Category: dark wave

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Golem Dance Cult Shares an Anthemic Ripper

Split between France and England, the emerging, self-described “industrial heavy rock dance” duo Golem Dance Cult features longtime friends and experienced musicians: producer, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Charles Why, who has played in Lotsa Noise, Nexus and L-Dopa and vocalist Laur, who has played in Sparkling Bombs, Kevin K Band, Vague Scare and Other-ed. In many ways, Golem Dance Cult can trace its origins back to when its members were teenagers, playing in their first band together, a band in which Laur played drums.

During most of the band’s short run together, the duo have written and worked on material remotely, as a result of the distance between the pair and because of pandemic-related restrictions. But their work is structured around a couple of simple, agreed-upon parameters:

  • They had to work spontaneously, with each member following their instincts.

  • Mistakes should be expanded upon.

What the duo eventually settled on was a rock-inspired approach with electronic production but without the formal structure — or strictures — of either genre.

Back in 2021, the duo released their debut EP Grotesque Radio, which featured the Bauhaus-like “Nosferatu Waltz,” a goth/horror track with a playful nod to Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. The duo start off the year with “Dalek Rhetoric,” a song which derives its title from the Dalek in Dr. Who. As the band explains: “Dalek are extraterrestrial killing machines with a binary thinking pattern: you are either a Dalek or they were will destroy you. This seems fitting with the mentality of the world we live in.”

Centered around buzzing power chords, thunderous drumming, rousingly anthemic hooks and arena rock bombast, “Dalek Rhetoric” manages to bring White Zombie and others to mind — with a nasty, gritty edge.

The accompanying video features footage of the band performing the song in desolate and forgotten places paired with edited footage of the Dalek in Doctor Who, reels of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which the band has dubbed another Dalek-like move, and edited footage from Phantom from Space, Plan 9 From Outer Space. Max Schreck’s Nosferatu and Bela Lugosi’s Dracula also make return cameos — because, of course.

Golem Death Cult’s sophomore album Legend of the Bleeding Heart is slated for release this year.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Stockholm’s Me & Melancholy Shares a Brooding Banger

Peter Ehrling is a Stockholm-based electronic music producer, musician and creative mastermind behind the solo electro pop recording project Me & Melancholy. Inspired by Depeche Mode, New Order, Camouflage, and Swedish synth acts like The Mobile Homes and Elegant Machinery, Me & Melancholy focuses on melancholy synth pop that blends retro and contemporary sounds to create a nostalgically upbeat yet introspective vibe.

Since starting the project last year, Ehrling has been rather prolific: he has released three singles, an EP and his full-length debut, You and me, Melancholy.

“I let you down (Dark Version)” is a brooding bit of goth-meets-industrial synth pop centered around tweeter and woofer rattling thump, glistening synths and guitar paired with Ehrling’s plaintive delivery and enormous hooks. Sonically, the song brings Violator-era Depeche Mode while rooted in self-flagellation, disgust, despair and heartache.

Ehrling explains that “I let you down (Dark Version)” is a complete and thorough remake of the the original, which appears on You and me, Melancholy.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Distance H Teams Up with Saigon Blue Rain’s Ophelia on Brooding “Bitch 16”

Distance H is a post-punk/darkwave/coldwave recording project of French producer ManuH. The project sees ManuH collaborating with an eclectic array of female vocalists, who contribute melodies and lyrics.

Released earlier this year, the brooding and cinematic “Bitch 16.” sees ManuH collaborating with Saigon Blue Rain‘s Ophelia on a Cocteau Twins-meets-Sixousie and the Banshees-like song rooted in eerie atmospherics and razor sharp hooks.

Directed and edited by Anaïs Novembre, the accompanying video for “Bitch 16” is split between gorgeous and broodingly lit footage of the collaborators in studio, and Saigon Blue Rains Opehila dancing in a creepy, goth-like forest.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Nice, France-based duo Divine Decadence — Sabrina and Tatiana — can trace their origins back to 2020: With the duo being confined to the home studio as a result of COVID-19 quarantines and restrictions, it allowed them the opportunity to write and then refine songs, while gradually developing a sound that’s informed by film soundtracks and darkwave.

The duo’s self-titled, five song, debut EP was released earlier this year. The EP’s first single “Purple Dress” is a cinematic bit of post-punk/darkwave centered around moody atmospherics, Sabrina and Tatiana’s eerie harmonies, and swirling guitar textures that become stormier as the song progresses to its explosive coda. “Purple Dress” manages to bring both Cocteau Twins and Kælan Mikla, complete with a palpable, creeping dread.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: ZADAR Teams up with Isa Niels on Shimmering and Brooding “Halos On The Moon”

Antonio G is a Philadelphia-based songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and creative mastermind behind the goth/darkwave outfit ZADAR. He’s currently working on the project’s first album — and is searching for like-minded musicians to join him in playing the material live.

