Blush Response – Tension Strategies (2013)

Blush Response Tension Strategies 2013 Blush Response was an electropop group formed sometime around 2000 and featured Billie Schubert, Trevor Gagner and Brandon Flowers, who left the band in 2001 and formed The Killers with Dave Keuning.
This Blush Response have nothing to do with that one. Eventually, it’s just another case of bad choice of name. The solo project of musician Joey Blush is based in New York and was created in 2009 and officially launched in June 2009 with the release of “Reduce You”, a two track release, featuring demo versions of songs.
The debut album, “We Are Replicants” was released in 2010, shortly after followed by the single EPs “Control Freak” and “Impossible”.
Joey Blush remixed Dangerous Muse’s single “I Want It All”, TENSE’s “Disconnect Myself”, iVardensphere’s “Bonedance”, Batillus’s “Cast” and Pouppée Fabrikk’s “H8 U”. In early 2012, he was tapped to add additional synth programming to the new Fear Factory record “The Industrialist”. He also provided a remix for the deluxe edition CD.
The second Blush Response album, “Tension Strategies” was released on March 05, 2013 on Tundra in the US and Haujobb’s label Basic Unit Productions in Europe and Russia. Read more Blush Response – Tension Strategies (2013)

Alexandr Vatagin – Serza (2013)

Cinematic and minimal electronic smoothly flavoured with dissonances and glitches, unexpected noise contortions and turns, but mainly staying in the smartly wide open spaces, Alexandr Vatagin’s third album it’s a chill, peaceful and enjoyable ride into minimal-modern-experimental electronic music.
Alexandr it’s also the head of Valeot Records, home of several other artists such as Tupolev, Port-Royal, Slon, Werner Kitzmüller Trio, Milhaven, Protestant Work Ethic, Dirac, The Pattern Theory, Werner Kitzmüller, Kutin and Attilio Novellino – some of them making guest appearances on this new album as well. Based in Vienna, Austria, Valeot Records supporting post-modern music that does not fit genre-classifications.
This is not an album of tumultuous, nowadays fancy bangings, drops and wobblings, but of emotions and gentle use of sounds. It’s a refreshing mixture of classic approach and modern texture, a style blending of post-modern shoegaze-like minimalism with the chill and gentle, jazz flavoured moments, all nice and smoothly dressed up in sparkling, electronic lace dresses. Read more Alexandr Vatagin – Serza (2013)

Device – Device (2013)

Device Device (2013)

Device Device (2013) If not a super-group, a super-project build-up by Geno Lenardo (ex-Filter guitarist) and modern hard rock icon, singer David Draiman of Disturbed.
It all started when Lenardo reached out to Draiman to collaborate on a song for the “Underworld: Awakening” soundtrack in late 2011. Even though the song they recorded in Chicago and entitled “Hunted” didn’t ultimately make the final soundtrack, they decide to continue write and record tracks and soon they had an entire album ready to served to the audience through Warner Bros. Records.
“It started to develop very naturally and organically,” recalls the frontman. “Geno is a brilliant songwriter in his own right and a tremendously talented sound designer as far as the electronic palette is concerned. Together, we made this monster. It’s not metal. It’s got a dark electronic vibe. At the same time, these are big, anthemic, and intensely melodic songs. It’s futuristic rock.”
Although they tag it “dark, heavy, melodic, industrial” and mentioning mainly industrial influences such as Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Marilyn Manson, Pigface, KMFDM, Front 242 and Skinny Puppy, Device sounds like a dense and powerful mixture of Godsmack with Disturbed, Fight and Filter. Read more Device – Device (2013)

Emilie Autumn – Fight Like A Girl (2012)

World-class violinist. Fashion icon. Famously bipolar. Vegetarian turned vegan. Identifies herself as asexual, freak for some, idol for others, Emilie Autumn is one artist you may love or you may hate, but definitively hard to stay indifferent. And even further, listing – and living – through “F.L.A.G.” – her third installment – you may love one song and hate the next one while this is another tumultuous journey from glossy cabaret to Industrial chaos, from burlesque to Glam Rock and back to psychotic Steampunk, while she often labels her music and style as “Victoriandustrial”.
Her vocal work has been compared to Tori Amos and Kate Bush, while her music encompasses a wide range of styles, it was labeled “new age chamber music, trip-hop baroque, and experimental space pop”, as well as “cabaret, electronic, symphonic, new age, and rock & roll”. Things did not changed with “F.L.A.G.”, Emilie cry one moment and laugh the next one and the music follows her ever changing flow of mood. Not an easy walk through a sunny park Sunday at the noon, but a dark, fractured, fever burned trip on the wild side. For real and for delusion. Read more Emilie Autumn – Fight Like A Girl (2012)

Brian Eno with Rick Holland – Drums Between The Bells (2011)

