Id Est Quo Id Est
Unsparing, scorched earth industrial punk from the northwest regions of Asturias, Spain.
‘Gloria Eterna’ (‘Eternal Glory’) is the new, debut album by the Oviedo-based trio Balcanes. Active since 2014, Balcanes have carved out brutal, enveloping incursions of exhilarating punk music across a series of cult singles and EPs. Sharpened by components of industrial, noise, power electronics, hardcore and doom, their output reaches new heights of concentrated ferocity on ‘Gloria Eterna’.
WACKELKONTAKT is a three-headed A/V psychotrap project that currently spearheads the Jerusalem experimental scene. From R&B to hip hop to industrial to power electronics and back to local influences, Wackelkontakt have already made a global mark with the sensory overload of their live multimedia performances and the scintillating presence of frontwoman Tomer Damsky AKA MC Slice, backed by Eyal Lally Bitton (electronics, visuals, scenography) and Marco Milevski Tomasin (drums and electronics).
Since 2018 the three have been developing an aesthetics manifested in their performances, sound installations and site-specific events, which challenge the relationship with the audience through social dissonance and emotional conditioning. Besides creating an ever-changing multisensual spectacle, they produce gallery peroformances and sound design for theater and dance.
WACKELKONTAKT’s visual and sonic language is a result of the boiling life on the border between East and West Jerusalem, present in their work with a sense of an absurd vitality, paranoia and isolation.
“The record is an accomplished and bold debut from a group at the forefront of Jerusalem’s defiant art scene […] Wackelkontakt are staring, screaming and spitting into the void, but forever will the void be too afraid to spit back”. (The Quietus)
Jerusalem’s foremost “psychotrap” outfit transform the writing of Michel Foucault, the philosophy of Deleuze & Guattari and the poetry of Antonin Artaud into cacophonous experimental hip-hop. (Factmag)
Qa’a is the last of a small secret genealogy of unclassifiable bands that use music for magic and quasi religious purposes. Using a wide variety of instruments – some self made – and configurations, their range moves from aural assaults to zen pastoral moments. Psychedelic in all its wide spectrum, repetition, dissonance, prehistoric rites, oriental folk, electronics, ritual noise, chamber music, and avant-garde leanings give birth to a music that feels alive, mysterious and yet full of emotion. Music that has left many reviewers agreeing that they are devoid of tags with which to pigeonhole it and that are unable to feel indifferent after hearing it.
Between 2006 and 2011 Qa’a toured Spain and Europe extensively visiting a total of 7 countries and participating in festivals such as Sónar, Primavera Sound, Saint Ghetto Festival or Klangbad festival curated by Hans Joachim Irmler (Faust), sharing the stage and opening for pioneers of advanced music such as The Residents, Steven Stapleton (NWW), Cluster, Dieter Moebius, Jaki Liebezeit (Can) and FM Einheit (Einstürzende Neubauten).
Hans Joachim Irmler (Faust) is a firm benefactor of the band and executive producer of their second album Chi’en which he qualified as “an incredible album which probably won’t receive the recognition it deserves until after 10, 15 or maybe even 20 years have passed”.
“Make sure you grab your own copy of this Final Drudion’s Vinyl of the Month, for SANG by Spain’s expert ensemble Qa’a is one essential to own in the real world. Released in triple white vinyl on the Magia Roja label, this supposedly final release showcases Qa’a at their Can-esque finest. […] SANG is six sides of pure sonic invention whose feet dance within the bossanova rhythms and Jaki Love-time drum-o-thons. Imagine Dr. John’s ‘Mama Roux’ Night Tripper-period meets Miles’ AGARTHA No Wave meets Parson Sound, and yooz halfway to understanding these gents’ pleasure centres.” (Julian Cope Final Drudion’s Vinyl of the Month)
“Qa’a turn in a well thought out and sophisticated krautrock classic, which high fives a long line of stimulating and galvanised influences. […]Somewhere between the moody dark rock of latter day bands such as Dead Meadows and Black Mountain mixed with the modular tinkering of groups like Holy Fuck and Leafcutter John, our plucky duo manage to throw up enough surprises to make sure that this is not merely a homage” (Monolith Cocktail)
Following in the tradition of the dark and stark imaginary of artists such as Lorka and with distinct Mediterranean fire, the sound of Ordre Etern is bleak and vile as the void the spirit of their city represents. Ordre Etern is not the defeat but the struggle, the endless struggle, and the celebration of the endless crises-not just economic, but moral-of present times. With lyrics dark as the period that brought them to light, they speak of fighting and resisting in a cruel present, against adversity, urban and moral desolation and the divide between the two natures of man.
With feedbacking drums that ressemble guitars and guitars that ressemble shards of metal-without a single note-together with electronic and modified drums, synths and tímpani, Ordre Etern have created a dystopic postindustrial nightmare.
