Back catalogue: Industrial/Noise

Review: Alongside fellow Belgians Front 242, The Neon Judgement are widely regarded as pioneers of electronic body music (EBM), a synthesised slice of underground noise that incorporates elements of electro and industrial to often disorienting and intense effects. Led by Dirk Timmermans and Frank Vloeberghs, the pair combined synth pop and post punk with more abrasive tones, unusually, for EBM, bringing guitar work to the fore. Marking 40th years of the Play It Again Sam (PIAS) imprint, a veritable institution in its own right that has itself influenced many bands and scenes, some of TNJ's most triumphant efforts and attempts at pushing the boundaries of genre and style forward are collected here. A selection of tracks that showcases exactly what they were about very well indeed, and why their legacy is so significant, albeit subtle.

Review: Curses is Berlin-based DJ and producer Luca Venezia, who has proven himself to be a reliable authority on all manner of deviant dancefloor sounds from the recent and distant past. On this compilation for Eskimo he takes up the challenge of spanning four decades of darkwave sounds by bringing seminal classics in line with exclusive new material for an epic 38-track compilation, which gets a thoroughly useful sampler edition for the vinyl DJs out there. The tracks on offer include Nuovo Testament, who get a punchy remix treatment from Curses himself before we can feast on the seductive minimal wave of Mary Moor. Curses also revamps JWB Hits The Beat with a strong Euro slant to the production, while the 12" mix of Sheffield pioneers Cabaret Voltaire's 'Blue Heat' rounds the set off in legendary fashion.

Review: "I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring," David Bowie famously quipped at his 50th Birthday concert in Madison Square Garden. That was 1997, and sadly we can now look back at the years between then and now as the last the icon would enjoy, although given the pantheons of unreleased material, music and other, we still have more than his legacy alone to learn from. He certainly kept his word, then, not least by opting to work with Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, a band that found inspiration in myriad styles and sounds, from Human League to Pink Floyd, carving out a 'industrial electronic rock' niche for themselves. In addition to tours and one-off shows, recordings of their collaborations are remarkable, generating fresh wholes from the enormous sums of these parts.

Review: Lisbon has a lot to answer for in electronic music. Not just a great city to party in (and we mean great), the Portuguese capital has, for a very long time now, been responsible for some of the most cutting edge beats and pieces being made in Europe as a whole. More impressive still, it has managed to build this reputation due to the predominance of location-specific noises. The country's colonialist history means the population is hugely diverse, resulting in a real cultural melting pot, and tunes are a major outlet through which people can express their identity.
A place packed with characters as big as the impact of their respective sounds, Teteu, AKA Normal Nada the Krakmaxter, AKA Qraqmaxter,AKA CiclOFF, AKA Erre Mente, certainly accounts for a good number of those personalities on monikers alone. And, as Tribal Progressive Heavy Metal shows, his tunes are also hard not to notice. At once harsh and yet also delicate, or at least spatial, we run from a plain evil gabber-chip music-fairground ride oddity ('Alive'), to dubby proggy techno ('Da Gamer'), off-kilter pianos and UK funky drums ('Batida 2 Dance'), and snare-bass minimalism ('Nai Na Chi (Na China)'), among other adventures.

Review: Steven Stapleton is Nurse With Wound. Originally a band, sometimes abbreviated to NWW, since 1978 the English act has explored a range of dark and brooding styles, including industrial, dark ambient, drone, and noise. Well known for sound collages - usually pretty intense in nature - influences come from the dada and surrealist art schools, cabaret music, John Cage, The Beach Boys, Krautrock, and Musique Concrete. She & Me Fall Together In Free Death is, in this instance at least, the highly anticipated reissue of the landmark album which proved just how good NWW is at all forms of song craft. Work here edges into the eerier end of Liars collaborating with Tom Waits' at his most experimental and that's really clutching for reference points. Quite unlike anything else you'll buy today, we promise.

Review: The latest Nurse With Wound release takes a deep dive into Stephen Stapleton's arhives and returns with a radically expanded version of 1990 set The Ladies Home Tickler, a typically eccentric and out-there blast of sonic surrealism crafted from tape loops, spoken word samples, weird noises, fractured electronics, and shards of bass, synth and guitar. In this edition, the original album's two lengthy tracks ('Duelling Banjos' and 'Registered Nurse') come accompanied by six previously unreleased cuts recorded during the same sessions, but previously unreleased. While one of these is an alternative take on 'Registered Nurse', the rest are increasingly wild and pleasingly freeform soundscapes in Stepleton's distinctive style. An essential purchase for dedicated NWW fans.

Review: Do we really want to know What You Should Know About Yourself? There's a high chance we find out something we don't want to hear but alas, the NX1 duo poses the question anyway across a broad selection of techno sounds on 11 different tracks. The moods are often introspective and provide an opportunity to get lost in deep thought and challenge yourself. The dramatic ambient start makes way for crunchy drums and fizzing synth disruption on 'Based In Lies', then dark and hard drums define the monstrous menace of Polarized Soul' and industrial clatter brings the heat on the militant and marching grooves of 'Cosmos Inside You.' A fierce album of uncompromising techno.