Issue 4 - Matrix Revelations

electronic music with attitude

HELALYN FLOWERS – AYRIA – I:SCINTILLA – JUNKSISTA – GLIS RECOIL – DANIEL B. PROTHESE - METROLAND - DISKONNEKTED

AESTHETISCHE – DUNKELWERK – KANT KINO – TECHNOIR – SIVA SIXFREAKANGEL – LOVELORN DOLLS – CYNICAL EXISTENCE – IMPLANT

MENTALLO & THE FIXER – KRYSTAL SYSTEM – MARI CHROME

2012 is over and out... A lot of things have happened in the Matrix we must say, a lot of things are still happening, and above all, a lot of things are still bound to happen. What a hectic year it was, and as one

door closes, another one opens…here we go again! Issue #004 of our «Matrix Revelations» magazine is here offering you a taste of what you can expect from us soon...

While the second half of 2012 brought us the stunning blu-ray from RECOIL, we also launched the de-but albums for two much-acclaimed new bands (both involving EBM veterans!) with METROLAND

and AESTHETISCHE. Add to this a bunch of outstanding EP’s from GLIS, SHAUN F, FREAKANGEL, I:SCINTILLA, MARI CHROME, AMBASSADOR21 or yet our most recent label addition from Germany JUNKSISTA. In October, we also inaugurated our official Alfa Matrix bandcamp page http://alfamatrix.bandcamp.com/ with the 44U concept through which we will reveal 4 new tracks from 4 of our label bands almost every month. These songs are made available in top quality and are sold at a «pay as you wish» price... A very successful adventure so far, and for which we received lots of positive feedback from you our fans. THANK YOU for this precious support!

After the recently released solid 6th edition of our classic «Endzeit Bunkertracks» compilation box, 2013 will see the release of a new compilation series exclusively devoted to female voices from the under-

ground scene: «Absolute Grrrls Manifesto» that we are currently completing as you read this... The first months of the new year 2013 will also see new albums by CYNICAL EXISTENCE, LOVELORN DOLLS, GLIS, DUNKELWERK, KRYSTAL SYSTEM and KANT KINO. And if this wasn’t enough, We’re also ex-pecting new CD’s soon from IMPLANT, HELALYN FLOWERS, DANIEL B. PROTHESE, JUNKSISTA, AYRIA, as well as EP’s from I:SCINTILLA, AESTHETISCHE, SIVA SIX and some intriguing surprises from POUPPEE FABRIKK, ALIEN VAMPIRES and FRONT 242...

In this new Matrix Revelations issue, we once again let the bands speak themselves about their future plans and new albums!

And if you’re still searching for the perfect x-mas present... Go and discover our e-shop if you did not use our mail-order service yet! We have at the moment a special discount corner active on the site

allowing you to buy 3 albums for only 29,99 EUR (shipping & postage included worldwide!). http://www.alfa-matrix.com/alfa-matrix-sales.php

Enjoy the read and we’ll rendezvous somewhere in 2013 for a next edition with more news, gossip and revelations about our artists’ musical endeavours present and future.

Your Alfa Matrix Team

benoît blanchart . bernard van isacker . seba dolimont

code: alfa matrixgenesis: august 2001

target: connecting hearts & brains

trademark: electronic music with attitudecredo: together we are stronger

operational HQ: brussels . belgium

www.alfa-matrix.comwww.facebook.com/alfa.matrix

www.twitter.com/alfamatrix

3electronic music with attitude

G L I S P H O E N I X

G L I S . P H O E N I X[CD / 2CDbox / digital]

Classic-era 4AD ambiance meets early WaxTrax electro/industrial.Lo-fi ethereal darkwave sound with a touch of melodic modernity. Nostalgic hints to Bowie, Eno, Cocteau Twins, NIN, Joy Division…A personal and meaningful album of death and (re)birth.

http://www.alfa-matrix.com

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LOVELORN DOLLSThe House Of Wonders [CD / 2CDbox / digital]Extraordinary dark romantic atmospheres à la Tim

Burton. Incisive guitars, infectious beautiful melodies, charming female vocals. Produced by Victor Love (DOPE STARS INC., OMEGA LITHIUM, etc.)

for fans of THE BIRTHDAY MASSACRE,LACUNA COIL, etc.

You have released a few new songs on various com-pilations lately… When

can we expect a new HELALYN FLOWERS release? We think that everything will be ready on early 2013. Yes, we re-leased these two new songs («Be-fore The Sunshine» and «White Me In || Black Me Out») to warm up audiences and reveal two diffe-rent sides of the album…

When hearing these new songs I have the impression that the new album will be more upbeat, more electro and maybe a bit closer to the debut album than to «Stitches of Eden»? What can you reveal at this point? «A Voluntary Coincidence» was a raw, adrenalinic and powerful re-cord while «Stitches of Eden» re-presents our finest taste by raising a big wall of melody and harmo-nies. We think that the new record

(officially we reveal here its title: «White Me In || Black Me Out») moves somewhere in between the two but it’s different at the same time. We’d say that it’s going to be our darkest album, in which even the sweetest melody has some-thing black inside. It’s not going to be a concept album like «Stitches Of Eden» was. Contrary, this time ‘mood’ is the key-word. It’s kin-da cinematic and each note is an image and a scenario. Some song titles: «Alkaline Twins», «Electric Night», «Collide», «Tribes Of The Future»... Image and design have always played an essential part in your work. What can we expect from your new release? Really we always do what we feel. So it goes with the visual. We think our image is the frame of the most important thing in Helalyn Flowers: music. «Stit-

ches Of Eden» sounded like our personal tribute to 80s sonorities (Punk, Wave, Pop/Rock, Goth or whether it is), consequently we vi-sually marked the whole concept with a New Wave-like look, white backgrounds, lots of flowers, sur-realistic characters etc. This time, you get Helalyn Flowers for what they are, for what their core really is. Less embellishments, more es-sence. Just like the record is meant to be.

What’s on your planning for the next months? Firstly, the release of the album! Also, we’re thinking at a live-re-lease including lots of bonus ma-terial (cover versions, unreleased, alternate mixes etc.). In the whi-letime, we’re planning a European tour with our new live line-up. Booking agencies which may be interested can contact us at info[at]helalynflowers.com

More essence -less embellishments…



From start ‘till release, we are now 2 years further down the road. How do you look back at the entire

enterprise? What was positive, what was negative? And would you do it again?It has been a very positive experience and with better-than-expected results. People seem to have readily accepted a format which I was told would be “difficult”, but more than that, have simply enjoyed the film and the premieres which have gone with it. The negatives are that I had to personally spend a disproportionate amount of my own time on the campai-gn, meaning I was forced to shelve most other creative plans I had for a while. I’m not complaining because I did enjoy the process but it has been all-encompassing time-wise. There are many reasons why I spent so much energy on the film project - firstly, as well as being excited about the film itself, I am a perfectionist - secondly it proved quite a complicated product to manufacture technically - but mainly, be-cause I had to undertake the equivalent work of 5 record company people myself while simultaneously communicating with Hungarian collaborators who do not speak very good English (even though they were all incredibly enthusiastic and willing to go the extra mile for the endea-vor, which was heartwarming to see in this day & age).

During various Q & A’s after the scree-nings you expressed your desire to work on film music. It’s a dream every musi-cian has, why is that? What attracts musi-cians in getting to compose film music? I’m not sure ‘every’ musician has this dream but there is something magical about hearing your work utilised on the big screen. And a great soundtrack can really gel with a great film to take both aspects onto a higher plain. ‘The sum is greater than its parts’ and all that. So it’s a very appealing prospect, and musically can give a extra wide scope of possibility - more so than the confines of pop music or even albums.

I saw 2 screenings, the one in Oslo and the one in Amsterdam and the Blu-ray format is indeed an excellent format for this kind of events with a very clear image and sound. I guess there is no way back for you as far as concessions regarding sound and visuals is concerned? Then again in a world where streaming and downloading has become almost the stan-dard it’s not always an obvious choice. No?High resolution audio seems to be very slow in becoming widely available but people want it, and frankly deserve it. Audio delivery for consumers has not kept up with the technological possibili-ties, still largely being delivered in fairly crude 16bit digital format, or laughable MP3. Basically CD hasn’t changed since the ‘80s. It is definitely time to offer much higher resolution, which some are alrea-dy doing of course. For visuals - people also expect higher resolution. DVD is already a dead format with HD streaming as the inevitable future for film & TV. Our filmmakers and I were never going to spend 2 years producing high definition visuals with DTS surround audio only to see it all dumbed down at the final stage, so Blu-ray was the best domestic format option for the physical release and the nearest one can get to the full experience, but I suspect that format won’t be with us for long either. As to physical formats in general, all kinds of possibilities and packaging ideas are being banded about - we see new attempts everyday to lure punters with more and more desirable options. At times, it can be confusing and appear slightly desperate. Record com-panies & artists are throwing out every template they can think of to see which sticks, or appeals most. Musicians and bands are also trying out different bud-geting & funding options such as Pledge, Bandcamp and the like. I’m sure for my next release, whatever it may be, I will also be looking at beautiful, high-quality physical formats because personally I am from a generation that values the objects.

I imagine by the time I finish my next work, these trends will have changed yet again.Once we ALL have lightening speed free-to-air internet connection, then HD streaming/downloading is bound to send these touchable, space-consuming objects to the gallows. Howe-ver, for many this is still some way off. I myself live in the countryside in Sus-sex and my connection is pathetic, with 1940’s infrastructure delivering hopeless connection speeds (no fibre-optics in si-ght). We live in the dark ages where this technology is concerned. I liken it the first days of electricity when individual companies competed over ‘renting’ it out to the chosen ones who could afford. Our UK government tries to encourage us to conduct all our banking, pay our bills, interact with the tax department, subscribe to entertainment services etc, all in the modern way over the ‘net’, but then do not provide anything other than a snail’s pace broadband supply which falls over every 5 minutes. It is incredi-bly annoying. They can’t even switch on the W-Fi at the world’s busiest airports - Heathrow & Gatwick - unless there is a severe snow or volcanic eruption crisis (only then does it miraculously becomes possible for everyone to get on-line). Un-til we get past this naive and childish pe-riod (and look back & laugh), physical objects will be with us.

There was an interest in getting a concept film made around ‘Liquid’, but like you said that would have obliged you to take a step back in time and not move forward. It made me think that pe-rhaps you could be one step ahead and consider working around a concept for a possible next album and include a film there. It would surely bring an extra di-mension to your work and perhaps even cling on even more to what you have in mind as far as visuals goes?I have been talking about this a lot re-cently. I intend, without too many pre-conceived ideas, to just make some new

music and see if it can be applied to a film, or work in conjunction with a film-maker. What we will end up with I do not know yet, but just thinking along those lines will free me up to concentrate on eclectic atmospheric music which can go anywhere. I won’t necessarily be thinking ‘album’ but we may end up with one or maybe both things become one entity. The most important thing is that I get into the studio and do not keep dragging on the live appearances and so on, otherwise I’ll never get going on anything!

Why didn’t you play Belarus? Titter :)

Regarding the whole X-factor drama we had in the past few weeks (Martin Gore and Simon Cowell falling out with each other), do you think there is still a pla-ce for non pre-fabricated music in the charts? I sorta have given that up years ago. And actually I would think the non-prefab music doesn’t even belong in there

anyhow. Because looking back in time, it has always been somewhat dominated by X-factor like bands, think Stock, Aitken & Waterman.I would always expect the more cynical out there to be trying to cash in on their perceptions of an audience that exists in their imaginations. Manufactured music was always aimed at the most susceptible teenyboppers in my day, although now it’s aimed at all-age groups. I remember The Osmonds, David Cassidy, Bay City Rol-lers and others in the ‘70s, all constructed by Svengali cigar-toting managers. Even The Monkees - perhaps the first manufac-tured band? I’m sure it will continue while there is a gullible buying public - many of whom, let’s face it, can’t be arsed to think for themselves and are quite happy to be force-fed their diet of underwhelming pop escapism. But pop doesn’t have to be trash - it can also be brilliant, moving, and of very high quality. There should be room within pop for everyone. Some great great pop music has been made over

RECOILPop doesn’t have to be trash

the years, with depth and sometimes even thought-provoking messages : ‘My Gene-ration’, ‘Unfinished Sympathy’, ‘Whiter Shade Of Pale’, ‘Satisfaction’, ‘Waterloo Sunset’, ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin Feelin’, ‘Strawberry Fields’, ‘I Feel Love’ - shall I go on? Like many, I tip my hat to Mr “weirdo” Gore in this instance : perhaps not put in the most eloquent way, but he managed to sharply articulate the senti-ments of a nation in one simple sentence with his anti-Cowell comment (‘shot’ used as obvious metaphor for “stop bom-barding us with shite and allow room for some proper bands & artists”) as anyone vaguely intelligent could deduce. And it is not surprising that someone who pulls their trousers up that far would inevitably get their knickers in a twist.

