James Geist can be already called a veteran in the Dark Industrial scene, although "Menschenfeind" is the official debut album for his music project NECROTEK. Initially started as a side-project of James’ main project NITRIOUS FLESH, with which he’s active since years in the Dark Ambient genre. But since NECROTEK has received some more attention through some well-placed compilation appearances ("Interbreeding" and/or "Endzeit Bunkertracks") and his self-produced debut EP "Satanik", a stronger concentration on the rather Dark Electro-related efforts have been required. Good things happen to those, who are patiently enough to wait – the Denver-based label and mail-order retailer Vendetta Music brought in euphoria and showed interest to James’ dark, but quite different sounding music efforts and so the contracts got signed. "Menschenfeind" acts as a representative cross-section of his works, it includes both, the already discovered tracks like "Back To The Grave", "Wish You Dead" or "Satanik" - of course in a better produced and mixed kind - as well as several new compositions like the opener "Drugsick", "Ghosted" or the title track. As you’ve already noticed on the chosen track titles, James’ compositions draw pretty much inspiration of these of the dark sides of life. Life after death in its sickest forms and thinkable perversions seems to have some fascination on him and his music even strengthens this impression. Even if his synth and bass line arrangements remind on the EBM-related works of early SUICIDE COMMANDO or SEVERE ILLUSION, he often likes to distort his punching kick and snare work. Darkest Dark Electro featuring rhythmically Powernoise percussion works accomplished with a haunting lo-fi-effected vocal performance would be a possible description – that’s all far away of the Techno-/Trance-infected Hellectro-bullshit, which still storms well in the clubs. Different and significant sounding enough, that the music of NECROTEK can be called authentic – at least James’s efforts offer identity – that’s already more than any nameless Trancewhackedgoregalore-formation would be able to produce. "Menschenfeind" offers 10 own compositions plus 7 well-chosen additional remix contributions – and no, you won’t get any further useless AGONOIZE-/HOCICO-/COMBICHRIST-remix nonsense, but seldom discovered acts, which normally don’t got victimized to the remix-insanity. Names like the heavily underrated TERROR PUNK SYNDICATE, BRAIN LEISURE, NEON CAGE EXPERIMENTS, LAST INFLUENCE OF BRAIN, TERMINAL STATE, EXPERIMENT HAYWIRE and the label colleagues of NOIZEKATT do their best to offer quality new interpretations out of the NECROTEK efforts. The remix of BRAIN LEISURE with its nearly FLA-like sequencing work I tend to rate as a highlight, since this one could be able to open several closed doors to the clubs for James’ rather obstructing arranged tracks. As a special goody for his die-hard fans, James has decided to produce a limited second CD of this album, which features additional 3 own compositions and 6 remix contributions by among others KIFOTH, NORMOTONE, COLD DRIVE, the SEVERE ILLUSION side-project VANVARD or SYNAPTIC DEFECT – well, enough reasons for sure to ask for this special DCD edition, just contact James directly. But already the 1-CD-edition uses the full length of an album – more than 78 minutes of necrophilistic Dark Electro ready pressed, awaiting you to discover.

After two years from the "Starting back" album the next September Laurent Perrier will release on vinyl a limited run of 300 copies of his new Heal album titled SUPERNATURAL. The eight tracks born from Laurent cut and paste and editing of recordings of eleven guest musicians. Mixing jazz/swing elements (the rhythms, the use of bass with xylophone, etc), industrial and experimental sounds the album sounds like a soundtrack to a noir cartoon movie. While side A is more based on treated classic instruments, side B is focused on electronic sounds. "Fille ordinaire", "Bright moods" and "Oslo" (great dub electonic experimental tune) are different from the five tracks of the first side but they doesn't sound strange as Laurent succeeded into keeping alive the same experimental touch with rich rhythmic layers and great sounds. This album made me remember another great album released recently: Laurent Garnier's "Tales of a Kleptomaniac". I know that Garnier's sound is more dancey but in both cases we have great tunes and a rich mix of sounds and rhythms where loops and minimal variations are used with taste.

