is not parallel but rather distant, in which in the end we feel like stating that another band with the present enlightened by class has entered the pockets of our hearts…

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

2nd April 2023

https://nightbusuk.bandcamp.com/track/mirrors

La mia Recensione: Nightbus - Mirrors

Nightbus - Mirrors

Dove eravamo rimasti? Al centro di una città, ad aspettare.

Da quell’attesa, la band Mancuniana prende Shadowplay, dei Joy Division, e vaga dentro le nuove movenze artistiche di questo agglomerato urbano che sta cercando disperatamente nuove realtà che sappiano ricordare i fasti di un tempo.

Ma il terzetto, musicalmente almeno, sin da subito pare essere un dirigibile che cerca di guardare la storia dall’alto. È il cantato, piuttosto, che regala riferimenti, quasi sembra di essere vicino al plagio, ma poi ci si accorge della magia, della brillantezza giovanile e di un lavoro spettacolare sulla melodia e sull’interpretazione. 

Ci ritroviamo così in un universo non parallelo bensì distante, nel quale alla fine ci si sente di affermare che un altro gruppo con il presente illuminato di classe si è inserito nelle tasche del nostro cuore…

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

2 Aprile 2023

https://nightbusuk.bandcamp.com/track/mirrors

My Review: BLACK NAIL CABARET and Friends - Sister Sister (Alternative)

 

BLACK NAIL CABARET and Friends - Sister Sister (Alternative)

May will come and there is no doubt that we will be subjected to a pleasant shock of continuous emotions, because Woodland Memories will be an axe that, in a gentle way, will cut away everything that our overcrowded auditory system does not need.

To assert something so absolute, maybe the old scribe is wrong, maybe not, but this is the situation: this first track anticipating the album has emphasis sewn into it, a slow-paced intensity that leaves the heart unmoored, as if it had been running and it hadn't.

That’s it.

The magic that defeats preconceptions and banalities.

A poetic attitude, almost explosive, almost dreamlike, almost a lot of things, but then, clutching its neck, you see in its veins stretches of intensity that leave you dumbfounded.

Pop kisses the black, has a non-alcoholic drink with Jazz, with the smoke-filled rooms of a faceless American city, and returns to Hungary, with fingertips pressing on tuned instruments with the flight of a swarm of vibrations one step away from sadness. One is moved, and a saxophone full of glass hidden in the charcoal makes things right: perfection has been represented…

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

2nd April 2023

https://blacknailcabaret.bandcamp.com/track/sister-sister-alternative

La mia Recensione: BLACK NAIL CABARET and Friends - Sister Sister (Alternative)

 

BLACK NAIL CABARET and Friends - Sister Sister (Alternative)

Verrà Maggio e non vi è dubbio che saremo sottoposti a un urto piacevole di emozioni continue, perché Woodland Memories sarà un’ascia che, in modo dolce, taglierà via tutto ciò che non serve al nostro intasato apparato uditivo.

Per affermare qualcosa di così assoluto, forse il vecchio scriba sbaglia, o forse no, ma tant’è: questo primo brano che anticipa l’album ha l’enfasi cucita addosso, un’intensità a ritmo lento che lascia il cuore senza battiti, come se avesse corso e invece no.

Ecco.

La magia che sconfigge i preconcetti e le banalità.

Un fare poetico, quasi esplosivo, quasi onirico, quasi molte cose, ma poi, stringendogli il collo, si vedono nelle sue vene tratti di intensità che lasciano basiti.

Il Pop bacia il nero, si fa un drink analcolico con il Jazz, con i locali pieni di fumo di una città americana senza volto, e ritorna in Ungheria, con i polpastrelli che premono su strumenti accordati con il volo di uno sciame di vibrazioni a un passo dalla tristezza. Ci si commuove, e un sax pieno di vetri nascosti nel carbone dà una botta al cerchio e una alla botte: la perfezione è stata rappresentata…

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

2 Aprile 2023

https://blacknailcabaret.bandcamp.com/track/sister-sister-alternative

My Review: ZEITGEIST+ Vol. 2 by Cold Transmission Music

 ZEITGEIST+ Vol. 2

by Cold Transmission Music

We find ourselves before the new gift from Cold Transmission, a label constantly capable of giving us reasons for happiness, privileges that become benefits to be used to steer our needs towards an area that knows how to be both collective and intimate.

So let's visit the 19 songs in this new compilation by Andreas and Suzy Hermann, whom we thank for the umpteenth time.