What’s on your agenda for the next few months?Maybe a few film premieres in the USA and a Mexican film festival, but mainly I shall adorn my warmest clothes and get my head down in the studio!

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electronic music with attitude

You have been quite silent for some time and suddenly you

reappeared with a new GLIS single, a SHAUN F single and a new tour with COMBICHRIST! What have you been busy with all this time and how did it feel to have all this together?My father passed away in 2008 and that was tough for me. We were very close. He was the main reason I am a musician. I stopped writing what was to be the new GLIS al-bum “Phoenix” for about a year. I got married in 2009, and my wife and I lived a low-key lifestyle whi-le we saved for a house in Seattle. In 2010, I began recording new music again, but it was very diffe-rent. I had changed. I had aged and started reflecting on music from my youth. My father gave me a beautiful purple Gibson Les Paul electric guitar that I used in a few GLIS concerts. I started writing all of my new songs with that guitar. Shortly after my wife and I bought our new home, I got a call from Andy and Joey from Combichrist asking if I was interested in rejoi-ning the band and doing a “best of” tour throughout Europe. The pre-vious month, I found out that my wife was pregnant with a baby boy. A lot was happening! I talked with my record label Alfa Matrix about my goal to finish writing the over-due GLIS follow up album, and kicked off the reboot with those 2 singles in the Summer.


You now announce the new stu-dio album. «Phoenix»! A new start?I had fallen out of the EBM/In-dustrial scene (music and touring) for a while and was doing my own thing behind the scenes. I went to see several alternative/punk rock/indie bands at the venues around Seattle. I was inspired by a lot of the music coming out and from the past. I was motivated to start playing guitar and drums… I went through a nostalgic period and started listening to all of my old post-punk records, Bowie, and Beatles… I had to translate this somehow in the studio, and “Phoe-nix” is what happened. By the time it comes out (first quarter of 2013), it will have been 8 long years since “Nemesis”… but 8 years of growth and insight.

I have the impression that this is the first time you sound totally free in your songwriting without any pressure? It also seems to be your most personal record ever? Yes. “Phoenix” is a manic, and at times very self-satisfying album for me. I wrote it as an ode for tho-se who have inspired me the most. I didn’t hide my heart at all, and I’m the most proud of that. The music-style changes from track to track, but somehow manages to stay focused. It begins dark, finds peace, and comes back again with a new outlook from where it began. I took a bit of Bowie and Eno, and

a classic-era 4AD sound to create the ambiance… grabbed some inspiration from Nine Inch Nails, Underworld and Joy Division for the body of the music. Many of the songs were written with a gui-tar before I added any electronics. I found my muse in the vocals of Lauren Krothe, who I met in past Combichrist tours. Lauren is the jewel of the record. She is intro-duced on the second half and ma-kes the transition from darkness to light perfectly. I used a few other musicians in the studio: longtime GLIS live drummer Michael Wi-mer, VNV Nation keyboardist Ga-briel Shaw, a very talented multi-instrumentalist Johnny Unicorn, and Krischan Wesenberg of Roter-sand for some extra help with pro-duction. I used my son’s heartbeat in utero on one of the songs. On the last Combichrist tour, I met a cool guy named Elliott Berlin who was my drum/keyboard technician (also keyboardist for Aesthetic Perfection). He did a unique remix of “Apocalypse Parties” during the tour and used equipment we had with us to make the sounds. I was impressed. He also did some drumming on the version of “Apo-calypse Parties” that appears on the album.

What’s next for you now?Fatherhood! Then we see what happens…

G L I S 8 years of growth and insight… before fatherhood!

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The new DUNKELWERK is underway. What can we ex-

pect from this new album, this new Operation? Back on the batt-leground so it seems?

Yes, some great defeats and many ruins. Endzeit Electro with an atti-tude and deep emotions. By liste-ning to «Operation: Duesterland» you can join a nation which was in a nosedive to hell. No tales from dark fairylands! I do what i can

do best... creating movie-like sce-neries. World War II was a reality and this fact makes the new album disturbing. It´s about defeat, not about victory! So don´t put Dun-kelwerk into the wrong corner. In my opinion «Troops» and «Ope-ration: Duesterland» are two of the strongest anti-war albums this scene has to offer. Many use war elements but only a very few bands deal with this theme wholehearte-dly.

Design is again a very important part of your work. How do you work on this part, research work, collaboration with a designer...?

This time I had a rough idea and some design elements. I worked with Oli Häcker from bastart-worx once again. He has created a sensational layout and the limited box design is outstanding. Besi-des this fact, he is reliable, always on time and trustful when dealing with Dunkelwerk. Perfect!

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Endzeit by conviction

Soundwise you have always kept some distance from the dark elektro trends to focus on your own thing, away from the com-petition of who is the loudest, the harshest, with massive com-pressed sound and beats?

Indeed. To be the loudest is no criteria for Dunkelwerk. I hardly can listen to most of this so-called harsh club music. It´s loud but life-less. Music needs some headroom to breathe. And all this hyper-dis-torted vocals are most of the time absurd. You cannot understand what the «singer» wants to tell you besides the fact that he is as evil as hell. Don´t get me wrong. I´m also far away from being a singer but i try to be understandable and to sound like a human.

Do you write an album a bit like a book with a story set from start or is music coming first? How was the writing process for this new cd?

For «Operation: Duesterland» I started with a research for original German war broadcast recordings. Some of them are very hard to find and rare. Those elements make Dunkelwerk very authentic and disturbing for some for sure. The samples give the songs the main direction. Sometimes I start with a broadcast sample, sometimes I start with a beat. But overall these broadcast samples are the main elements for me. My concept is: Endzeit aus Überzeugung! If you want to join soldiers on their way into defeat and misery you should give Dunkelwerk a listen.

What’s next for you?

After releasing «Operation: Dues-terland»? I don´t know. The time I can use for making music is limited and shrinking. I needed 4 years to release a new album. That´s crazy and a killer because after 4 years you can be happy if there is so-meone who still knows your name. Over the past few years the market for this kind of music is close to be dead. I´m not the only one thinking about if it is stupid or clever to go on. In the end, I do it because I love this kind of music. We will see.

What can we expect from your forthcoming album «The

House Of Wonders»? Goth, me-tal, electro, darkness, mystery...?

C. All of that and much more! It’s impossible to sort Lovelorn Dolls in a precise category. When I’m listening to other artists I hate to hear an album where every song is a copy/paste of the previous one. I like the spirit that you could find in some early Queen albums like «A Night at The Opera» where you could find an acoustic song, then a very hard one, then a ballad, then an 8-minute prog song, etc. So the idea is simple: does it sound cool? Yes? Ok , then let’s do it!L. You can expect surprises. There

are some cool male and female duets. There is also a bonus CD which includes extraordinary re-mixes of our songs. I’m amazed by the talented people who worked with us.

The album design is very intri-guing and fantastic as well. We have a feeling of darkness in a fantasy world? What can we find in the house of LOVELORN DOLLS?

C. In the House of Wonders, we-rewolves are lurking in the dark... There are actually lots of werewol-ves in there. The idea of the we-rewolf is that he looks «normal» during a period and turns into so-

mething else more... dangerous. The werewolf can be your neigh-bour or someone close.... or it can be you! L. In the house of Lovelorn Dolls, there is also love, passion, hate, in-trigue. We tried to talk about love in every aspect of it. Love: passion for a man or a woman, love for your child, love for nature, even love for fame. Love can make you do crazy things. The world is dark, but you need to protect the child in you.

As often with new bands, you get compared with other artists. I read about THE BIRTHDAY MASSA-CRE or yet GARBAGE for exam-ple. How do you yourselves define

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LOVELORN DOLLS and what are your music background and influences?

C. I must admit that I had never lis-tened to TBM before Ladyhell told me about the band but after that I really loved what I heard. I usually dig bands like Yes, Dream Theater who write long and complicated songs but I also like bands that are more straight to the point like Rammstein, Linkin Park, Oomph. What Lovelorn Dolls has in com-mon with the bands you mentioned is the love of catchy choruses and haunting melodies.L. I’m honored to be compared to Garbage or The Birthday Mas-sacre. I admire them very much.

I love their catchy melodies and their dark but pop atmospheres. They both have a catchy and cute female singer. I hope I can handle with the comparison, ah ah! My personal background includes bands from the 90s like Placebo, Depeche Mode, Tori Amos. They all have the sense of good compo-sitions, and in the end, that’s what matters. What’s next on your list?

C. Lots of things. We have already begun to compose new songs for the next album. We already have some very cool tracks in our wal-let... Also we are looking forward to play on stage. Of course, first of

Welcome to the house of wonders…all, we are very excited by the re-lease to come and we are curious about the reactions to our music.L. We are very proud of that first album. We hope people will have as much pleasure listening to it than we had making it...

How was Cuba?Haha! Is this actually an interview question or are

you just asking me? Cuba was won-derful. I love the culture there and it was a needed break from everything including technology. Plus warmth! But landing in Santiago De Cuba on the South East Coast was a little de-pressing. Hurricane Sandy hit that area pretty hard and the damage was clear driving through the country. The resort used to have a restaurant and bar on the beach that was com-pletely destroyed in the hurricane but it was neat watching everyone work together to rebuild what was lost.

It was an interview question for sure (laugh). Now, after the «Hunger» 1-track release, we will soon have some more Ayria material hitting your fans. It’s been a while since your last album. Frustrating to see the process being so long I guess?YES! New material, with the new CD “Plastic Makes Perfect” to be re-leased in early 2013, with hopefully another song or two released digi-tally as a sneak peak before then! It

was an incredibly slow production process this time around, although when things got moving, they rip-ped along very quickly. I’ve learned to be patient, and that good things will come eventually. Sometimes things aren’t in your control, and that can be frustrating since I’m a “want it now” kind of person, but my fans have been understanding, pa-tient and I hope they’ll find it worth the wait. I plan to push this release hard. I’m planning touring already for this Summer and hopefully fall. I’m already booked to play the Go-thic Cruise this September, which sounds like an incredible experience of getting to hang out with everyone for a solid week AND get a sort of va-cation! It’s going to be a good year. I can feel it ;) 13 has always been a lucky number for me…

Can you already shed a light on what we can expect on the album and its added bonus disc for the limited edi-tion?Like previous Ayria releases, it’s kind of hard to summarize the ove-rall sound or genre. I feel like I never

write the same song twice on a CD. If a song is the first song released and comes out as the single, everyo-ne’s like “Oh that must be what the new stuff sounds like” and I never think it is! (example, «My Revenge On The World» or the «Gun Song»). To be honest, the first single, is always the track that gets produced and finished first! There’s no deep thought out strategy behind it. I love all my songs equally, so to me, it never matters what song comes out first! This time, it was “Hunger”. On “Plastic Makes Perfect”, the-re’s an array of genres I’ve explored again, some electro-pop, some har-der industrial or EBM, or whatever you want to call it, some guitars, a moody ballad, a genre I felt I didn’t cover on “Hearts For Bullets” un-like the very moody “Flicker”. The-re’s a song that’s unrecognizable as me singing on it. There is some song writing, and melody progressions that I’m very, very proud of on this CD. Overall, I’m more comforta-ble with what I do now. I write for myself, not for fitting into a specific genre. I’m sure all bands say that,

but I think I’ve earned that. I dive into different subject matter, but I’m still angry, I’m still disappointed, and I’m still searching through my lyrics, but there’s more confidence, more fun, some silliness and sexyness at times. For friends that have heard the CD, they think it’s the natural progression, working with the talen-ted Seb again for the production, the sounds are strong and in your face. There’s more exploration with synth solos, and my one friend described the vibe of many of the electro songs as moody and retro in the lines of De-peche Mode. That is a very flattering complement indeed. The bonus disc? Lots of goodies again such as pho-tos, stickers, buttons, and this time.. something plastic! But we are still working on the details of that.

As you said, you went into the stu-dio with Sebastian Komor, how was that? Most artists I know try to learn from producers and knowing you are quite a curious kinda of person, I guess the same counts for you?It’s always a neat experience to work with Seb. He just gets me. I learn a lot from him technically. His vocal production is some of the best in the scene. along the lines of mainstream level in my opinion. I think together, we are a really cool combo sonically. Those familiar with Seb’s own work, know it sounds nothing like Ayria but with my songs, he gets to work with my type of structures and melodies inspired by genres and artists that we both love as our production goals! This time, he did an amazing job again. We’ve both had several years to come together with new techni-ques, skills and songwriting! I’m ex-cited with the outcome.