Active since mid nineties Bad Sector is the project of the Italian Massimo Magrini. CMASA is its latest release and it's a particular one. Born as soundtrack to the M3M art exhibition in Pisa/Italy the five tracks you can find on this release have been later re-assembled and edited. The exhibition was based on images of the seaside and the rivers estuary of the Pisa area with CMASA airplane factory built there vis a vis of archaic marine cottages. Massimo was asked to use acoustic and natural sounds too, so he used treated piano and acoustic guitar sounds along with water and metal samples. The whole album in this way acquired a particular mood inspired by the places he saw. Melancholic melodies are mixed with bleeps, synth pads and samples creating a great soundtrack. Sometimes sounds have been treated like on i.d.m. music (creating that particular cut and paste/interrupted effect) and those ones create a good contrast when used with the ambient ones. CMASA is a particular Bad Sector release but it sure fits really well the Power And Steel catalog.

What have we got here? A guy, two female singers, electro danceable music; no, this is no reason enough to compare Mechanical Moth to Blutengel. Let me make it clear, there are no songs about vampires on the album in question. This unit from Darmstadt, Germany has been around since 2002 under a different name – Projekt Rosenhöhe (perhaps a word play on Mathildenhöhe located in their native city). Also it would be interesting to find out whether the band’s name was inspired by the short story by the writer Nikolai Leskov. His fiction story "The Left Handed" is about a highly skilled Russian craftsman in the 19th century who succeeded to produce a real-size jumping mechanical moth.
With their debut album "Fallen into You" the band found its way into DAC and enjoyed respectable positions in further charts. Now to "Rebirth"; the album stands in the tradition of the previous MM releases but not in their shadows. Some melodies are almost breath stealing and Tandrin proves his talents as a composer once more. It has to be mentioned that he does not sing much himself on this album. The opener "Dance Revolution" takes the attention of the listener hostage. "Cathedral" is a mid-tempo electro ballad with great female vocals. "Black Queen Style" is about a very specific female species. I don’t want to spoil it to you, just listen to the lyrics yourselves.
All in all there are 13 small pearls on the CD to hear. Everything sounds very professional thus you will enjoy "Rebirth" not only at the first listening. The only reason to bitch around is the relatively low number of high speed dance floor killer tracks (like "MDK"). Most of the songs are though really good and personal, but, to my opinion, not ideal for a playful party. However, entertainment value is not the only scale to measure an artist.

Hey what do we got in the toolbox? I’ve the itch to write: "much more than a simple pair of Tongs" and consequentially we’ve an heterogeneous artifact taking inspiration from a bunch of different influences. Forget my crappy humorism but it was just one simple way to introduce the basic concept of bands like this, infact we’re speaking about a sort of advanced fusion or at least about "fusion the way it had to be", somehow we could speak of a sort of Spaceway Inc plunged in a jazzy-rock-electronic salsa, if the sound is not exactly the same the modus essendi is undoubtedly similar infact you hear different quotes coming from different genres scattered here and there in what remains a jazz dough. Soft-groovy parts mixed with jazz-rock rides like, James Taylorian fragments mixed with afro-american venatures, complicated passages evolving into neo-classical music portraits. If a band has a sound and you can bet they have it, imagine a really warm jazzy/rock/groovy double bass (sometimes electric bass) pulsing on a really calculated drumming which according to my opinion betrays a strong rock and percussionist training, saxophonist/clarinetist plays with a strong afro-american accent and they dress the salad with a whole bunch of electronic tricks. Differently from what many may expect from a band like that you hear this is a collection of compositions and not a series of impros, as I’ve said you hear their way of writing songs is very premeditated but still not too angular like early Zu, when they’re soft they have the goddammit jazz feel and when they go for the rock/loud parts they have the volume like Ruins, Vandermark 5 or something in that vein. Despite that many wonnabies out there sold their soul for the last trend (come on, is it black metal?...power-noise?...weird-folk?), this music is the result of several influences and underlines the historical importance of towns like Chicago in crossing the boundaries of genres and styles, we’re talking about the hometown of Art Ensemble of Chicago, Tortoise, Rob Mazurek, Ken Vandermark and a zillion of other great names. Well recorded, well produced and well played, I guess that has to be undoubtly filed under "interesting debut".