Once upon a time there was a little small house in the middle of the Black Forest with a little group of fairies casting gothic-tinged spells, some years later a necromancer noticed the music spread out by this little creatures’ ensemble was a good and safe thing and so he decided to pronounce a magical formula to turn into a wonderful and luminescent castle... It’s not just a silly fable to let your puppets deeply sleep, but it could be a transposition of the story behind the astonishing Equinoxe Records, a label which moved his very first steps in the summer of 1998 in order to provide an independent release platform to the legendary German Gothic Rock band The House Of Usher by avoiding the subjections and compromises of the usual market mechanisms. Nowadays Equinoxe is one of the most interesting reality of the music market but in spite of a 10 years-long activity and more than one hundred releases (and notwithstanding the leaving of two of the four founders, who decided to move on to other endevours) the enthusiasm which inspired their action is almost unchanged and it seems to be the same of the beginning. The tireless publishing effort of this German label let us discover a plenty of interesting bands coming from those music grounds... but the story (or the fable?) of Equinoxe keep on surprising with two remarkable highlights i.e. an agreement in 2003 with the professional distributor ALIVE and the almost concomitant decision to create an electro sub-label, e-noxe, digging into the rich electronic music soil – that’s why this 10-versary sampler is also a celebration of the 5-years birthday of e-noxe!-. As it happens in almost every respectable fable, it should be a frightening ghost, a pustule covered angry ogre, a ravenous wolf or any other monster-like character playing an antagonist role in the set: as everyone knows, the music industry has deeply changed with the advent of internet and file-sharing, one of the greatest threat to many labels – especially the smallest ones -, reducing the possibilities of surviving in an highly competitive market, featuring an excess of supply never experienced before. But this "new order" resulted in a sort of new challenge for Equinoxe masterminds and that’s why the brave efforts mainly focused on any possible attempts to improve the quality of the releases without neglecting the roots behind any bizarre form of stylistic "revisionism". So we could say that this 16-track sampler combining exquisite pieces of both catalogues (the Equinoxe and e-noxe ones!) – with a lot of special tracks by bands which filled the roster from the very first day such as House Of Usher and interesting newcomers such as Psyche and Silvery... - has a particular meaning for the men behind the label curtains! Not only a gift and a sort of thanksgiving to all supporters of the label all over the world, but also an invite to breathe on the 15 candlesticks to join to the bacchanalia! But please don’t forget to... keep the fire burning, folks!!!

Hey, folks... please take your eyes off the green-filtered (you should know that green is an hypnotic color, shouldn't you?) picture of the entrancing neckline of that cutie model on the artwork and respect our fatigue of reviewing records for hours and hours just for a while as the Munster old gothic school seems to be more active than ever... Well, after the renowned issue of the prog-rock band Long Distance Call, here it is the second long-awaited act (... the whole fan-base and those critics which acclaimed to their debut Anodyne have patiently waited for five years their coming back in a studio recording... ) by Neon Dream, a fine band of contemporary gothic novelist and music translators of "dark" feelings swarming in the bowels of contemporary society into a musical idiom deeply rooted in the traditional gothic-rock ground' it's almost impossible to deny a certain influence of bands such as Paradise Lost - enhanced by some elements deriving from metal and wave and inventing a sort of (not so) fictional plot with a fertile level of metaphorical imaginary. In the illuminating preface to the record, the band headed up by singer Klaus Mollers' his gloomy voice is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable element of Neon Dream's line up... - clearly states that their main theme is "war and aggression against life" and quoting a famous sentence of Platoon ("We did not fight against an enemy. We fought against ourselves. The Enemy was inside us") in order to describe the state of the art of the mankind today, they identify their source of inspiration in a sort of nightly revelation inside of which there could be an hidden remedy ("It is despair, that characterizes all the beliefs in imaginary spiritual forces... call them god. Because: did those powers ever arrive or have been seen yet at all? I watch out for them every night. Hours, in which all lyrics of this album were written"... that's maybe why the album metaphorically begins with an atmospheric intro entitled "Flight to Dusk"... there're even some samples of an helicopter just to underline the technology evolution since the times of wax wings by Daedelus! ). Metropolitan West is not only what is normally known as a "conceptual album", even if its cohesion could suggest it, but the honeycombed way this band well balance gothic influences with metal and new wave excerpts is a body of evidence of their musical skills, which are clear since the first track Black Cicada, a sort of allegorical spell highlighted by a somber vocal interpretation by Klaus, whose visionary but not inducted by hallucinogenic drugs (!) state reach a peak in the title-track, a track which stylistically has a more "commercial" appeal, reminding to us some tv fictional series' soundtracks and classical goth-rock throughout airy sounds and sequenced guitar sets. We really like the inspired lyrics of Stealth, a sort of call-to-arms combined with a disquieting transliteration of a modern incubus in the "trillion lights up to 90th floor" of a skyscraper, which is depicted almost as a treasure of terrible mysteries connected to homologation plans ("crowds rushed beneath dark skies/Woman and man . dressed the same") transcending common people's imagination... ! Melancholy and depression as well as a sick sense of inadequacy are the leitmotiv which seems to inspire Veils , while in Agnostic there's a synth-pop pigment which doesn't disfigure the darkish visions of the whole album as well the touch of medieval folk harmonies roosting on Last Hours harmonies. The next track, "Exil" the only one with German lyrics with his industrial-novelistic wit and a hieratical tic-tac of a pendulum clock is with no doubt one of the most atmospheric one (and one of my favorite one). The harder side of Neon Dreamz' sound is surely Child Night Dream, which partially join with the support the band's giving to the Kim Foundation for helping children who physically or mentally suffer from war experiences (have a look to the foundation website: http://www.www.kimfoundation.com) . Some influences by the famous Finnish goth-roch band 69 Eyes on the luscious Sexaholica, while Human Replica seems to be another lucid inversion of a predictive dreamlike realism. The bonus track, Overscreening, with gears moving from the new-wave scene, is another body of evidence showing how diversified Neon Dream style seems to be! Thanks for your attention... now you can look elsewhere!