Aesthetics and styling are something that are part of Ayria. You talk about your hair and make-up and so do your fans. I even saw ‘how to make up like Ayria’ video guides on YouTube. Very special fans you have there…Hahaha! I have to admit that the look of Ayria isn’t my normal look. I spend most of my time at home in my pajamas :) I’m a complete crea-

ture of comfort. I prefer function over fashion day to day. But when it comes to Ayria, I love experimenting with fashion and make-up. Thanks to my friends at Plastik Wrap for making me look so good on the road too! I just love their unique clothing. I love colours, and have a strong pre-ference for solid colours and drama-tic textures. (Debris was blue, Flicker Green, Hearts For Bullets was pink and Hunger/Plastic Makes Perfect is going with Purple) At the request of my fans, I recorded a make-up tuto-rial showing them how I do my main pink and purple eyes and red lips look. I prefaced it with the fact that this is my go-to look on tour when I’m stuck with badly lit backstages and cramped spaces, and have to quickly pull off a decent stage look! I thought it was funny since I’m not a make-up pro at all! My main technique is usually just to cake it on until I look like a cartoon character! I paint with my fingers too! No pro-tools that I’d know how to use! My fans then came back and did their own “Ayria Inspi-red Make-Up Looks” complete with glitter, pink, hearts and stars, and red lips! It was amazing! They are very skilled. I sent the “winners” (a few of my faves) a prize pack for being so creative! It was fun! There’s not a lot of girls in this musical genre, and I happen to be one of them, that hap-pens to have a pretty colourful and feminine aesthetic too. I think my fans find that fun, which is why all the positive feedback to that aesthetic component of my music.

Your musical influences come from a wide array of bands, not necessarily from this scene. I suppose it’s the per-fect way to stay open minded when it comes to making your music?Definitely! There’s still not enough women in this genre, which I find important for me personally to find inspiration from. I love singing along to women vocal stylings! Hahaha ;) I also love male vocals too of course! It’s always about the melodies, lyrics and song progressions.. I go outside of the scene for vocal inspiration to be honest. I don’t think since I’ve star-

ted writing my music a decade ago that I’ve ever been shy about saying that I’m inspired from anything from early industrial, synth-pop, 80’s, current pop music, anything! I love melodies, I love any song that can make me feel. Goosebumps are pre-ferred. That’s when you know it’s a good song. Anyways, I’m currently putting together a Deezer playlist to promote some of my favourite stuff shortly, mostly unknown female vo-cals in the sake of promoting more of the ladies.

Lots of bands started introducing dubstep in their sound. Did it ever seduce you to do so?Hmm. I’m a song writer and vocalist mainly. Dubstep to me isn’t song wri-ting, it’s a production technique so, to be honest, it’s not really something I think about when I write songs. Al-though, I hear a band like Nero, a song like “My eyes” and go “Oh my God! What a great song!!” So the style has intrigued me, I love hearing what new production trends can add when incorporated into song structu-res. On my 2005’s «Flicker» when we produced “It’s Been Fun” we were inspired by the phasing synths of Benny Benassi at the time! It’s more in the production details than song writing I guess. That being said. Seb was working on “Hunger”, he texted me “How do you feel about dubs-tep?” Me:”ummm... it’s cool, why?” Seb:”Because I just did something to your song”... he was referring to the break down beat of the chorus, in «Hunger» which I loved! I had ori-ginally kept it with the driving beat, but he transformed it. I don’t think it’s that dub-steppy, but definitely in-fluenced by it. See that’s what I love, taking styles, trends or new produc-tion techniques and using them in moderation, or for effect. It’s weird when bands completely jump on the train 100% and are doing nothing but dubstep.. that’s when a genre gets run into the ground unfortuna-tely. Dubstep is this really cool sound effect in songs.. But I often feel the songs need more structure, hooks.. and of course vocals! ;)

I’m a complete creature of comfort…


w


What brought you to create the JUNKSISTA concept?

Underground music we can dan-ce to but also laugh to and relate to in a certain way?It pretty much happened by itself, we didn’t plan anything. Boog and me are very different when it comes to the musical background and personal taste. We were to-tally open for anything, when we started working together. We ex-perimented around a lot, combi-ned whatever we thought might work. As i am not the greatest sin-ger in the world, i prefer to talk in the songs and it kind of became Junksista’s signature thing - just like the kinky and wicked lyrics. They are a result of my dirty hu-mor and the fact that i usually don’t like to write lyrics that are too personal. We want our music to be entertaining and i think it’s working…i think everyone appre-ciates a dirty joke!

Don’t you fear that only people with a certain noir sense of hu-mor can fully understand and enjoy your music while it could

shock others or simply lead them not taking you seriously?I don’t fear that - in fact i know that some people do feel shocked or really don’t take us seriously. We don’t really give a shit and it wouldn’t be realistic to think we can please everyone with what we do. We prefer to create something that is either loved or hated rather than something neutral that won’t bother anyone.

How different is the Diana from JUNKSISTA from the Diana from the real world?She is exactly the same - in «eve-ryday-life» she just knows when it’s appropriate to keep her big mouth shut or when to leave the slutty clothes in the closet.

Tell us more about your new ep and forthcoming album? What can we expect from these. How was the creative process for these new songs?We are very happy with the EP and the remixes we got from the other Alfa Matrix bands. It sounds and looks hot! Most songs are very

dirty..like «Cunt Rocker». With «Electronique» we want to show that there is another side to Ju-nksista too. We also just finished the music video for «Cunt Roc-ker» released along with the CD of «You’re My Favourite Thing To Do». The creative process is always the same: either Boog or me prepare a demo with a new song idea, then we have a session where we finish it together. We usually have lots of fun doing that. Even though I write the inappro-priate lyrics, Boog isn’t really less silly and inappropriate. We are still working on our Album - the release is planned for early 2013. If you like the EP you will LOVE the album. There will be lots of the famous Junksista humor, stuff that will make you shake your ass, but also some less dirty/silly songs… and maybe even a ballad! We will definitely think of some hilarious surprises that will come with the CD..don’t know…a thong, a mini whip, something pink that sparkles..haha….we’ll see!

Shake your ass or leave your slutty clothes in the closet!

J U N KSISTA

JUNKSISTAYou’re My Favourite Thing To Do

[EP - playstation box]A crazy and explosive diversity in sound for a unique groove.

From indie rock to 80’s dance through laid-back electro!A characteristic filthy touch of humour with sensual female vocals.

A crazy and burning sonic firework that makes you irresistibly shake your ass to JUNKSISTA’s sexy, catchy and stylish tunes...

Addictive noise-pop you sing along in no time.



How have you been doing since the release of your «powerswitch» album? I

have the impression that the fee-dback was extremely positive so far, am I wrong?The feedback has been quite positive, the vast majority of re-views have been good and most important of all lots of great fee-dback from fans! We are aware we cannot make everyone happy, there will always be some people criticizing, but even then it is very important to listen as this is what makes us grow as producers.

It seems you are also much de-manded for remix duties and col-laborations? Back in the spotli-ght?Oh yeah, we have been very busy remixing other bands - We have

remixed 14 bands already so far... some remixes are still not released. We have remixed great bands like Stray, In Strict Confi-dence, Robotiko Rejekto, Junk-sista, Psy’aviah, just to name a few... There is much more to come in the coming months!

I heard that you have been wor-king on new songs already and that some special compilation ap-pearances are in the pipeline and maybe even a new EP release? Can you tell us more already?Yep, that is all true! We are in fact finalizing our new EP, which will have 5 new tracks, and several re-mixes. Collaborations with other great artists is also expected, so we guess it is gonna be a strong EP! 11 trax more or less!What will be the title of the EP ?

What are the new songs dealing with? What music style can we expect? Tell us more!The title of the Ep is NACHT-BRENNER. You can expect hi-ghly energetic EBM tracks as well as multi layered dancefloor fillers with some nice collabora-tions from other artists as well. The title evokes the mood of the album, night burning electronic trax. Club friendly.

What’s next on your side? You seem to be very active again!!Well, next is release our new EPCD, collaborate with other artists, produce new remixes! We would also love to be able to play in a major Festival in Europe next year, but we understand it costs a lot for a promoter to bring us there... well...let’s hope!

night burning electronic trax

AESTHETISCHEpowerswitch

[CD & 2CD box]

New hard-driven EBM project from ex-AGHAST VIEW members!

Good old EBM for fans of FRONT 242, NITZER EBB, F.L.A ,...

Hammering beats, intense rhythms, vocal fx, kick-ass basslines.

A full blast of electronic force made in Brazil.

19electronic music with attitude18 electronic music with attitude



«The Productive Citizen»… How should we understand

such album title? Sarcastic? This is our feel to the current eco-nomic system. Belgium is stron-gly taxing on the working mass to keep the brute national budget in balance. We have an index system, constantly rising wages, so compa-nies expect the production level of the workers to increase or outsour-ce working capacity. There is this constant pressure to produce more, to contribute, to participate in the system. And I have a feeling that is not only a Belgian story, but some-thing that holds up for the world economies. Yet, art is never valued in that balance. While I feel more productive on releasing a new al-bum, than producing more e-mails. Maybe we should re-evaluate pro-ductivity or log out of the game!

It’s been 3 years already since the last IMPLANT album… Will IMPLANT be able to surprise us again? I’m not sure if I’ll surprise people or not. I never wrote an album with the idea in mind to surprise. This time again, I have a feeling we worked on an album that makes

sense as the next step. We did re-work and re-work end re-worked tracks. That was kind of a new ap-proach to an album. But we wan-ted to step away from the normal pattern of creating a track, record vocals, next. These tracks have been re-altered after the vocals and then re-worked again, till we felt like they were really finished, and reflected a track to the best of our abilities. We also wrote a few real lyrics, using rime, chore rime. And that is something new for Im-plant…

You already let a few songs out on some compilations… How much do these songs represent the new album actually? Only the one on sounds of the ma-trix 013 will be featured on the album as is. “Lord knows I tried” with Claus Larsen is also on the al-bum, but totally reworked. To my opinion way better than the pre-vious released version. The track on Endzeit Bunkertracks act VI will be on disc 2 (the limited ver-sion). All other released compila-tion tracks will not be on this al-bum. Basically because they didn’t fit the flow of the album.

You mention one song together with Claus Larsen… Can we ex-pect more collaborations again as always? The collabs are not that many this time. One reason is that a lot of those collabs end up being the very good tracks of the album, and then we can’t do them live, unless we put the vocals in the backing. And again, the track with Claus is so good, it’s kind of a shame we’ll never be able to do this live. Or maybe once, who knows. Still, it’s not going to be a track we’ll play on every concert, simply because we can’t put Claus in the backline! Other collabs on this album are Bonnie from Krystal System, who does guest vocals on a track, and 2 backing by Isa Garcia from XMH. And that is it. But lots of friends from the music scene did remixes for disk 2 (and disc 3). So lots of collabs there still though.

Where do you still find that inspi-ration after all these years without ever repeating yourself? Hé, we are the productive citi-zens… laugh!

Log-out of the game!

DUNKELWERK . Operation: Duesterland[CD / 2CDbox / digital]

Old school Endzeit Electro with modern elements and an attitude.Deep emotions on movie-like sceneries of total defeat!

Authentic rare original German war broadcast recordings. One of the strongest anti-war albums this scene has to offer!



How different is this new pro-ject CYNICAL EXISTENCE

for you from your other music ac-tivities?

There is a big difference, mainly cause I make everything on my own from music to vocals. It also gives me room to explore things I haven’t been able to before… I learn to explore the ways of ma-king music from scratch and I mean everything from a beat to a melody. Before I only wrote lyrics and recorded vocals, now I am the god of my own music. I can do whatever the f*ck I want and no-body can tell me what to do.

What should we expect from your first album? And why did you call your band like this actually!?

You can expect a album with a lot of personal influenced and varia-tions of dark electro. Dark, perso-nal and angry. And maybe even a bit playful! I called the project cos I’m a cynical person! People are arrogant, stupid and self centered. And of course egoistic. I am a cy-

nical person and I exist so it kind of makes sense, doesn’t it?

Will you also be performing live with this one-man band?

I Already performed a couple of shows actually and I’m planning on playing more next year. Cyni-cal Existence is me so of course it will be based around me. It might sound like an egoistic thing but it will revolve around me since I try

to reflect and show my feelings and sound to the crowd through myself. This will of course be bac-ked up by some really nice backing projection. I love to communicate with the crowd and feed from the energy they give back.

Am i wrong to see this project more as a personal catharsis?

In a way yes, since I can write about anything and do whatever I feel like doing...The lyrics are per-sonal experiences and of course personal thoughts and feelings. I write about things that I have seen or done, or what I actually want to do or think. It all comes down to what kind of state of mind I am in or how I feel at a particular mo-ment. This also reflects the sound of my album, it’s mostly dark and angry but there are still a few rays of lights that shines through in the darkness.

What’s next?

Get out and play live and work on new material.

Dark, angry, arrogant & f**cking free!


CYNICAL EXISTENCECome Out And Play

[CD / 2CDbox / digital]

New harsh EBM project from F. Croona(PROJECT ROTTEN, MENSCHDEFEKT).