Song by Song

1 Bedless Bones - A Poison Tree

The Estonian band packs melody and intriguing situations by taking us, dancing, to the banks of a river, with a tree guarding this Synthpop-soaked electronica.

2 Alex Sindrome - Suicide Watch (featuring Dawn Blackbird)

The French artist's electro has a make-up of sensual darkness, a track that closes the shutters and plunges us into an ethyllic coma: eclectic, seductive, it conquers by the solutions adopted.

3 Walter Frosch - Under A Spell

The Swiss musician and singer, with his punk soaked in Synth wave and Pop, finds a way to write a sonic path that colours the sky at a high tempo.

4 Night Haze - The Light

We fly to Greece with an Electro-Dark embraced by Darkwave and it is a physical and mental delight, as with the track we travel into the light of a darkness that welcomes this perfectly structured sound system.

5 A Projection - Time (RMX)

Sweden confirms its distinct sense of giving joy to fear: a song with the gothic banner on Dark-Electro beams, splendid...

6 Left for Pleasure - Hinter Schweren Gedanken

EBM, Synthwave, Post-Punk, Electronics for the German band that takes the eighties and treats them with a syringe full of algorithmic woo, flashes of icy wind and magnetic fingernails: amazing act of strength.

7 M/A/T - Das Fundament

We stay in Germany and throw ourselves into icy, enchanting synths, where it's the EBm of the Nineties knocking at the door, with doses of electronics filling the pulsating veins of a robotic dance: ecstatic!

8 NECRØ - Surviving Pessimism

Lisbon and the synthetic fog, the shards of dust coming out of the abyss and the magnetic vocals of the most suggestive Dark-Electro, creating tension, even in the presence of hints of melody that try to make the situation more acceptable. It's pure adrenaline, with a whip on the skin.

9 Lacquer - Them

Berlin gives us a nice dose of conceptual sadness, slowly descending into the body, with oblique keyboards and a voice kept just under the skin for a song that compares Coldwave and Electro Pop, for a challenge in the very curious Alexander Platz. Intense!

10 Menthüll - Pour un silence

We go to Canada to dance in the folds of silence, with musical genres that meet each other, a lightness that makes us dreamy and happy: Synthwave prevails, toasting the many friends of this circular, sunny movement...

11 La Mécanique - Vestige du futur

Canada again, but this time we're in the middle of a lake full of electronic waves, in a sombre mood, powerful though, with its dose of Synthwave, Coldwave and Synthpop, urging us to surf on shards of ice in search of a farewell, with the future approving its melancholic guise...

12 METAL DISC - Crooked

Athens fills the Parthenon for an acid party with flashes of EBM and Synthpunk, with Minimal Synth projections that warm the hearts in its changes of impulses and hallucinations...

13 Rina Pavar - the things we hide (Club Mix)

The Leipzig goddess offers us a Club Mix, to complete our toxic addiction to this track: the dark electronic measures her breath with a weave of synths soaked in poison, to dance, dying, in her arms...

14 Oliver Decrow - We Are Going In Circles

Dear Oliver is the emblem of Germany, who whips the present, teases it and pours his strategies on it, skilfully combining Coldwave, Electronic and Synthwave, for a gloomy welter of liquid atmospheres. Therapeutic and mysterious, the song spins us around in a magic circle of feverish threads...

15 Laurent Colson - Senses Game

At night, in Paris, among the streets, staggering, fleeing, with happiness in black clothes and shadows, and the Synthwave blessing and summoning sick carriers of fragments of electronics, hot. Hypnotic and rapacious...

16 Sun's Spectrum - All I Want

All we want is to lose ourselves in the intensity of the Italian duo, pelvic engineers of Synthwave pounding, with voices morbidly close to enjoyment, as everything moves in delirium...

17 Revenge Body - Bliss

We fly to the States and cover ourselves well: the band here melts our hearts with a catatonic melody, its skin painted with Retro Wave and tamed electronics, close to a sobbing Coldwave...

18 Bleached Heat - Against the Wall

Canada again, and it's black-skinned orgasm, in a merry-go-round that starts in the Eighties and arrives at the present day: it takes a few prestigious genres, on which Synthwave, Synthpop and Dark Synthpop take over, deciding to command operations. And you dance with your eyes against the wall...

19 Scenius - High Low

To end it all you go to Leeds and it's a glow of synthetic tears, a pensive walk between the darkest Synthpop and an obedient Synthwave. You close your eyes and fall in, happily, with bruising cheers, because sadness is never quite a mistake...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

1st April 2023

https://coldtransmissionmusic.bandcamp.com/album/zeitgeist-vol-2-2