“There is noise everywhere – pressurized spews of static, mangled metallic percussion, manipulated shards of guitar – yet it feels choked off. It comes in bursts, it promptly stops. Pockets of silence hang where the anger should be, as Ordre Etern fight for the oxygen necessary to continue. […] Despite the omnipresence of waste and immobilising noise, Revolució Soterrada still glimmers with the potential for change.” (ATTN Magazine)
“Mixing electronics with buzz saws, soldering equipment and a cannonade percussion of metallic reverb the new but atavistic preoccupied Order sound like a pissed off The Normal, or a stripped backed and hostile Einstürzende Neubauten jamming with Sunn O)))” (Monolith Cocktail)
This primitivistic music is created with a varied instrumentation that goes from electric viola, piano and snake-charmer’s flute to cymbals, modular synths and self-made instruments, with almost all other possibilities in between but with virtually no guitar.
Moving from animalistic sexual pulsations, the reptile brain, noise-zen, surrealism, free savagery and minimalism, Huan uses space in an unusual way, orchestrating it with sounds that are almost visual and palpable. Far from cold and empty experimentalism, this is visceral and alive music that’s almost like a living organism, an organism that is at times sick, dying or excited.
Huan has toured several countries with highlighted shows such as at the CCCB Barcelona, Sónar Chicago, Terminal in Oakland or at the Ethnological Museum of Barcelona. With Huan he’s also worked on several collaborations such as touring the US in collaboration with Les Aus and as a sporadic collaborator of Nurse With Wound with whom he played live as a guest member at Primavera Sound Festival in 2013.
“Huan is on loan from his mother-band Qa’a. ‘Bells’ is further out and crazed, sounding like something dredged up from the american counter-culture during the glory days of esp (think Cromagnon) and the furthest reaches of the most recent ‘free folk’ scene. The emphasis is on organic instruments, sound-art, voice, samples of disembodied sounds and of course bells. The cd throbs with an underlying sense of menace and ancient rituals.” (Rough Trade)
Dame Area mixes synths and live percussion, industrialism and tribalism. Their music works as a musical Rorschach test: some people call them Tribal Wave, others Latin EBM, some say they do Techno Punk and others call them Industrial Postpunk. Silvia Konstance and Viktor L.Crux, (also in projects like Futuro de Hierro, Ordre Etern or Qa’a, and collaborator of Nurse With Wound and J.Arbeit from E.Neubauten) are part of Màgia Roja label and collective, Viktor being the resident DJ there.
Mixing synth bassline arpeggios and live percussions, noises and congas, industrialism and tribalism, Italian and Spanish, Dame Area are running across the same path and breathing the same air of the EBM/Industrial driven Diseño Corbusier or the drum compositions of Roberto De Simone.
Starting to play live in 2018 they have toured extensively in Europe, sometimes also in a trio format with Jess Webb from Gnod/Anthroprophh at drums. Their latest LP “Ondas Tribales” was released in April 2021 on Mannequin Records and their previous works were out on Kess Kill, BFE Records and Màgia Roja.
“Post-industrial duo Dame Area capture the spirit of Spain’s experimental scene […] Records like Ondas Tribales have much to give beyond the four walls of a venue: it’s thrilling and life-affirming” (Bandcamp Daily feature about Dame Area)
“The revelation of the European underground scene in recent years” (PANM360 Magazine, Montreal)
“Is it primitive rock, voodoo? Is it the return of the 80’s confontrational mind expanding industrial? Or is it simply the next generation of paranoid synth punk like DAF, Throbbing Gristle and Suicide? The thirty minutes of “tribal waves” could become a small phenomenon as only the underground knows how to create them. […] Those who have seen the duo’s live shows on the alternative circuit speak of it as an epiphany.” (Dame Area feature on Libération, French daily newspaper)
An iconoclast inside the postindustrial mélange. His artistic voice is unique; vunerable and brutal at the same time, his subjects are-at its core-classic: love, identity, relationships. Taking clues from Coil and Nurse With Wound he samples live original sources in the most unadverted ways and creates different layers which he modifies through pedals which serve as backdrop to his lyrics where he digs deep into his most uncomfortable personal truths.
“His voice is an important one, low and heavy, most of the times more speaking than singing, and along with
heavy, industrial rhythms and ditto heavy electronics makes this is all indeed sound like something out of the 80s […] Zozobra plays his industrial music with a similar amount of aggression, ‘con furioso’; a well-orchestrated nightmare.” (Vital Weekly Review)
Zozobra sabe entender el post-industrial exponiendo sus vivencias y perspectivas de una forma fría y directa. Un diario negro escrito con sangre y puntas de agujas rotas. Los siete temas que alberga su primer trabajo se plantearon con la intención de desorientarte dentro de un laberinto sin salida, y han sabido cumplir su objetivo con extrema pulcritud.” (NoMelody Magazine)
Viktor Lux Crux is a key figure in Barcelona’s vibrant post-industrial scene as a musician, producer and co-founder of the label Màgia Roja. He has performed more than 300 shows, almost 200 of them touring abroad in Europe and the US as Futuro de Hierro and with past bands Ordre Etern and Qa’a. Collaborator of Jochen Arbeit (Einstürzende Neubauten), Nurse With Wound, Paddy Shine and Chris Haslam (Gnod), among others he has also been the resident DJ at Màgia Roja venue for the past 5 years.