Powerful elektro haunted by stand-out vocal angst and melodic synths.A promising new hard elektro entity revealing determination

and aggressiveness.For fans of [SITD], SUICIDE COMMANDO, GRENDEL, AGONOIZE, etc.



23electronic music with attitude 25electronic music with attitude

It seems that the FREAKAN-GEL machine keeps running loud and fast? DVD release, a

new ep… How are things doing?Everything is going just fine. We have been picked up by one of the greatest booking agencies in Ger-many - NeuWerk Music Manage-ment and well... trying to do our best in reaching something... not sure what or why... but well... we just do not like to sit on our assess and do nothing. We are always in action and I think it will be OK to say that we have almost finished writing demo tracks for our third album... and how pathetic of me to say it... but well... it will be so-mething really different from THE freakangel You knew... or not.

Great! You are also publishing se-veral videos… How important are image and visuals in your work?

We are not some Visual Kei band... if You see us on stage all dressed up... well... it only means that we are actually looking like this in a real life too... plus/minus some make up or so. We will never put on some uniform to look indus-trial... we better feel free and open instead of hiding ourselves behind some «oh gosh look... it is soooo industrial» image.

I also indeed noticed that FREA-KANGEL is performing live more and more?That is what we are doing best as a band. I mean... when we are wor-king on a song...we work separa-tely and we actually never meet in real life only to work on music. We do mostly everything via internet. Technology guys. For a new album we are working exactly like this... But when the right time comes

and we are getting for a show... we meet and actually do something all together. Because it is what we do best... especially now when we are playing with a live drummer. Eve-rything sounds pretty different and we just really enjoy it!

What can we expect next from the FREAKANGEL camp then? The 3rd album already you said?Our third album is almost ready... we still need to do a huge amount of work... but I think I can say that it will be possible to release it next year right after the summer break. At least it looks like a plan at the moment. So the end of this year looks for us kinda simple... we work on music, play videogames and have fun.

Technology guys do not need uniforms!

FREAKANGELPorcelain Doll EP

[CD-Playstation Box]Strongly boosted by the detonating success of their second album"Let It All End", FREAKANGEL returns with a limited 11-track EP.

Heavily fused electronics, melodic guitars, harsh vocals, hard-hitting beats, ghostly female backings: a deviant violent lovesong for all the bleeding

hearts amongst you! Raw, heavy, uncompromising... simply FREAKANGEL the way we all love them!



KANT KINOfather worked in industry

[CD / 2CDbox / digital]Much anticipated new album from Norway’s EBM gang!

Hard-hitting old-school EBM - NITZER EBB meets FRONT242.Strong melodies, ripping bass lines and upbeat electro.

This is pure classic Electronic Body Music at best!

What has been going on in the VIRGINS O.R PIGEONS camp lately? Since the fire that ravaged your house and studio we no longer heard much from you? All OK?Since the fire a lot of things have happened. It was hard to get back on track with all the equipment des-troyed, my sound library collection gone and the pressure of all the lost time. I also had to prepare a new room with proper acoustics to work in. But at the same time we got the chance to further mature musically, we got to know and experiment with different types of equipment and I had the time to expand my knowled-ge as a producer and use it in our up-coming album. It took us quite some time but I had to make sure the new material is worth the wait. And it does. Can we expect the new album la-ter this year? Can you reveal more about it? We heard some songs on compilations revealing a much harsher dark elektro approach. What is VIRGINS O.R PIGEONS anno 2012 sounding like?Yes, you should expect our 2nd al-bum to be released somewhere in 2012. There are still no specific da-tes but the material is near comple-tion and we are very pleased with the results. You shouldn’t expect a

much harsher dark electro sound, the tracks revealed in past compila-tions were recorded way back and might be misleading you just a little bit. There is a huge variety of tempo, rhythm and melodies, which is exact-ly what we had in mind in the first place. There’s also a strong «mains-tream» element existing throughout the whole album, without losing in quality or changing radically the dis-tinct sound of Virgins O.R Pigeons. We aimed for something unique and original and I think we’ve got it. Get ready for a full Virgins O.R Pigeons blast! More details will be announced as soon as the mastering process is completed and some fur-ther arrangements are made. Maybe we will prepare a «special» treat for our fans…

What else can we expect from you? More concerts?We will start booking concerts for 2012 soon enough, having a Euro-pean tour in our plans. Again, no further details can be announced yet as we are still focused on the recor-ding and the planning is raw. But I can say for sure that we missed the road and the road missed us! We are also looking forward to introducing our new members Miyuki and Sin-ner to our fans, as they will be a big part in our live shows.

Full blast!

Steffen, it has been quiet around the band for quite some time. I guess your work for Apple has been more than

taking up your time. We got a trailer online earlier this year announcing a new album. So, what is the status?Oh yes, it ‘s been a while, the work on music tools on the one hand, and the peaceful free time it takes to be creative on the other, they don’t go along so easily. Nevertheless, the album is nearly complete, one more vocal recording, and some really minor mixing tasks. I had targeted this state for much earlier in the year. There were just so many changes and interruptions, e.g. a greater move within Hamburg due major to chan-ges in my private life, new studio setup, voice training and sound experiments, and always new gear to nerd around with…

Who took the producer seat this time? Olaf Wollschläger?This time, it is a 100% self production. Doing this album more or less on my own is part of the concept. It shall not imply that I might think I can do any of this better than great producers like Olaf. This time I just want to give it my own full sound stamp that I have in mind. Generally I think that produ-cing music nowadays is much closer related to the composition process anyway, at least with electronic music like Technoir. If one likes developing these skills then one should also use them, both creatively and techni-cally that is. In addition, I do have some ex-perienced and patient people watching this process, so there is good communication which always helps a lot and is essential to avoid dead ends.

The band is now a male fronted act. Quite

a drastic change after 2 albums with Julia Beyer on vocals. Did it never cross your mind choosing a female singer again? Then again, your covers of the Depeche Mode tracks «Sea of sin» and «Lie to me» with you on vocals proved to be amongst the most popular on the 2 Depeche Mode tributes that Alfa Matrix released. It was a longer trial and decision process. It started with defining what Technoir would be after the familiar vocal part defined by Julia had left. I looked at the two obvious options. One was to look for a new female vocalist and simply continue on the same path. But this left a weird feeling. Why would another female vocalist sing older Technoir songs and let the new thing sound similar like the past? I was looking for a more radi-cal change. Also, the Technoir sound itself would stay similar: I knew that from having tried lots of styles in the past and always en-ding up with the sound that I like best, the melancholic and melodic sound that simply defines Technoir. In spite of the fact that I think that Julia was a great singer (in ge-neral and for Technoir), I also had the im-pression that male vocals could push even the same sound further in a more provoking and fresh way. «Lie To Me» was a first trial, just to see if it could work in general. «Sea of Sin» was already more mature and I gained enough confidence to redefine what Tech-noir was and is. So it made sense to develop my voice further over a longer time. And it’s paying off.

«Believe» and «Human Shapes» are the first new tracks that appeared on respectively the «Sounds from the matrix 013» sampler and «Matrix Downloaded 001». The music is

more edgy than before, moving away from the clean electropop, I guess that’s because you are singing now?The melancholic and melodic attitude is still there and is the basis for everything, and it sounds in many ways familiar. However in most songs I use harder drums and more dirty synth elements. Although my voice is a clean singing voice without intention to sound distorted or otherwise manipulated, it transports everything I compose a bit stronger than before. Even older Technoir songs can sound more impulsive due to that. So yes, the simple fact that it is now male vocals makes everything a bit more edgy and snappy, which was my intention.

You already tested the material out at the Dark Waters fest in Nottingham; how did that turn out?We played about 50% new material, among it were «Believe», «Human Shapes», «We Came For Love», and «Sea Of Sin». We also played older songs where a transition to male vocals was not only possible but made a lot of sense. Among these were e.g. «Growing», «Dying Star», «Silence» and even a song like «Breathe» worked out well. The new live line up includes me as the front man for the first time, with some additional keyboard parts, my old buddy Stephan on his traditional analog synth, and Meike on electronic drums, iPad synths and female backing vocals. She is a well trained singer but likes the idea of male front vocals for this kind of music. We rehearsed a lot for this gig, and saw it as proof of concept which worked out nicely. Now we are ready for more.

Over the past years, the music market has also changed a lot. What is your take on it?Hm, I personally noticed a shift towards vinyl;! I started buying a lot again, it must be the old passion of having heavy great art work in your hand and dealing with the playing process more intensively than just listening to mp3’s in the background. For example, the new Dead Can Dance double vinyl has only two songs per side, you spend a whole lot of the time just flipping sides. But I enjoy the digital format, too. Tech-nically it can sound good enough for me nowadays. Speaking Music, Spotify is the new game changer to me. It can actually help to keep and extend your music cultu-re. Whereas Facebook attracts more people when posting your cat eating a synth knob compared to announcing a new album, it is a weird world. With so much easy acces-sible music content today, it has become much harder to leave a lasting impression with your own work. Permanent promotion keeps you in the front but away from the creative process, which should be the ba-sis still, in my little world at least… Feel blessed, if you find time for both.

TECHNOIRFacebook attracts more people when posting your cat ea-ting a synth knob compared to announcing a new album!



METROLANDmind the gap [CD & 2CD box]

Conceptual synth project from Belgiumfor lovers of vintage keyboards,

KRAFTWERK, KOMPUTER, TELEX, I START COUNTING...Melodic synths, robotic vocals, analogue drum machines.

Music and vision melt around one central theme:The Underground.

Daniel, it’s taken you a while but we were finally able offering new mate-

rial from your earlier project. You have never been silent with the project though we never saw new material being released. What made you decide getting ‘public’ now?I had time to make it happen and also the urge to release all that dormant material. I worked on this over a long period of time in an on/off manner , more for my own pleasure , but realized it could become an artistic state-ment of some sort when I went through some of the stuff laying around.

Was it the birth of Front 242 that made the output of the band scar-ce or were there other elements playing in the on hold status?Yes Front 242 ,took all the time and even some of the early other compositions of Prothèse only two (humoristic) tracks where re-leased under the Prothèse name.

How would you say that your ma-terial progressed overtime ? Be-cause you have been recording for this over quite some years.

For Prothèse, the challenge/man-ner of working is always the same no midi, no sync, 98 % analogue synths and noise machines, re-cord everything as audio, no sa-ving (or writing down of sounds), maximum 8 tracks, sequencer was analogue (electro Harmonix drum sequencer) , only 8 notes and its own oscillator (Square), other things that sound sequenced are just lfos playing with different parameters of modular synths or the Arp Oddysey in repeat mode.

What can we expect from your forthcoming solo release?Lots of music spread on different formats...2 vinyls , a 12» and a 7» ,2 cds , all packaged in one box/cover. I want the people to listen to the music in episodes and I choose to spread all the stuff on the formats I felt would be best for the music at hand. It is not my intention to have people listen to everything in one go. The design will have that electro retro fee-ling, it will be a very limited phy-sical output, around 333 ex.

Front 242 will also awake with a vinyl re-release of some more back catalogue material. Has the

material been re-worked in some way?Sound wise ,it wasn’t what I could/would call a remaster, but a going back to what the original sound was at the time. We are not trying to compete in the loudness war and I even went back some steps from the american version, everything was passed through analogue outboard equipment. The catalogue was unavailable from us for some time and Sony USA of course took that (wrongly) as an invitation to sell in Europe. Being a vinyl fan since almost always, I also felt it was important to release «No Comment»/ «Geo-graphy» again, and by extension, have a vinyl release of some «Pul-se» and assimilated tracks. The covers have been changed a little bit, at least some of them. «No Comment» took inspiration from the USA design, the vinyl release of «Geography» remains the same (except some details) and the vinyl attached to the «Pulse» cd release ... is a «filtered pulse». we made a selection of some pieces of the to-tal releases of the «Pulse» project and put those on a single vinyl with a cover design related to the first edition.


98 % analogue synths and noise machines

Daniel B. Prothèse

No midi, no sync,


With the new material one could say that Kant Kino is shifting away from the

dark electro sound from the debut album, and instead choosing for a more melodious style with softer edges.Stop the presses! We don`t neces-sary entirely agree with that overall conclusion. Actually, we still think that Kant Kino has a sound that are quite rough edged and dark in style on this new album, tracks like «Push Your Buttons», «My Game» or «Ubermensch» have stomping beats and angry vocals. And many of the tracks have a lot of dark electro elements in them. For ins-tance, the second part of «Ich Liebe Katarina Witt» is pure dark electro in our book, and a slow track like «Bleed» ends with raging vocals and beats on a quite dark theme (btw, that one is about the imme-

diate overwhelming feelings the days after the terror attacks July 21st here in Oslo). But, we have taken the sound of Kant Kino a bit further, combining more elements from different styles of music with our own sound, form techno to rock. And yes, many tracks might have some softer elements to them, the most obvious being combining more clean and vocoder vocals with the distorted/dark ones, trying to build a stronger focus on melo-dic choruses. We never felt like an endzeit category band anyway. The press release from Alfa-Matrix on our previous album said: «KANT KINO inject the distorted force of the 90’s dark electro genre into their strong 80’s EBM roots to ren-der dark body music with distorted vocals and a strong sense for me-lody». If you add «clear vocals» to that statement, it`s not that far away

from the new album either. And as the title of the first track states: We are still Kant Kino! Many guest singers also made their entry on this second album. How come and how did you choose them individually?We think it`s part of the evolution we discussed. It`s a nice variation with female vocals, they suit the tracks in question, and they bring another level of quality to the tracks. There was no «big plan» to incor-porate other artists in our songs, it just happened along the way as we met these great people. They are all Norwegian vocalists based in Oslo with experience from other genre bands, one of them (Hanne Haug-sand) actually performed in the in-ternational finals of the Eurovision Song Contest years ago.