ZADAR’s latest single “Halos On The Moon” sees the Philadelphia-based Antonio G collaborating with Isa Nielsen, a singer/songwriter and guitarist, who has opened for Rage Against the Machine‘s Tom Morello and John 5, who has played with Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie — and is the newest member of Mötley Crùe. Nielsen has also played on MTV Specials, MTV’s VMB Awards. Built around shimmering guitars, a relentless motorik-like groove, Neilsen’s plaintive vocals and enormous hooks, “Halos On The Moon” may recall The Sisters of Mercy and Cocteau Twins, while being rooted in swooning Romanticism.

“‘Halos’ is a song about regret and loss. It’s a song about somehow coming to terms with your failure and past mistakes and still moving on with your life,” Antonio G explains.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Psykasya Shares Woozy and Darkly Seductive “Fleetingly”

25 year-old, French singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Adriane is the creative mastermind behind the emerging dark wave recording project Psykasya. Adriane can trace much of the origins of her career to getting vocal and Celtic harp lessons at a very young age. But after discovering MAO last year, the French singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist was inspired to write her own material.

Sonically, her work is informed by several different styles and genres — but she cites Aurora, aleah, Myléne Farmer, and Fishbach as major influences. Centered around a dark, mysterious atmosphere, the young and emerging French artist’s work thematically focuses on the night, witches, death and the like.

The French singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist’s latest single, the retro-futuristic “Fleetingly” is a brooding and darkly seductive track centered around skittering beats and woozy atmospheric synths paired with Adriane’s sultry delivery. The end result is a song that seamlessly meshes elements of trip hop, dark wave and goth.

Fittingly shot at night and in a cinematic black and white and through VHS tape, the accompanying video follows a walk through a suburban office park, to the city and a night out at local pub for pints and then to a crowded, sweaty club and a house party.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Atlanta’s CDSM Performs “666” at Yellow Studio

Atlanta-based collective Celebrity Death Slot Machine (CDSM) — Ben Presley, Tyler Jundt and John Restivo, Jr. along with live accompaniment from Jack Blauvelt, Drew Kirby and Vinny Restivo — features current and former members of local acts like Material Girls, Neighbor Lady, Mothers, and Rose Hotel.

CDSM is a decided sonic departure from its members previous and current projects: The Atlanta-based collective’s sound blends elements of dark wave, psych rock and post punk in an edgy, genre-bending fashion. The act’s debut EP Hell Stairs was released late last week through Mothland and EXAG Records.

Hell Stairs which features the LCD Soundsystem from hell meets No Wave-like “GFH” finds the members of CDSM crafting material that’s simultaneously glamorous and bleak, swanky and derelict, uplifting and crushing. The EP’s latest single “666” is a dance punk song that’s one-part dark wave, one-part no wave featuring relentlessly tight four-on-the-floor, buzzing synth arpeggios and swirling sax lines paired with crooner-esque laments fittingly delivered with a Vincent Price-like campiness while detailing evil, murderous deeds over the course of a bloody, moonlit night.

Sure there’s murder and mayhem but that doesn’t mean you can’t dance the night away. Just make sure you don’t slip on the blood, eh?

The accompanying video features the band playing at the soon-to-be opened Yellow Studios.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Italy’s IC2 Shares an Icy Yet Dance Floor Friendly Single

IC2 is the darkwave/post-punk solo recording project of Ivan Coppola, mysterious Villa Latina, Italy-based producer, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Late last year, I wrote about the brooding yet dance floor friendly “Falling Down,” a track that sonically brought post-punk heavyweights like Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure and Joy Division — as well as contemporaries like ACTORS, Bootblacks and others to mind.

The Italian singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer will be releasing the Bad Moon Light EP this year. The EP’s latest single, title track “Bad Moon Light” continues a run of dance floor friendly yet icy post punk centered around reverb-drenched and guitars, atmospheric synths, thumping beats, the Italian artist’s detached vocals placed within a hook-driven song structure. Interestingly, “Bad Moon Light” manages to bring Garlands era Cocteau Twins to mind, revealing an artist gently expanding upon his sound.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Canadian/American Duo Ritual Wave Share Sultry “My Sin”

This week is an extraordinarily busy week as I’ve been covering this year’s New Colossus Festival. So I haven’t been posting with the same regularity as I’d normally would. But I’m seeing live music and doing that valuable in-person networking one has to do to get by. And I’m having a ton of fun doing so. But as always, let’s get to the business at hand . . .