In 1992, Eno talking about his interference with Roxy Music and his musical career, said: “As a result of going into a subway station and meeting saxophonist Andy Mackay, I joined Roxy Music, and, as a result of that, I have a career in music. If I’d walked ten yards farther, on the platform, or missed that train, or been in the next carriage, I probably would have been an art teacher now”. In life turning on a particular point to left or to right, sometimes makes the difference. Eno took the right turn and went on his own way. He didn’t get along with Bryan Ferry, he quit the band on completing the promotion tour for the band’s second album, “For Your Pleasure” in 1973, but he becomes an important musician, composer, record producer, music theorist, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.
Eno’s solo work has been extremely influential, pioneering ambient and generative music, innovating production techniques, and emphasizing “theory over practice”.He also introduced the concept of chance music to popular audiences partly through collaborations with other musicians.By the end of the 1970s, Eno had worked with David Bowie on the seminal “Berlin Trilogy,” helped popularise the American punk rock band Devo and the punk-influenced “No Wave” genre, and worked frequently with Harold Budd, John Cale, Cluster, Robert Fripp and David Byrne, with whom he produced the influential “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” in 1981. He produced and performed on three albums by Talking Heads, including “Remain in Light” in 1980 and produced seven albums for U2, including the famous “The Joshua Tree” (1987), and worked on records by James, Laurie Anderson, Coldplay, Depeche Mode, Paul Simon, Grace Jones and Slowdive, among many others. Read more Brian Eno with Rick Holland – Drums Between The Bells (2011)

Parachute Pulse – Kingdom (2011)

Something smooth and free to download. Check out the Asiluum Arts site and download “Kingdom”, the debut solo effort of Ana Roman from Bucharest. This is like a dream without sleeping, a soundtrack with ever changing movie, the film that you imagine there. Ana has been an active part of the Asiluum creative group, she worked previously with artist such Discordless and Nightpray, but this release meant to bring her out from the shadow and put her in the spotlight. 11 tracks, one collaboration with Res Es (Åžerban Ilicevici of Semiosis) and another remix by Liar. Field recordings, mysterious and shady noises, some haunting vocal arrangements and shattered harmonies, flowing ambiental layers and broken clock rhythms makes this trip colored and chill. Sometimes strange and slippery, other moments warm, relaxing and friendly, ambiental, trippy and cinematic, this is a nice and smooth journey. Read more Parachute Pulse – Kingdom (2011)

Lamb – 5 (2011)

Lou Rhodes and Andy Barlow parted their ways in 2004 to go on divergent solo projects after four beautiful electronic albums. Six years later, talking on the phone and catching up, their considered the time it’s right to make another Lamb album. And this is it. “5” will be released on May 5 and the pre-ordered special limited-edition version consist in 15 tracks. The flawless blend of baffled beats, intriguing textured ambience and lush, the soulful melodies and color of exciting noises are merged into this highly pulsing new material, Lamb sounds fresh, distinguished, alive and kicking, the best possible mixture of experimental trip hop and pumping drum and bass. Aside from trip hop and drum and bass, their musical style is included a mixture of jazz and dub. Read more Lamb – 5 (2011)

The Raveonettes – Raven in the Grave (2011)

Something stinks in Denmark. Actually Shakespeare said: “Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark.” – Hamlet, Act I, Scene 4, at line 90. Well, when British music press staple NME declare the Danish duo to be responsible for sparking “America’s pop renaissance”, something clearly stinks. On one hand, Brits has been already saved by the Americans by White Stripes, so, it’s pure wickedness to say America need to be “saved” by anybody, on the other hand when a band or an artist are highly praised by the media, there’s no bloody doubt: something stinks. Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo, the duo behind The Raveonettes delivered another nice album, but really, there’s nothing outstanding, nothing sparking, nothing special. In short words, it’s like Robert Smith (The Cure) teamed up with Angelo Badalamenti for a film score for David Lynch. Gloomy, airy, minimalist, kind of clear-obscure and with a particular, distant, but still warm retro taste, with a few nice tunes and a couple of better moments, but really, there’s nothing really impressive about “Raven in the Grave”. Read more The Raveonettes – Raven in the Grave (2011)

Rafael Toral – Space Elements Vol. III (2011)

Toral plays experimental electronic instruments like electrode oscillator, modified MS-2 pocket amplifier feedback, glove-controlled computer bass sinewaves, filtered feedback circuit,  modified MT-10 portable amplifier, modulated noise, modular synthesizer and tamtam.  Sometimes it sounds like R2D2 are talking to you. Strongly interested in phrasing, he calls his style “post-free jazz electronic music”, described as “a brand of electronic music far more visceral and emotive than that of his cerebral peers”. His music actually it’s kind of abstract, but interesting, you never really know what to expect in the next moment. And some of these experiments are quit exciting. The music is not congested, it’s airy, Toral know to use the silence and he’s colored it with interesting noises and all sort of elements to create atmosphere without being overwhelming.  Read more Rafael Toral – Space Elements Vol. III (2011)