The song «Ich liebe Katarina Witt» displays your fascination with for-mer East-German figure skater and model Katarina Witt. What attracts you in her?Katarina Witt is an icon. Her pre-sence, her eyes, her beauty, her moves – elegant, strong, passio-nate, seductive. But of course also as a figure in regards to the DDR. It was actually Lars who said: «I want a Kant Kino waltz!». And a waltz style track he got. We have never seen Katarina Witt do a waltz on her skates (maybe she has), but in our minds she is a perfect image for an industrial waltz. And as the track develops, it shifts from the focus on pure fascination for Ka-tarina Witt, to her role in the DDR years. In Kant Kino style of course, just observing, not taking a stand on the theme in question.

You covered The Normal’s «Warm Leatherette» with Claus Larsen on vocals and changing the title to «Warm Leætherette». You already played this cover live in the past together with Larsen. Why this track?It was actually an idea that appea-red when we opened for Leaether Strip on the Xelabration Festival last year. Lars convinced Claus to do a thing together with us on sta-ge, and then the idea for the Warm Leatherette cover came up. It was such fun that we decided to use it our album, and the spelling of the track is our little hymn to Leaether Strip. Btw, Claus has mixed and mastered our album as well. Kenneth, you work in the opera house in Oslo, while you Lars make sure that our deceased get a proper burial. It’s not exactly jobs that fit together. Does this clash of careers have any influence on how you two look at music for Kant Kino?We don`t think of this as a clash really, we just have different kinds of jobs, that’s all. We have a lot in common, but also there a lot that`s different. For instance, Lars has

three children, Kenneth has none. Lars has a wife, Kenneth has none. Lars works at a crematorium, Ken-neth at the back office of an opera house. We don`t think these diffe-rences influences our choices for Kant Kino that much. The biggest thing is perhaps working hours for the band. When Kenneth is on his most creative side, Lars has been asleep for hours already… Things going on at work of course inspires our tracks, as do all parts of life, may it be work, a movie, an exhibi-tion, a newspaper article, going for a walk, a subway ride. Kant Kino songs are about observations on society, trough our eyes and senses. For instance, Lars wrote the lyrics to the track «Father Worked In In-dustry» (which also happens to be the name of the album). It is about a the fact that our forefathers to a greater extent used to work in fac-tories and industry, but it is also about his own father. And of cour-se, Kant Kino also loves the scene clichès (factory, industry, metal noizes etc). We tend not to write to-gether, one of us comes up with an idea, and then it develops. We have a lot of the same tastes in music (we both agree that Skinny Puppy «Ra-bies» and Nitzer Ebb «Belief» were among the best albums of 1989), which kind of sets a basic musical style for Kant Kino, we could never be a rock band. For the added bonus CD of the new album, you added quite a lot of dif-ferent remixers all adding their own style. The one that surprised me the most was «LRZBASS» which got an Anders Odden remake, which ended up being a trash metal one. You knew it would sound like this or was it a surprise for you as well?A bit funny story, in regards to the latest statement in the previous question: Lars actually had an idea of calling Kant Kino ‘No Fucking Guitars’ when we explored band names, just to be kind of provoca-tive (we guess we really wouldn`t go for that one at the end of the day

though....). Lars knows Anders Od-den from way back, and convinced him to do a remix. Since he is well known as the live bass player for Satyricon, and his guitar work for Apoptygma Berzerk, Celtic Frost and Cadaver, it felt natural to ask him for «as much guitar and orga-nic instruments as possible», since LRSBSS is an oldschool EBM track. It`s amazing to listen to the fantastic and almost «opposite» interpretation Anders Odden has come up with. Love it! Why it`s called LRZBSS with a “Z”, only Anders knows... Also the dub step remix Erlend from Essence Of Mind made of the «My sweetest crime» is very re-freshing. Your music really lends itself to various interpretations.We are very proud of our remix CD of the limited edition version of the album, as you said with very va-rious interpretations of our songs. We can`t believe some of the stuff people have come up it, we are so honored that these great artists have done their own thing on our tracks. They all sound fantastic to our ears. Since our own music has a more fixed sound palette, it is re-freshing to hear our songs come to life in these versions, and the re-mix from Erlend and Essence of Mind is a killer! Love it! Who has a sleeping disorder in the band? Or was «Just for the com-fort of sleep» an interpretation by the guest singer?Nice question! Lars has problems with sleep, but it`s actually the sin-ger of the tracks who has written the lyrics – Karine Kristiansen, and we put the song and melody to it. We guess it’s about a theme that everybody experiences and strug-gles with more or less in some way, the minutes or hours of insomnia with a whole world of thoughts rushing through your mind, and you would «just do anything for the comfort of sleep...».

we are still Kant Kino…


The sound of your new album is very astounding!! You set the bar very high again, this time?!!! Tell

us more about the writing, recording & production work for «Rage»?B: Thank you! Writing and composing is quite a bit like dreaming: you just explore your secret garden and try to enlighten it, like you have no fences. Then… The recording thing comes. You have to stop dreaming and start to work (laugh)! All our stuff was recorded at Studios d’Or in Paris and the master was made by the Swift crew in London.

I have the impression you experimented more on this album, putting more atten-tion to details and sound research? Am I wrong?S: You’re right! We wanted to create a sound of our own so we used hand-made analog pedals. We put them on our guitars and bass of course, but also on the synth and drums to try to catch a unique sound.B: Yes. Seven likes the mojo of a single coil with analog boutique pedals while I dig walls of metal guitars played with active humbuckers. So we sort of blend those two worlds. We also love working with synths which bring a unique organic texture...

S: We wanted everything to be boosted. Electro/EBM parts are more present than on our previous album and so are the me-tal guitar parts. We also made room for industrial sounds, classic instruments, sound design... B: That’s what’s interesting in music, there are no rules: you can use a large pa-nel of ingredients and blend genres and sounds, it’s all up to you!S: And I like the idea of discovering an album gradually so we also focused on details that aren’t necessarily heard at the first listen. I’m always impressed by your unique skill of jumping from one loud wall of guitar noise to the next synth track with ripping electronic basslines while kee-ping the KRYSTAL SYSTEM spirit…? Tell us more about your creative pro-cess? What comes first?B: What comes first is the spirit of the track. Once we have the feeling we were looking for, we turn it into music and ly-rics.S: Beyond the music itself, what really matters for us is the fight to wake oursel-ves up and to live in the present. It’s not a way of talking, it’s our lives. And that’s what we’re trying to say in our songs. Ho-

pefully we add a little touch of humour on this so that it doesn’t sound like a philoso-phical course…B: So to answer your question, we’re both doing things in equal part : writing and composing. But Seven takes also care of the production. What are you all «raging» about on this new album?B: Lots of things. We’re leaving in a world where we’re taught to be weak and to follow someone else’s creeds. We’re raised to think through authorities whether they’re religious, political, fami-lial… All our education consists in filling up our spirit so that we’re full of noise and endless thoughts… You hardly find some-thing straight in this world, everything’s twisted and corrupted. Even in art which is supposed to be intrinsically subversive you’ll find a lot of money seekers or, wor-se, fake rebels. This is where our rage is coming from.S: But feeling rage is a hope, it means you’re not dead yet and you still have the strength to fight your inner weakness.

What’s next after the «Rage»?B: Inner silence. That’s where rage leads to…

we’re full of noise and endless thoughts…


Check our exclusive digital releases on:

http://alfamatrix.bandcamp.com/

Rage[CD / 2CDbox / digital]

Electric versus electronic A unique blend of styles made in Paris - France.Loud rough indie rock guitars filtered through artisan fx.

Straight ripping electronic bass lines, radical synth arrangements.Seducing contrasting harsh male and filtered female vocals.



Your new album «Music From The Eather» challenges the listener to a new degree I find. You really

have to get absorbed into the music to find the structure and melody within the dense interlaced soundtrack?I do totally agree with your description. I did have the intention of releasing so-mething completely instrumental that was out of the ordinary that would throw people off, I also wanted music you could cruise to as well. Something you could lose yourself in while driving. But yeah it’s almost as if you have to listen to it as one long piece. I figure if you listen to it enough just like anything else, you will eventually know the structure, but it’s not something you’re going to get on the first or even 5th listen. I wanted pieces where not all is not present – you eventually dis-cover things after many listens that you never noticed before. I know it can get crazy but it’s all about a journey of some sorts, an adventure for the free of heart and the daring, just take the ticket and get on the ride.

Would you like to tell us something about the production process?

Hmmm. Well, it can be rather random, most of these pieces were works in pro-gress between lets say- 2006 and 2009 – I took a hiatus from music altogether and came back to it for a few months in mid 2011 and then I just had to say ok- you can work this pieces 100 different ways, just settle on something… and I compel-led myself to do just that, I had so much music and still do that have been works in progress, I loose my attention after a while when working on a piece and save it for another day and I may have a new perspective on it. But anyways I compelled myself to get over to my brother Dwayne’s and do the final layout of the tracks for the cd’s… That was rather a random pro-cess too… getting the tracks in order… I just wanted a flow that suited me at the given time. Something I could cruise out in the country to, driving without any dis-traction. It was very spontaneous. I recall my brother Dwayne hearing the tracks for the first time because I had never played anything to him, so it was the first time for him hearing the pieces. In the past when Dwayne was still a part of the band he never commented much on my pieces, we have always done what each of

us wanted to do, but I remember there were many times during the final mas-ter sessions where he would chuckle or break a grin and smile, but yeah he did make the comment “Gary, this is music for people who do lots of drugs” and we laughed. Like I mentioned, I did it for myself, it was for amusement, as well as escape too.

How much autobiographical is this al-bum actually?Well musically it is autobiographical in-deed, whether it be my far past when I was still a teenager, but it’s also about the experiences of others or situations to where I has been privy or witness to. It’s a theme that has always fascinated me. But in a nutshell I just wanted to take myself any a journey, and keep things interesting for me as an artist. I wanted the music to go through a lot of episodes, to take you on a wild ride. I think I have always done that to some degree or ano-ther, look outside the box. As a producer, I want to be challenged, and not always do the safe thing. But in a nutshell as far as themes go- I want the listener to make the music their own soundtrack

for their own experiences whether it be in daily life or a night on the town.

You’re kind of sticking to the same themes you already dealt with on the previous al-bum, aren’t you?Well as to why I stayed with the topic, it’s one that obviously fascinates me, I could obviously stay with what is safe in the scene, but that’s not what industrial/ex-perimental music is about. I choose to do music it’s as simple as that. I do what gets me off, no matter what direction I take it. As far as the music on these releases, I don’t expect all my fans to get it, besi-des most fans would rather make it their own. Why I wrote or composed the song is rather senseless to explain at times, words are simple inadequate that is why I wanted an instrumental release. Hell put your own words or thoughts to it, or it could be completely senseless to you…In a nutshell, it was music I had a dam good time composing when I felt up to it or had that urge. Well sure I have had higher states of consciousness; people can achieve that many different ways…. Some are dangerous and some are not. And there are no guarantees because when all is good, even everything can go completely wrong. Well what am I sear-ching for…..? I’ve already received those answers… funny thing is sometimes when I reflect; I feel ignorance, it can be bliss-ful. Be careful what you wish for, becau-se when you get the answers you may be completely unprepared for them and how they will affect your life. Yeah and I will say there was a pivotal {plus 4 moment/ as in relativity to the SHULGIN rating scale of psychedelic states} moment in my life when I had lots of unanswered questions, personal things, and in my youthful quest for a night of fun, I ended up having a full blown religious experience, and this was well over 15 years ago and at the time it was something I was not really ready for… Then again better than never ha-ving one at all. But that is something deep and introspective. In one pivotal moment everything made complete sense. It was my first taste off full blown ego loss. The-re was no duality.