Ritual Wave is an emerging post-punk/dark wave duo featuring Toronto-based Judy Karacs and San Diego-based John Goodman. The Canadian/American duo bonded over a mutual love and appreciation for similar styles of music, which led to their collaboration together. Although they’ve been working on material since 2018, the duo’s work sonically sees them combining elements of old school post-punk with melodic dark wave undertones.

“My Sin” their second official single together as Ritual Wave features Karacs’ sultry cooing over glistening and icy synth arpeggios, a propulsive, angular bass line and subtle industrial clang and clatter. Sonically, “My Sin” — to my ears at least — recalls Cocteau Twins, Depeche Mode and the like, but fueled by a desperate, obsessive desire.

“My Sin” as the Canadian/American duo explain uses religious themes as a metaphor to express the psychological torment and destruction of a person willing to sacrifice everything in order to be loved. And as a result, the song explores the darkest sides of obsession, control and desire as is relates to romantic affairs.

“This track was really a labour of love for us. We actually wrote ‘My Sin’ very quickly, in 2018, but ended up re-working, re-recording and re-editing it ’till we finally decided it was ready,” Ritual Wave’s Judy Karacs explains in press notes. “With the lyrics and melody I really wanted to explore the subject of obsession and how that impacts the human psyche. I likened these feelings to a strong religious devotional experience. It was the idea of having such a profound faith in someone that you were willing to sacrifice everything just to hold onto what they made you believe was love. Obviously, this belief was based more on unhealthy fixation and desire instead of genuine love.”

Edited by Ritual Wave’s Judy Karacs, the accompanying visual is shot in a gorgeous and sultry black and white, and evokes the song’s central themes: lust and obsession through religious metaphors.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Atlanta’s CDSM Shares Menacing and Feverish “GFH”

Atlanta-based collective Celebrity Death Slot Machine (CDSM) — Ben Presley, Tyler Jundt and John Restivo, Jr. along with live accompaniment from Jack Blauvelt, Drew Kirby and Vinny Restivo — features current and former members of local acts like Material Girls, Neighbor Lady, Mothers, and Rose Hotel.

CDSM is a decided sonic departure from its members previous and current projects: The Atlanta-based collective’s sound blends elements of dark wave, psych rock and post punk in an edgy, genre-bending fashion.

Their latest single, the LCD Soundsystem from hell meets No Wave-like “GFH” is centered around swirling synths, wobbling disco-like bass lines, driving four-on-the-floor, copious cowbell, swirling synths and saxophone skronk paired with irony drenched baritone vocals. Underneath the dance floor rocking thump is a menace and paranoia-fueled fever dream of a tale that follows a troubled young man, who gets busted by the cops and makes a deal to reduce his sentence. The troubled young man agrees to become an undercover agent and wear a wire. During an operation, his cover is busted and he’s brutally killed. But through a weird bit of fate, he’s fittingly reincarnated as a rat.

The accompanying animated video by Anna Firth is fittingly a hallucinogenic and uneasy fever dream that follows the song’s story in an immersive fashion.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Houston’s Victorian Death Photos Release a Brooding Single and Visual

Victorian Death Photos is a Houston-based post-punk/darkwave act that’s shrouded in a cloak of mystery: The Houston-based act features two anonymous artists, a man and a woman, who publicly go by He and She. The duo’s latest project can trace its origins back to a series of multimedia collaborations between the pair. Interestingly enough, the duo initially intended for Victorian Death Photos to be a metal album — but the best laid plans of mice and men, as they say.

Once they started working on original material together, they wound up zeroing in on a “haunted synthy post-punk electronic sound,” which wound up comprising their Victorian Death Photos debut, The Basement Tapes EP released earlier this year. “We went with it,” She says in press notes.

Back in July, I wrote about “Radium Girls,” a song, as the duo explained was based on a true story: In the early 1920s, female workers in watch factories, painted watch dials with radium paint. The women were repeatedly told that the paint was harmless. But after being around and ingesting massive amounts of radium, the female factory workers wound up contracting severe radiation poisoning: the factory workers wound up with their teeth falling out, and bone deterioration in the jaw — to the point of having bones removed.

Ultimately, the track with revealed the duo’s ability to craft a rousingly anthemic hook within a song that bearded a resemblance to Garbage‘s self-titled debut and Version 2.0.