With Futuro de Hierro he mixes the legacy of Esplendor Geometrico and Throbbing Gristle with the heavyness of Swans or early Laibach and transcends the nihilism of the genere creating a cosmogony of songs where the personal, the esoteric, the present and the future intertwine. His live shows are a visceral and energetic deal, a hands-on approach to electronic music with an unseen control of rythmic feedback, dynamics and noise. His music has been released in Enfant Terrible/ Gooiland Elektro, Opal Tapes and Màgia Roja.
“Los fans de Esplendor Geométrico, Throbbing Gristle, Dive o Portion Control, disfrutarán de los cuatro temas que propone el artista con sede en Barcelona y residente de Màgia Roja en los que traza una fina línea entre la sutileza y la corrosión y donde ruidos y feedbacks, a primera vista casuales, evolucionan en secuencias hipnóticas que se tornan canciones”. (Reseña en Clubbingspain)
“The rhythm is mechanical, feeding through synthesizers and on top of that Crux delivers his vocals, sung, spoken and shouting, along with a fair amount of feedback. Just as, I guess, Esplendor Geometrico once did in their earliest days. Monotonous, loud, noisy and aggressive.” (Vital Weekly Review)
” A industrial burn of visceral collaterals, crowing feedbacks. He’d quickly sculpt a chiselled beatbox into a rhythmic ransom of disjointed disforia, slash /oblique the scenery brilliantly, pinchering in the odd paramilitary jackboot, slicing in a dynamic silence to floodgate the senses seconds later in skidding frictions and torqued talon.” (Live Review on Freq.org)
Starting as a de facto studio project his songs have slowly matured, in cassettes and limited editions, until reaching a new level with the edition of his first LP “Humo y Espejos”, which has been released on early 2018. As his live shows have multiplied he has perfected a language that bastardizes the legacy of Birthday Party and the No Wave with the deconstructed noise-rock of Sightings on top of rythms with an industrial but heterodox flavor. On top of this he spits lyrics who intertwine the personal with the surreal and that often reference to a sometimes blurry, longed or traumatic past.
Caramuerto es como una explosión en un convento: impactante, morbosa y estéticamente atractiva. […] Humo y Espejos es indudablemente una carta ganadora que se desliza sobre el plato declarando profesionalidad y originalidad a partes iguales. (NoMelody Magazine)
“Entre noise expé, musique industrielle, electro sauvage et rock extrême, Caramuerto se débat dans une camisole de fièvre avec une guitare sonnant comme du verre brisé (Big Black aurait adoré) et des machines/rythmes qui électrocutent. Le tout avec une science de la perversion, du silence et de la mise sous tension qui déstabilise et rend dingue à l’instar du chant en espagnol sachant très bien faire vibrer la folie dans ses cordes vocales même si le panel est large.” (Perte&Fracas)
Akauzazte are the last secret band in Europe. From their H.Q. at the Azkoitia abandonned abbatoir (Matadeixen) over the last twenty years they’ve always taken their time to perfect their records, their discography is vast, and they’ve evolved their sound in each one taken risks which few “sacred cows” would take.
Between the industrial tribalism of Missing Foundation, the crushing force of early Swans (not in vain their rhythmic section is comprised of two drums and two basses) and their own deconstructed version of black metal or power electronics. Most bands in industrial/noise music scenes are markedly urban, Akauzazte on the other hand sound rural, ritualistic and mystical. An oasis of ritual psychedelia and basque industrial “folk” with ancient horn instruments and deteriorated and destroyed guitars that sound as though their amplifiers are about to explode.
“Birthday Party, Einsturzende Neubauten y especialmente los Swans son algunos de los nombres que se han mencionado para tratar de referenciar el majestuoso sonido de esta banda. Todos apropiados, todos limitados también. No hay verdaderos antecedentes, Akauzazte es un ente autónomo que se rige bajo sus propias reglas. […] Creo que fue Anari quien dijo que si las piedras de nuestros bosques pudieran hablar, sonarían como la música de Akauzazte” (TIUMag)
“Incantation style vocals waft or fill the horizon in suffused spookiness, as every instrument and found object (the imagination shudders) from the factory is used to produce an unnerving black metal/industrial rural soundscape. Not always heavy and knocking on damnations door, odd references of straight laced Teutonic pop, the dead Skeletons, Amon Düül II, Psychic TV and the Velvets appear liberally throughout.” (Monolith Cocktail Review)
“No creo que sea una buena idea describir la música de Akauzazte. Como si fueran los únicos intérpretes de una sabiduría arcana acumulada en las rocas del País Vasco, parece proceder de otro tiempo y de otra dimensión. Los Akauzazte se describen como poderosos y magistrales en su arte, como los grandes grupos que han sabido combinar el ruido sucio del industrialismo con el trance de la psicodelia (los viejos y eternos Swans o los actuales Gnod, por citar algunos).” (Entzun.eus)