Above the cover artwork of the new al-bum there is the statement «be cautious using this substance»?It’s sort of a trick question with many rea-lities to the answer! That’s all in how you view the statement, I leave it up to the lis-tener on that one. It’s a double meaning referring to the music and or the psyche-delic experience, it’s where you choose for the music to take you or how you apply it to the soundtrack of your life. To use it or

abuse it, depending on what your true in-tention is. Knowing yourself, your mental and physical capacities. And whether to take it to the bleeding edge…

What obstacles did you find in writing the album, after several years the previous one? Well, our music has always been about the sonic element. One of the main things nowadays is not to fall into the generic category. I find allot of electronic music within our scene now just generic and disposable, it’s either being played safe, Meaning acts are just following cur-rent trends within the scene and are not pushing boundaries. And when I’m spea-king of pushing boundaries I’m not just speaking of getting heavy or noisy, that’s not it. but there was a lull in the per se industrial/electro scene or whatever you want to label it, many years back, it sort of cornered itself, and even more so no-wadays with the advent of technology, It’s like I don’t hear any real effort being but into music. In that it’s being done just for the sake of it witout any real passion. Don’t get me wrong maybe I’m just to old school since I’ve been working with keyboards since the early 80’s. hell if I’m not mistaken we got our first synth a Ro-land juno 6 back in 82 and that did not even have MIDI but a pulse sync on it. But things were a challenge and more exploratory back then. With today’s key-boards and software it doesn’t take much knowledge of passion to come up with a simple dance beat/baseline and a basic melody. The sounds are already produ-ced. Everything seems too polished, too professional to be termed industrial or even EBM, hell I remember the days when EBM sounded raw and aggro. Much of what I hear today is done with pretense. another issue is everyone wants to be a rock star now and it does not cost nearly as much to get things going as it did back then, hell my first drum Machine had 8 sounds, it was the TOM by sequential cir-cuits, it cost me 800 bucks back then, I had to mow a hella lot of yards to get that. Now I can download a program for free with 1000 highly produced sounds for free with pro effects.

We always talk about the nostalgia from the good old times… You as a veteran on the scene, can you tell us? Were they really so much better?Sheesh -- really being around during the early inception, yeah things were different, I can remember them as plain as day- the underground due to the ad-vent of the internet and other factors, being that as time goes on, it has become

more mainstream- practically 90 percent of the music you hear, even on the ra-dio is 90 percent electronically based in some form. But yeah today it just doesn’t seem underground- back in the day, hell in 84 if you had a tattoo or a piercing or your hair dyed, you stuck out like a sore thumb, people would stare- today it’s the norm- as far a Texas goes. And back then it didn’t matter whether you were into Cabaret Voltaire or Bauhaus, Front 242 or Cocteau twins – you all stuck together, there was a reason why they called it un-derground- because at least from my view in the united states if there was one small club in a big city, with a following for anything outside of the mainstream you were there- there were no boundaries, there was an eclectic mix of people who were getting exposed to all types of music because it was all so new and technology was very archaic back then. So musicians had no heavy reference to start from… So many of them were coming up with fresh sounds.

After such an impressive career what is the greatest experience as a musician so far… what was the most negative?Well first off it is so much more than I ever could have imagined, and that’s the god to honest truth, even to this day I’m still shocked that people still listen to my music or that I even generated any sort of fan base other than myself – it really sor-ta freaks me out. I do chuckle to myself sometimes but I am also very humbled. I would have been thankful to release just one album, let alone have a good portion of my life documented to music and re-leased by various record labels, and have the fans who have been along for the ride over the years… And to keep it going this long…. Its like I have to slap myself, I think the fans know that though, it’s just the type of person I am, I’m sort of a twea-ked out old fashioned type of guy. But the greatest, and the worst, it’s just been a journey; the good things far outweigh the negative. I’m still around!

Can we expect some musical changes on the new album?There will always be that underlying ele-ment of MENTALLO in there- many of these pieces are more like ear candy for me. When I felt up to it, I would pass the time working on pieces just to sonically freak myself out. It’s not like I’m inten-tionally out to try and write an ebm or old school electro hit. Those old albums were honest and true, I wasn’t trying to impress anyone. Hell I was just a kid at the time locked away in a home studio in Texas. (laugh)

Taking you on a wild ride…


With «Skin Tight» you go to-tally electronic, there is no

bigger difference than what you did on the previous EP «Marrow 1». Is this also the outline for the next album?We love music and we love writing songs regardless of the genre or instrumentation. We usually don’t set out too many rules when we create music. With «Marrow 1,» we wanted to strip away the program-ming and computers and synthetic sounds so that we could return to a more «pure» form of music. It’s fun to try new things, especially with EP’s, because they’re quicker to produce and have less of a time/effort investment than full-length

albums. «Skin Tight,» on the other hand, was a fun song that was writ-ten 2.5 years ago that we wrote spe-cifically for the clubs. I don’t think either of these releases are any in-dicator of our new material or next album. If I could sum up our upco-ming music in one word, it would be «growth.»

The video for «Skin Tight» is one of the most professional that I have seen in a long time from this scene. How did you fix that?The director of the «Skin Tight» video is Chris Folkens. This is the third video we’ve made with him and he keeps getting better. He is ridiculously talented and he has a

great ability to get amazing shots and then edit them into a virtuosic fury that makes sense. We have been friends with him since 2004 when I did post-production audio and mixing work for his second in-die film, «Toxin.» We love working with him and we are very lucky to know him. He works with some pretty big bands and he has made several famous television com-mercials (in addition to his indie films).

You played a set at JBTV Music Te-levision, which is totally unknown here in Europe. What kind of show is this?JBTV is a nationally broadcast


music program that is based here in Chicago and has been on the air for the past 27 years. The show fea-tures music videos, interviews, and live performances from some of the biggest artists around. This inclu-des underground artists like Skinny Puppy and Combichrist to mains-tream rock bands like Green Day and The Smashing Pumpkins. Our episode will be shared with Silver-sun Pickups, which I think is cool. This is the second time we’ve taped appeared on the show (the first was in 2007) and it is a tremendous ho-nor.

I just found out that you’ll be doing the score for the documentary film Journey Through Fire. Many mu-sicians would die to get such an opportunity. Can you tell us a bit more about it, especially how you got involved?We’re very excited about composing the score for «Journey Through Fire.» The documentary film is a gut-wrenching story of overcoming abuse (you can Google it for the trailer and more details). We have thrown ourselves into this project and it has been a very moving ex-perience so far. The filmmakers are fans of ours and we met in 2011 when we played some live dates in California.

Can you tell us what you are wor-king on right now musically next to this soundtrack?We’re finishing up a new CD version of the «Skin Tight» EP. It will have a several new songs and remixes in addition to the title track. After that we’ll return focus to composing the score and writing new songs for the film, which will be released as a soundtrack album. I hope there will be time for a new studio album before the end of 2013.

Yes they did this…I:SCINTILLA

Skintight[digital EP]

Quick on the heels of their recently released acoustic EP "Marrow 1," electronic-rock quartet I:SCINTILLA switch gears completely with their brand new digital single "Skin Tight". The band abandons all guitars while vocalist Brittany Bin-

drim’s seductive lyrics shine over a bed of pulsing bass and synthesizers. A down-and-dirty electro

stomper that will definitely find its way into clubs.


What are you both listening to these days?

MK: Most of my time I am liste-ning to some new stuff I want to work with, finding lyrics and me-lodies. This morning in the car I listened to “City and Colours”.KO: Predominantly, I’m listening

a lot to the good old classics at the moment. For Example: Tears for Fears, Fad Gadget (which I have seen live on stage at one of his last concerts back in the early 2000s in Belgium), Depeche Mode, Front 242, The latest album from Men without Hats (Love in

the age of war) which I like very much, especially the Song «Eve-rybody Knows» and last but not least Soft Cell, just to name a few. For me, all these bands, and lots more of classic stuff in general, fits perfectly the Winter feeling and a soon ending year. I also


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listen to brand new stuff, I won’t miss a new favorite band or song of mine.

«Come Closer» peaked in the EBM charts. It wasn’t even a sin-gle, did you expect it?MK: No. But it’s a good song and even when it’s not EBM – the peo-ple like it. That’s great!KO: Same here I’m still comple-tely surprised about it. «Come Closer» is a relative quiet song and emotionally a little bit strange. As we finished the song, our first idea about this little strange tune was to offer it to Quentin Taran-tino as a soundtrack for «Kill Bill Vol.3». But who knows if Quen-tin will ever finish the script for it and if he would like the song. May be, we will never know. But back to issue, I’m very happy that a Mari Chrome song peaked the EBM-Radio-Charts. Beside our-selves, our listeners, fans and the people in front of a stage are the reason for doing all the work. At this point a very big thank you to all the listeners and the ones who got «Come Closer» into the Ra-dio-Charts.

So, what is Mari Chrome up to these days? I guess you are alrea-dy busy in the studio Kai? KO: Yes, we’re working on new material. And I can tell you there will be really kicking ass tunes once they will be finished. The only secret I really can reveal to you all out there is: NEVER CHANGE A RUNNING SYS-TEM! I had major problems the last weeks with my studio PC so that the work here stuck. I guess everyone who is producing music with DAW’s knows about this ni-ghtmares. Freezing DAW’s, Blue

Screens, crashing Plug-ins and all this sort of funny things. A se-cond thing is, at the moment I’m switching my studio to the brand-new Cubase 7 and I’m trying to get into it, so that I can start work a.s.a.p.!MK: These days I am busy with Christmas-Stuff, voyages and other projects. But between two dates I always write lyrics and trying some lines for the songs and ideas, which are waiting for me.

Marion, I indeed noticed you have been traveling around here and there, anything that inspired you for new songs?MK: I was in Spain where the music of Invisible Limits is still very very famous, the songs are still around in the clubs. I was in Madrid, performing a new Remix of «Golden Dreams». In Valencia I met some very interesting musi-cians and DJs. Their style of music is different and very special. But I like this open, a bit melancholic sound of the Valencia-Area. That inspires to new melodies and vo-cal-lines and also new projects.

An album these days is getting an even shorter attention span than compared to 10 years ago. You’d almost think that it has become quite disposable. What is your take on this?MK: Characteristic for these days: Music is made fast, songs are pro-grammed very fast in the compu-ter, vocals are recorded with lots of effects and distortion: “Throwing away society” needs “throwing away music”. You find this in the mainstream and you find this in the scene. Quality music will stay and grow over the years. First

you don´t recognize that but after some time (Invisible Limits = 20 years now) you see the difference and a continuous presence.KO: I think that you’re right when you say the attention span is much shorter but I don’t see this as a unsalable problem, be-cause good music and good songs always found the way to its fans and listeners. That has been like this in past and will be like this in the future. Of course, for me Mari Chrome stands for both. By impli-cation for a Band like Mari Chro-me that means that it needs more time to reach the people which will like our music. Our songs are not mass-produced goods so each single songs wants and needs to be explored, my opinion is they’re worth to be explored. I think, if an album is disposable or not depends on the listener. If I use music just as a kind of cheap consumer good all music can become disposable. If I take myself the time and real-ly listen into music it can become a pretty nice piece of art. What music in my eyes definitely is.

Are you both Spotify users? If so, what do you think of it?MK: I use it sometimes, only at home and private. I often switch on the artists-radio and discover new music I did not know. I like it and for bands it’s a great opportu-nity to present their music.KO: Yes, I use and I like Spotify, it’s an excellent service but right now many rare scene diamonds and many of my all time favorites are still missing there. So I don’t use it too often. May be they will work it out in 2013 and I will be there more often. I will keep an eye on this.

What has been going on in the VIRGINS O.R PIGEONS camp lately? Since the fire that ravaged your house and studio we no longer heard much from you? All OK?Since the fire a lot of things have happened. It was hard to get back on track with all the equipment des-troyed, my sound library collection gone and the pressure of all the lost time. I also had to prepare a new room with proper acoustics to work in. But at the same time we got the chance to further mature musically, we got to know and experiment with different types of equipment and I had the time to expand my knowled-ge as a producer and use it in our up-coming album. It took us quite some time but I had to make sure the new material is worth the wait. And it does. Can we expect the new album la-ter this year? Can you reveal more about it? We heard some songs on compilations revealing a much harsher dark elektro approach. What is VIRGINS O.R PIGEONS anno 2012 sounding like?Yes, you should expect our 2nd al-bum to be released somewhere in 2012. There are still no specific da-tes but the material is near comple-tion and we are very pleased with the results. You shouldn’t expect a

much harsher dark electro sound, the tracks revealed in past compila-tions were recorded way back and might be misleading you just a little bit. There is a huge variety of tempo, rhythm and melodies, which is exact-ly what we had in mind in the first place. There’s also a strong «mains-tream» element existing throughout the whole album, without losing in quality or changing radically the dis-tinct sound of Virgins O.R Pigeons. We aimed for something unique and original and I think we’ve got it. Get ready for a full Virgins O.R Pigeons blast! More details will be announced as soon as the mastering process is completed and some fur-ther arrangements are made. Maybe we will prepare a «special» treat for our fans…

What else can we expect from you? More concerts?We will start booking concerts for 2012 soon enough, having a Euro-pean tour in our plans. Again, no further details can be announced yet as we are still focused on the recor-ding and the planning is raw. But I can say for sure that we missed the road and the road missed us! We are also looking forward to introducing our new members Miyuki and Sin-ner to our fans, as they will be a big part in our live shows.