The Houston-based act ends 2021 with “Home.” Centered around glistening synth arpeggios, skittering, tweeter and woofer rocking beats and She’s yearning vocals, “Home” is simultaneously a brooding and icy bit of post-punk/darkwave seemingly inspired by early Depeche Mode and an earnest ballad expressing profound heartbreak and longing over a relationship and lover, who was confusing and dysfunctional.

Shot in a gorgeous and cinematic black and white, the recently released video for “Home” begins by following a young boy, who dreams of being an astronaut and of space exploration. In one of his dreams, he lands on an Earth-like planet, where he sees a woman digging in the sand. We see the boy as he explores a forest. The video ends with the boy being flung out into space.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Italy’s IC2 Releases a Brooding Yet Dance Floor Friendly Single

IC2 is the darkwave/post-punk solo recording project of a rather mysterious Villa Latina, Italy-based producer, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. The emerging Italian artist’s latest single, the brooding yet dance floor friendly “Falling Down” is centered around glistening synth arpeggios, thumping electronic drums, wiry bursts of distorted guitars, crooned vocals and an enormous hook. Sonically, “Falling Down” may remind some listeners of post-punk heavyweights like Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure and Joy Division — as well as contemporaries like ACTORS, Bootblacks and others.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: German Dream Pop Act Seasurfer Release a Gauzy Cocteau Twins-like Mix of “Drifting”

Hamburg-based songwriter, multi-instrumentalist Dirk Knight is one of that city’s grizzled scene vets, who can trace his career back to the 90s: his previous band Dark Orange was a pioneering act in the Heavenly Voices scene — and as a result, he collaborated with Cocteau Twins‘ Robin Guthrie.

amburg-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist started his current project  Seasurfer back in 2013, and interestingly enough, the project finds Knight eschewing the traditional rock band set up and collaborating with a rotating cat of vocalists and musicians. His first two critically applauded Seasurfer albums saw Knight work with members of acts like Trespassers William, Whimsical, Jaguwar and Last Leaf Down. 

Seasurfer’s third album Zombies was released last year through Reptile Music. The album saw Knight simultaneously refining and expanding upon the sound that has won him and his collaborators attention internationally. While still retaining shoegazer textures, there’s a much larger focus on cold wave and dark wave influences with the material employing an increasing use of synths, motorik grooves and beats to create what Knight has dubbed “electrogaze for dancers and dreamers alike.”

ritten and recorded during pandemic-related restrictions and lockdowns, Zombies thematically paints a picture of a society on the brink of annihilation. As a result of the pandemic, Zombies is the first album that features Knight playing and recording all of the material’s instrumentation and even contributing some vocals. The first part of the album features vocals from singer/songwriter Apolonia.

As the story goes, as the pair were finishing the album, they had the distinct impression of living in a world that was completely losing its mind: Naturally, there is constant fear and uncertainty inspired by the pandemic; but there’s also the increasing numbers of self-serving political leaders hellbent on power, greed, corruption and lust. And let’s not forget the looming global climate catastrophe that will likely occur within our lifetimes. It shouldn’t be surprising that the pair frequently felt as though they were like zombies struggling through a lost and dead world.

Shortly after the vinyl and CD releases of Zombies, the Hamburg-based act reworked album single “Drifting.” “Drifting” is a fan favorite on the album and as a result, Knight and Apolonia came up with an alternate mix of the song. Interestingly, the alternate mix is centered around gauzier textures while retaining the glistening synths and brooding air of the original. In some way, the alternate mix manages to gently push the song towards a Cocteau Twins-like sound.

For me ‘Drifting’ is the song with the coolest bass of the whole album Zombies,” Seasurfer’s Dirk Knight explains. ” For the first time I recorded all the basses by myself and learned to love playing this instrument. Basses are extremely important to us and determine the harmonies and melodies, similar to how Simon Gallup (The Cure), Peter Hook (Joy Division, New Order) and Simon Raymonde (Cocteau Twins) are doing it. For the single and the extended mix we let the drums run straight through to make the song even more mesmerizing.”

The recently released video is a trippy mix of nostalgia-inducing Super 8 shot footage of a young child going on a cruise on the open sea, projected over Apolonia’s face, as she sings the song’s lyrics.

“Drifting (Single Mix)” appears on Seasurfer’s recently released Drifting EP, which features a 12 minute, extended single mix, the previously unreleased track “Ghost Children” and remixes of “Drifting” by Spanish dreamwave duo STEREOSKOP, Russian shoegazers Life on Venus and French electronic artist GIIRLS.