Back catalogue: Coldwave/Synth

Review: Cult English electronic duo I Monster aka Sheffield based record producers Dean Honer and Jarrod Gosling dropped Neveroddoreven, their second studio album, on 21 July 2003. A little later than first planned, it now gets a special 20th Anniversary re-issue on CD as well as this double gatefold. It incudes the original album plus three new singles and the much loved acoustic version of 'Daydream in Blue' which even if you don't think you know, you will, because ti has been rather ubiquitous in ad campaigns for brands including Ford and Magnum Ice Cream. Also helping to keep this band relevant after all these years was their single 'Who Is She' going viral on TikTok in 2023 and picking up 290M Spotify streams.

Review: Dark Entries takes it back to New York City in around 1982 for this previously unreleased record from Ike Yard. This cult crew was made up of Stuart Argabright, Michael Diekmann, Kenneth Compton, and Fred Szymanski and they worked in their own realm somewhere between proto-body music and No Wave peers in New York. They disbanded just a year after forming having dropped an EP on Les Disques du Crepuscule in 1981 and then a self-titled album for Factory in 1982. Using the Korg MS-20 and the Roland TR-808 they cook up plenty of hybrid electro-acoustic sounds and ramshackle rhythms that are underpinned by moody baselines and perfect to get bodies moving in the club. Whether you're a post-punk fan or lover of weird electronics, this is well worth checking out.

Review: The arrival of Il Quadro di Troisi could not have been more ironic. Anything but new faces on the music scene, the Italian electronic partnership of Eva Geist and Donato Dozzy debuted as the reality of living in a pandemic really began to hit home - November 2020. A month that usually calls for their brand of dark, Ital-disco-cold-synth stuff was void of the situations you'd want to hear it in. No parties, no clubs, no concerts - not even an opportunity to stick it on when getting ready to do something. Nevertheless, we've more than made up for it now, and having grown incredibly close betwixt that waking nightmare and today's chaos, the arrival of a new LP is an enticing prospect. As the notes explain, "everything changes, all things evolve, nothing stays the same... La Commedia marks the band's embrace of a more traditional song form, shaped by a very personal and distinctive musical style. The distinguishing elements of Il Quadro di Troisi's music meld into a unique mix that is both seductive and eerie, elegant and earthy, contemporary and timeless."

Review: This fresh new LP by Inconscio Viola, an experimental electronic duo from Greece, flaunts eight cuts of dark, ambient-atmospheric EBM and intersperses them with industrial and noise influences. Limited to just 50 copies, an aura of specialty adorns this one, with gothic gated snares and ghostly verbed-out shouts ricocheting across every track. Most riveting is the toothy saw line on 'Wounds', which sounds to peppered with the whispers and roars of a demon throughout.

Review: Recorded over the course of a single week during summer 2022, hauled up in a house on the stunning and serene shores of Lake Lugano, Passarella is an exercise in less as more. Spanning post punk, synth and dark wave, synth pop and more, the arrangements here aren't really minimalist, but share in a particular kind of functionality. Everything is in its right place, and there is absolutely nothing more. As such the aesthetics, and textures, are distinct in their rawness. There's more in common between Infesta's latest offering and the prototypes of these genres that were crawling out from the depths of cities such as Dusseldorf between the late-1970s and 80s than the vast majority of things produced today. Which isn't to write this off as pastiche or pure nostalgia, but to celebrate a pervading air of sonic adventure.

Review: Try Googling Influenza Pods in 2022 and you're unlikely to find the work of Bruno De Angelis and Giovanna Gulinello anywhere close to the top of the results. Add Memoire, the title of this LP, and things get even worse, with scores of pandemic diaries on offer for the grisly-minded. However, do a little digging and you'll soon realise these guys were among the pioneering electronic outfits of the late-1970s and 1980s, with this particular record a case in point.

Together the pair became a couple after moving to London, stayed there for a bit before heading back to Italy, where things began to formalise in terms of studio output. Often using recordings of dialogue from British soap operas, strange sounds and funky noises, they create heavily textured, subtly rhythmic and resolutely leftfield pieces that don't immediately invoke other artists and outfits. And there aren't many people you can really say that about.

Review: The members of Munich's Instant Music have all done their fair share of wonderful things throughout the 80s post-wave scene, but their one-off LP as Instant Music is the one that still gets all the praise, both from listeners and second-hand sharks, so it's only natural that the mythical Dark Entries have gone on to reissue it in all its glory. The 1981 album is a stand-out piece of work, managing to merge the very best of post-punk, synth-wave and, yes, even a little bit of proto-techno. The latter is heard mainly through its arrangements and bass tones, perfectly formed for dancefloor action...and domination. All of it is, of course, guided by the wonderfully subtle and minimalistic vocals of Marion Siekmann, who then went on to do great things with Ski Und Der Rest. Recommended!

Review: Ionnalee's 2018 debut album "Everyone Afraid To Be Forgotten" was superb, so hopes are high for the artist's similarly minded sequel. "Remember The Future" is a little bolder, shinier and more upbeat than its predecessor, though stylistically it still sounds like a 21st century update of Kate Bush's distinctive early '80s sound circa "The Dreaming" and "Hounds of Love". It's a dreamy, ethereal and otherworldly take on electronic pop that's always alluring and often memorable. The album's plentiful highlights include "Some Body", the superb Zola Jesus collaboration "Matters" - a deep, bubbly and intoxicating affair - and "Mysteries Of Love", an echoing, Royksopp-produced cover of a song from David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti's "Blue Velvet" movie soundtrack.

Review: It is now five years since Nabihah Iqbal got widespread critical acclaim for her debut album Weighing Of The Heart, and finally, she is back with another. This one, Dreamer, was two years in the making and finds the London-born artist, curator, broadcaster and lecturer offering up her most reflective and raw work to date. This versatile talent has done everything from composing music for the Turner Prize to being involved in a performance as part of a major Basquiat retrospective. Here she reflects on pandemic experiences having let the ideas develop in her head before she even turned on her machines.

Review: Croatian cold synth artist Iv/An is a master of the sonic retrofuture, with his sound spanning both contemporary production hallmarks and 80s tape-hued rawness - while still managing to do this in a fully authentic way. Self & Selfish is a shining example of this: eight tracks of dark, minimal and melancholic songs that deal with themes of identity, alienation and love. This is technically a reissue; one from Iv/An's own self-released efforts, after which it soon became a highly sought-after treasure among synthwave lovers. The reissue comes on a limited white vinyl pressing and includes an extended mix of the track 'Loopholes'.