Full blast!

Jan, what are you doing these days?After the album was fi-

nished, I gave myself some time to experiment with new musical directions. Finishing an album is always rather stressful, so it felt great to be free again and make some music just for fun. I’ve been feeling very ins-pired lately, and the plan is to finish the Mildreda stuff, to make some Le-mongrazz, to create some ambient, and to do some GNY. And I am also doing some drum and bass. And did I mention I am buil-ding a new studio?

It’s funny to see how you dig up some older work of yours on your Facebook and especially the influen-ces that you associate with it. For «Out of this world» for instance you added that you were strongly ins-pired by Paul van Dyk and Oakenfold. I always had the impression you have a good internal sponge for sucking up new tech-niques and sounds to in-corporate in Diskonnek-ted. What elements are ready for being included this time?It’s tricky to be a producer and listen to music. I am happy that I can still enjoy music, but I can’t help myself but check the diffe-rent layers and the way things are arranged and produced. I am sure every producer feels that way. But it’s not just a curse. It’s a blessing as well because new styles can be a real adventure to discover. No-wadays I especially enjoy liste-ning to drum and bass and how

things are evolving there. The genre evolved from a much more sampled based sound to a more synthetic one with synthetic beats instead of samples, making it much more solid and club orien-ted. An interesting evolution that inspires me a lot, and I hope you

can catch a first glimps of this ins-piration in a forthcoming remix I am working on.

You also started a new side-pro-ject GNY I noticed which is more dub step and D’nB based. Now, as you might have noticed, some in the dark electro / industrial scene have a visceral dislike of anything that smells after those influences. What’s your take on it?In a scene where artists dress themselves like the Gestapo cha-

racters Herr Flick and von Small-hausen as in ‘Allo Allo’: how could one care about every single opinion? Or where hard electro bands go classic? It’s not a joke anymore, it’s far beyond. So no, I don’t care. With GNY we’re hap-py to seek our own path, and it’s

getting further and further away from the ‘scene’.

Also, are these influences that you couldn’t get into Diskonnekted?Even if Diskonnekted is about breaking bounda-ries, there are limits no-netheless. Some things just don’t work. I remember experimenting with some dub influences but that didn’t work out. The goal has always been quite clear to reach that certain at-mosphere. Some elements don’t work for the moods and colours that I want to create with Diskonnekted. GNY on the other hand is totally free. The main goal with GNY is to have fun and not to care about anything. But I wouldn’t say the influences are that different though. There’s

definitely an overlap.

Do you think everyone unders-tand your Oostends dialect on the rehearsal videos?I guess not, but bless yourself if you do (laugh). While Diskon-nekted started as a one-man only project doing its thing in the stu-dio, it became a real band. During rehearsals you can sense the dif-ferent vibration, and feels great to be more than the sum of three people creating music.


A curse and a blessing…

«Superstition»…? I heard a new release was in the pipe-

line? Can you reveal more alrea-dy? «SUPERSTITION» is the tittle of our new ep, 3 new tracks,2 remixes we chose from the european li-mited box edition of our latest al-

bum «THE TWIN MOONS» and 1 remix from the japanese limited double cd edition of our latest al-bum +7 new remixes upon tracks coming from our latest album too. This time i wanted to do so-mething that sounds completely different than what we’ve done so far, so..we did a new song which

will be featured in 2 different ver-sions..one with my vocals and one more with female vocals, just a voice & guitar..nothing more,the rest about this track will be known as soon as the new ep will come out... The 2 other new tracks will be the usual DARK/HORROR/EBM sound SIVA SIX is into.


Are the new tracks announcing a new album or something or are they especially made for this new EP?We are working on a new album, those 3 new tracks are part of the new material, we will finish the new album by the end of 2013, and i guess it will be out early 2014, meanwhile everybody can have a good and fast sniff about our new stuff in «SUPERSTITION « EP , mind that this new ep will be a strictly limited edition!! concept wise «SUPERSTITION» is one of the key themes to the main point/idea of our next album, unfortu-nately i cannot let you know more or announce to you the title of our next album since right now we are focusing on various points of view upon SUPERSTITION as a way of life, as influence in the life of millions, the way it has penetra-ted in us, the way it has put its corruption seed even in society’s official laws, how it can lead us upon evil..and how it can destroy true life ..the wise..the true and the beautiful..,at the other hand SUPERSTITION is also dedica-ted to the false and to the weak out there..the ones that all they can do is to clone..to a scene that has be-come nothing more than supers-titious when it comes to issues of evolve and progress, the luck of guts ... ideology and respect ,the bands that all they care about is not to lose their sales and disap-point their fanbase..to all who are so scared to move on....cto taste a bit of art..cto all of them that they are naive to understand the essen-ce of music and have not got the character to fit in the same disc an dark-ebm track..with a black me-tal remix... a techhouse remix and a track with just a voice and a guitar ,but we can do it...cand this is the breaking point of the mu-

sick SUPERSTITIONS ,this is all about what music is..and why and how its falsely labelled ....the dark side of the sound might have a lot of expressions the rest if for the weak.. You guys recently relaunched your www.sivasix.com website and are also working on another video clip taken from your last « The Twin Moons» album. I’ve the impression you have never been so much busy and hectic than the last time? What will the new video be like, cos the previous one was simply astounding! Tell us more about these projects and other things you have in the pipe-line?I guess you liked our first video clip « VALLEY OF THE SHA-DOWS «.. it was the first time we did a video clip, we had the help of some great people..they know who they are, it was not easy but not hard at the same time, being your-self makes everything easier... our new video clip is for the track « SERPENT WHORE « we wor-ked again with the talented di-rector CHRISTOS MAVRIDIS, we wanted to do something way different than VALLEY OF THE SHADOWS..Christos loved some of the ideas i had and he added his ones too, the rest you will find them by yourselves quite soon. Our official web site was dawn for almost 2 years for various reasons. We worked hard and i hope our FRATERS & SORORS will enjoy the ride.. everything about SIVA SIX is there....music player-bio-photo gallery -official merchan-dise -tour dates-contact.... WWW.SIVASIX.COM Yes we have been busy from day 1 we got into alfa matrix roster, it makes sense...a big label with a good distribution and with the help of it our WORK

gets closer to everyone world wide, we could not wish for more..., late 2013 we have our first ever Rus-sian tour (18-19-20 of january 2013) last april we did our debut Spanish and German live shows + around 15 more live dates sup-porting our latest album « THE TWIN MOONS « so i guess that we are quite active at the time. You guys are also very busy on the dark scene with various other ac-tivities? Can we know more about what’s happening under the veil of SIVA SIX?I am into the core of the Greek dark/goth/fetish scene for 15 years now, my good friend george fakinos and i we run the SECOND SKIN CLUB ( www.secondskin-club.gr) which means a lot of band bookings as well as events as the infamous TORTURE GARDEN or FETISH BALL and so many more to mention ,i love what i do and i am 100% happy with my li-festyle, i am true to myself, after all i am a musick lover… Most of my life is based on this fact, i could not ask more than what i have but i have dedicated myself and my will upon thee... What else will 2013 be like for SIVA SIX?2013 is a superstitious year.. a lot might happen..starting as i said before with our russian tour..2 gigs in italy later on spring 2013..and a very ambitious offer to be part of a summer -tour festival amongst the greatest Greek bands of the extreme, finishing our next album...releasing our new video clip for the track «SERPENT WHORE»...yes there will be SU-PERSTITIONS!!

Entering the year of Superstitions

CompilationAbsolute Grrrls Manifesto

[4CD box + bonus]The ultimate underground collection of female vocalists ever released!

4 discs + 40 more songs on a bonus download card in a deluxe carton box. Over 500 minutes of female talent across the best alternative scene genres:

Industrial, Goth, Electro, Metal, Synth Pop, Darkwave, Ethereal...LEAVE’S EYES, L’AME IMMORTELLE, TRISTANIA, THE BIRTHDAY MASSA-CRE, COLLIDE, AYRIA, CHANDEEN, MANTUS, I:SCINTILLA, MARSHEAUX, XANDRIA, HELALYN FLOWERS, THE DREAMSIDE, UNTER NULL, LIV KRIS-

TINE, TYING TIFFANY, DARK ORANGE, GRAUSAME TOCHTER, KRYS-TAL SYSTEM, DARK ORANGE, DAYBEHAVIOR, JAVELYNN, AAIMON,

PSY’AVIAH, MELLONTA TAUTA, ALICE IN VIDEOLAND, ISIS SIGNUM feat. SARA NOXX, NUDE, and many more.


Why did you decide to start work on «Absolute Grrrls Manifesto [chap-ter 1]», a girls only compilation?

After all the label is run by 3 guys. What is the deeper concept behind it?Seba. Well… As you know it, over the last 2 deca-des, I’ve been instigator and promoter of several compilation series. In the past I already did the «Venusa XX» sampler with female voices only. Don’t you remember where many people from our scene discovered a band like CLIENT for the first time? Well, Venusa XX vol.2 it was… The last years, we have developed at Alfa Matrix 2 strong conceptual compilation series that are «Endzeit Bunkertracks» and «Electronic Body Matrix», both released as 4CD compilation box sets. The idea of doing such box with female vocalists only, has been on my mind for some time I must say. For me it’s a bit the follower of the «Fxxk The Mainstream» compilation box but with a stron-ger focus on bands with female voices, but wi-thout music styles limits. On both «Endzeit» and «EBM», I already expanded the sound frontiers a bit cos I love challenging the ears of our listeners, but these projects nevertheless still remain within certain «scene walls» I imposed to myself… This new «Absolute Grrrls Manifesto» gives me more sound freedom within the indie music world. I really felt the need to have more sound freedom in one of our compilation projects, and this is my new playground! Every compilation I make re-quests lots of time and energy. Each one reflects my very personal tastes. The track listing order needs to flow in my ears. There is a logic for me behind every song that I select. And believe me when you get, like for this one, thousands of songs to choose from and shrink it all down to 10 times less, the filtering exercise is very tough and frustrating. I also always try to explore as many corners possible fitting the compilation sound concept, and it’s what I did here again… You see, for me the importance is that although I here restricted myself to working with songs with lead female vocals only, I show how different female vocals can be. From operatic chants to spoken words, from sensual sugar pop singing to harsh distorted growls. I just want to push the listener hearing new music that they would not check spontaneously on their own, mix renown bands of the scene with new talents I actually just disco-vered while working on the project. And with this «Absolute Grrrls Manifesto» concept, I’m happy showing to a male-dominated scene the strength and potential female vocals also can have next to male ones… This is my manifesto!

Your preference for female vocals is widely known. Can you explain why?Seba. It’s funny you mention this! I think it’s more my eclectic taste which should be known though. But it’s true that this is something I read about several times, especially in the early years of the label. I actually think it’s pure hazard that several of the first bands signed to Alfa Matrix were female fronted bands: HUNGRY LUCY, REGENERATOR, NEIKKA RPM, EPSILON MINUS, AYRIA… If you remember well, at that same time we had also signed bands with male vocalists like MNEMONIC, PLASTIC NOISE EXPERIENCE, IMPLANT, NEBULA-H, GLIS,

MALE OR FEMALE (funny mentioning this one with this question actually – laugh), FRONT 242, VIRTUAL EMBRACE…I think what im-pressed people back then was maybe the balance we had in our roster between male & female vo-calists. And I’m proud that through the years we continued working with even more talented female fronted bands like I:SCINTILLA, UN-TER NULL, STRAY, HELALYN FLOWERS, ZOMBIE GIRL, TECHNOIR, DIFFUZION, KRYSTAL SYSTEM, PSY’AVIAH and more re-cently MARI CHROME, LOVELORN DOLLS or yet JUNKSISTA…. But I could easily do a similar inventory within the other gender. Let’s say Alfa Matrix was back then maybe one of the only so-called «industrial» label daring signing bands outside the standard harsh angry shouting elektro genre… You know, you can see some la-bels using sub-label names according to the band they release. I am fighting against scene walls so building such style separations within the Matrix makes no sense to me. They simply represent our personal tastes and the perfect combination of 3 persons with very eclectic and different mu-sical tastes and affinities… If I personally like an ethereal lo-fi album as well as a dark noise experimental disc, and then a pop rock teenage band, why wouldn’t you? Or why would you? This is what Alfa Matrix is all about. Explore the sounds from the Matrix, check our bands, taste their music and leave what you do not like. I cannot imagine someone out there liking every release from our label repertoire, otherwise it would mean I have a clone somewhere out there (laugh).

Would you say that female vocals are largely underestimated in the industrial / dark wave scene?Seba. «Underestimated» is a wrong word I think. Sometimes too rigid in its approach, and too much focused on «angry boys»… Somehow yes. This said, we have many successful female fronted bands on the scene proving that gen-der is not what makes success. I remember the good old days when I was as much fan of THE CURE than SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES, SISTERS OF MERCY than GHOST DANCE or SKELETAL FAMILY, ANNE CLARK than DEPECHE MODE… Well, why would this have changed today? You cannot imagine how happy I can be when we get some very eclectic orders in our e-shop cos they prove that these scene boundaries are damned artificial! This week for example, we got an order for DUNKELWERK, KRYSTAL SYSTEM, ESSENCE OF MIND and the Electronic Body Matrix compilation. I said «yeaaahh»!!!

Unlike the other compilations like End-zeit, this compilation doesn’t focus on just one music genre but is open to all forms of underground music: electro, EBM, gothic rock, synth pop, new wave, metal, industrial, techno, etc. I suppose it didn’t make it easier to compile it. How did you proceed?You bet! It’s the first time we get so many song submissions for a compilation! But also so many new names I had not even ever encountered on the net before… The selection process was pretty

tough this time. I did not calculate too much, but just let my heart and ears guide me. I could have tried having X percent goth metal, X per-cent industrial, X percent synth pop, X percent ethereal wave, etc. But this would have made it all too artificial for me. There were some bands I absolutely wanted to be on this compilation and I’m glad a good majority of them (and their la-bels) joined me in the adventure, of course I’m also missing some of them, but let’s say it still gives me some challenge for a next chapter… When I compile such project, it must kind of be the perfect compilation I would do for myself on my ipod or to play in the car. So I play all songs at random all the time, take notes, rate songs, try to find links between songs and in the end I end up with 150 songs or so. And then I start the whole licensing request process, a very time-consuming phase and not my favourite of all of course… What I also love doing besides the compilation process is working on ideas with our designer to come up with the right design, the right image feel to it. For this one, the choice of the compila-tion title was not easy. I remember talking hours and hours long with our copywriter about it cos I really wanted to avoid falling into clichés and wanted a title which stands out and catches the eye… Music-wise it indeed features an amazing rich palette of possible underground styles and genres going from TRISTANIA or XANDRIA to CHANDEEN or THE BIRTHDAY MASSACRE, from angry EBM and harsh dark elektro to mi-nimal pop or yet ambient techno. The sense for melody and the personality are 2 common factors in all the selected bands. And I’ll admit that I surprised myself by turning the comp in a much more upbeat/danceable selection than I thought it would be when we launched the concept… Maybe chapter 2 will be more slow-tempo and more ethereal wave oriented. I guess it’s my cur-rent mood which lead me there. I needed some-thing dynamic and exciting, maybe cos I compi-led it during the Autumn/Winter season!? Who knows…

Does the industrial scene need more female fronted bands?I don’t think it’s a question of gender here, no…Whe,n I take your question, «What the industrial scene needs more today»? I’d rather say «more fans who do buy music and support underground art». This is what we need, let them be male or female… And people who dare spending some coins on new talents, and not always support the usual top-10 favourites. By acting like we do, we’ll end up eating our tail and seeing the essen-ce of underground art vanish. Spotify is for this a very interesting way to discover new things in the whole internet jungle and the plethora of active bands all around… Who will be the big bands tomorrow, I really do not care male or female, I just hope we’ll continue seeing some indie artists rise from nothing, cos it’s getting more and more difficult these days to get there, and the global economic crisis shall not make things any bet-ter I fear. I’m really worried about the future of underground culture, what will my children and the next generations have access to… Any way, enjoy the present and let me know how much you liked this new compilation project of ours when it comes out round March 2013…

Absolute Grrrls Manifesto A new compilation concept by Alfa Matrix



RECOILa strange hour in Budapest

[blu-ray]Full HD production with 5.1 surround sound & stereo audio.

Exclusive concert film from the ‘Selected Events’ tour celebrating 25 years of the RECOIL project

of Alan Wilder, formerly of DEPECHE MODE.

MENTALLO AND THE FIXERmusic from the eather[CD / 2CDbox / digital]

It is amazing how such an influential band with an impressive career and expanding discography still dares challenging him-self album after album by totally reinventing his sound instead of rehashing the easy recipe of success. An avant-garde schi-zophrenic new album filled with ultra-complex synth arrange-ments layered on devastating upbeat sequencer rhythms and haunting samples. More than ever, MENTALLO & THE FIXER will make your head turn and offers you an ear-challenging paranoid soundscape rich in detailed production work that

guarantees multiple sound discoveries still after over a dozen of listens. Restricted to trained ears!




Metroland has been the Alfa Ma-trix revelation of the year. You have now prepared a live set for

your first concert, which was during the BIM festival in Antwerp. Were you ner-vous?M: To be honest, yes, we were. It’s kind of logic, as it was the very first time that we were playing on stage as the band Me-troland. We were using brand new gear and a brand new set up, a radical chan-ge with the former 20 years we were on stage. We were using nearly the same set up as Recoil: MacBooks + Akai APC40 controllers, Ableton software that we are still getting acquainted with. Next to this, the audio was accompanied by special vi-deo images that were projected on huge screens. Despite some hiccups with the vocoder and the use of an analog conver-ter for the video-images, we only got posi-tive feedback from the audience.

That Sophie Watkins remix of «Moscow Main» is da bomb as they’d say in NME. That must also have been your reaction. I noticed it’s also one of the most favo-rite remixes from your release on Spotify, iTunes and related services. M: Sophie Watkins is known for making bombs when it comes to musical terms, so we are not surprised at all. It’s one of our favorites too. And we were only too hono-red when she agreed to make 2 versions of her remix. Admittedly, all remixes as featured on the limited edition version of «Mind The Gap» are smashing in their own. We were more than fortunate to be able to co-operate will all artists included. It took us quite some time to get these acts together, as we wanted a complete set of artists we liked, so no one else but us two had full control on what would end up on the remix CD. And the result is smashing, we have different sort of styles and still they go together, making it a perfect com-

plementary disc to the original album.

Metroland is actually a very visual act with Passenger H being integral part of the band. How did this happen?M: How we met was all a happy accident. We appeared on an Alfa Matrix sampler and someone put a rather boring video for it on YouTube. Passenger H picked it up, and created another clip of the song, so what came as an act of friendship tur-ned out to be a mutual way of working. It feels like Passenger H totally unders-tands the direction and the concept of Metroland. As he stands very close to us this way, it was only a logical step to make him part of the crew. We are again very fortunate how this turned out! Me-troland is in its complete form an audio visual concept. Each song has a story and a ‘vision’. With both these items you can easily get through to people.

Over the past weeks, we have been able following your musical influences via posts on your Facebook. It’s kinda re-freshing to see a band also adding other than their own videos and soundbites on their Facebook pages. Before that you talked about every single track that we could hear on your album. As uncommu-nicative Kraftwerk is, as communicative Metroland is…M: We already discovered in our former musical life that communication is very, very important. With the track-by-track information, we thought it would be good idea to do this as we wanted to show peo-ple that the songs are not just program-med on computers and put on a disc. They each have a separate story and base, enforcing the complete concept. And of-ten our songs have a deeper meaning that one would not even come up with when listening to cold machine like music. And thus we thought it would be nice to spread the deeper meaning.

How did you try to stay out of the Kraftwe-rk copycat water? Because everything sounds like Kraftwerk but the structures are to my sense more developed and more up to date.For starters we never copied anything, except maybe the witty wink to «It’s more fun to compute». And yes, we use voco-ders, hi-q’s and bleeps, analogue sounds and vintage drum machines but as far as we are concerned, that is where the com-parison stops. The K-word is a source of inspiration, sure, but there is much more that I inspired us such as Komputer, Or-bital, OMD, Nitzer Ebb, Marsheaux… The structures as you put it, the tons of hours spent on stereo-effects, the small things happening in the back that pass by in a nano-second, the more aggressive baselines, the up tempo of few tracks is making us more distinguished from the K-word. Sad to notice some never seem to dare and look beyond their list of referen-ce. Sad to notice some always have to nag about a band being a copy instead of fin-ding what is the true sound of that band, instead of always trying to look for what is copied. Both bands are separate, luckily. We would be lying to say that we were not influenced by Kraftwerk, but if you listen closer to our «Mind The Gap» album the-re is much more that meets the ears. The influences are so, so much more, but it’s only people that hear melodies and vo-coders that say «ah, Kraftwerk». We are nothing like them in oh so many ways. Our music is multi-layered and our bass sequences tend to breathe more power. Fortunately several magazines made re-views on our album sharing that opinion,

very clearly. It is Kraftwerk based but with some ingredients you won’t be able to find in Kraftwerk. And obviously (due to the pristine production and mastering) some listened very attentively to the album, dig-ging just that deeper.

Bands like OMD, Komputer etc have only praise for your material. It must feel good that such renown artists like your work? If I’m not wrong, you’re both big fans of said bands.Oh, yes, we definitely are. We have been in touch with both bands for several reasons. OMD recently took us in the pic-ture by posting a link to our «Enjoying The View» video. And well, for being such great artists at a hard to reach level, they are nice people to be around too.

Metroland is quite different from your previous band. It must have been 2 years already that I was informed that both of you were working on something comple-tely different. Which intrigued me back then. How did all of this start?In our former project we were working on auto-pilot for too many years and you could say that the drive was gone. Despite the fact that we were working on a brand new album then, we were no longer keen on continuing. During our former career we discarded so many arrangements and ideas, simply due to the fact that it didn’t fit the band’s concept. A few years ago, we started to store those “disposable” arran-gements in a folder. After half a year or so we looked and found about 8 arran-gements that we could work on. Still at that moment we had no idea on which direction to take. It was not until we by accident came across a sample “mind the gap” from the London Tube, that we used it on a song. During a brainstorm session we decided to use the name Me-troland, simply because it fitted that one sample and because we are both fan of Komputer (Metroland is a remix version of “Looking Down On London”). A few weeks later when working on some more tracks and samples, we took a conceptual decision and went for the full monty. We decided to make songs about metro sta-tions, transport, trains and commuting in general. It was kind of a big risk, because it would be all or nothing. Luckily, thanks to the co-operation with Alfa Matrix, we were proven right. Metroland is getting a great positive feedback from across the globe.

As expected especially Scandinavia is falling for your approach. You aren’t sur-prised?We are getting great response from eve-

rywhere, we feel, not only from Scandi-navia. Also from places we never thought they would pick us up, Cuba, Mexico, Uruguay, and Russia…. We notice that Metroland is much more accessible than our former band, as we now also get in-terest from UK, or even bands like OMD and Front 242 placed us in the spotlight on facebook.

I noticed that a lot of drum sounds could have come straight out of the first album from Depeche Mode. Where did you find those on? Sampled or just via some old drum computer.We have been working with Reason from Propellerheads since 2004 now. All sounds we used are carefully seeked out to have a vintage feel, but in fact they all were taken from soundbanks and refills that we bought or freely downloaded. None of the sounds on the album or sam-pled or presets. We always care to change something about it, layer sounds, put se-parate effects on it. Metroland is a techni-cal concept so we try to get the maximum out of the machines.

Your biggest stunt this year has been the feature in the 1 million readers newspa-per METRO here in Belgium offering a special remix. It’s not the first exclusive mix you guys have made right?So true! Next to some exclusive mixes for compilations, we once had this crazy idea to glorify the fact of being a metro station, so we created 6 different exclusive ver-sions of “Theme For Metroland”, made 6 e-mails (some even in the native speaking language like Russian or German) and sent it all to those 6 stations. We targeted Moscow, Brussels, Berlin, Paris, London and even New York. For METRO news-paper we decided to make an exclusive re-mix of The Passenger (METRO mix) and it was for free for the readers to download for about 5 days only.

You both still are hooked into vinyl and other physical formats. Has the digital re-volution completely passed you guys?We are kids from the 80’s and a left-over is indeed the need for a physical format. Apple’s condition that none of the down-loaded tracks are really yours, has only fortified that sentiment. We do download from digital platforms now and then, but that’s only because it is not available on any other medium, which is sad, very sad.

We are kids from the

80’s


AMBASSADOR21FAS

[EP - playstation box]Louder and more provocative than ever before!

11 tracks that will hack your mental system!49 minutes of provocative attitude!

The sonic hackers of AMBASSADOR21 strike back.Stop the loud declarations!

Fuck all systems! Start the action!

CompilationEndzeit Bunkertracks - act 6

[4CD box + bonus]6th edition of the most successful dark elektro compilation ever.68 tracks on 4 discs + 40 more songs on a bonus download card!

The best harsh elektro and modern power noise acts of the moment.A new ultimate Endzeit experience of 500 minutes of sonic extravaganza!

53electronic music with attitude52 electronic music with attitude



Issue 4 - Matrix Revelations

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Transcript of Issue 4 - Matrix Revelations