"The future is now" ... and it is obviously bad smelling... First full-length album signed by the evocative moniker of Splatterpunk (a term coined by D.J.Schow in order to describe a movement which rebels against the traditional horror fictional structure by depicting â?“ even from the graphical viewpoint â?“ the violence in a very tangible way and using horror novels just as a tool to propose a non-fictional analysis of the most disgusting portraits of the daily social life in a provocative way!), an interesting ebm project empowered by sharp reviews of contemporary lunacy, ideally broadcasted on channel 83, the highest frequency (now defunct) for NTSC-M terrestrial broadcasting! Even if there �re a plenty of references to some EBM classics, itâ??s evident that a rich eclectic vein pulses using new music forms to propel its sometimes "subversive" messages in Splatterpunkâ??s electromechanical body and Oscar Javierre Payà aka F18, the man behind this moniker, keep on dissecting the foggy pall enwrapping media-COMtrolled minds through an exquisite blend of sound tricks and well-crafted frequencies full of style variations, which sounds really good and absolutely enjoyable according to our ear response! Rooted down in the cyberpunk fertile cultural ground, the lyrics contains some eruptive statements since the beginning: Future Shock is a good ebm-techno liberation march related to the almost scientifical control some mass media use for enticing minds through apparently inoffensive bombing of info-shit ("digital emotion is the wrong devotion, connected to their lies by optic fiber line") and the nice Psychoterminal (... itâ??s adorable that girlâ??s voice contrasting with the hoarse one by Oscar repeating in an obsessive way "psycho"!) continues with the similar themes which is a sort of leitmotiv of the whole album, inherited by a lot of ebm and dark past acts ("the operative system that they install on your mind is just a simple extension of their fucking masterplan" evokes some dystopian writings by the legendary Philip K.Dick). After the whistling and suppurative minimalistic My Neurosis with the classic crumbling on some brassâ??nâ??bass sounds with an 808 State-like (to be honest, we should speak about a 909-State!!!) rhythmical pattern, thereâ??s the first pit stop, Robot Interface, a mumbling little candy (a little more than one minute is enough to take breath... !) with technospheric soundings which stands almost like a sort of tribute to Kraftwerk lessons before the further snapshot on social manias (un)frozen in the track Hi Technology, Low Life, a good example of danceable yeasty lo-fi tunes with grizzling "vocoderized" captions for a technologized world suffocated sentencing "the time has come and it will never come back again, we live in the last step of the final end", a nostalgic caress before the retro-futuristic high-propelled track Renegade Hacker 3.0 (prepare to repeat a lot of words ending with â?“tion if you like to sing this song while dancing, folks!!!!). What a great track for a supposedly forthcoming Apocalypse engineered by Intel!!! Mr.Ralph appears again on Self Isolation, a catchy conglomerate of pitiful assumptions on people which decide to live this condition as a way of escapism... what canâ??t be cured must be endured... ! A bleeding conceptual passage from robotic to zombie interface (not casual!) before another bath in an acid pool throughout the trance inducted by the well-done XXX-Terminator and the (voi)dances on a sort of vituperative "thrust and parry" in Suicde Epidemix ("Iâ??m tired to see you in these fuckin photos, throw away this shit, it shows your selfâ??s lightlessness" seems to be the words a strong-minded friend will shout to an absent-minded one loving filling his albums on facebook!!!). Turbina Neoplastic with the flux of exercises on throaty beating vocals is certainly not my favorite track (even if it contains good samples), while the howls introducing the romantic intercepted love affair (letâ??s say so!) of an idiot and a mechanical whore (containing a sample of the lies by Jose Maria Aznar told to Spanish people to justify the war on Irak... you should already know the bullshits on Iraki mass destructive weapons... shame on you, politicians!) is surely one of my favorite ones! Donâ??t forget to have a listen (and some jumpy steps) on the two remixes included in the album, among which the ASCII-Disko one of XXX Terminator is an highlight! My personal compliments to Die-6 form Barcellona for pictures and artwork (well... the "fluttering" girl on cover artwork presumably taken from a Japanese porno movie is not the next picture taken from Berlusconiâ??s Sardinean villa family album bought by El Pais!!!).

Hard Body Music is a title which wears the new unmusical effort by the esteemed Italian promoter and dj (but not so many people knows heâ??s also a talented techno forger... ) Noorglo like plastic gummy (and potentially carcinogen!) overalls giving the illusion of a perfect body. His name is mainly related to Decadence parties, among the most famous rendez-vous involving a lot of people devoted to Gothicism, fetishism (and related fashion branches... ) and obviously electro-techno music, but heâ??s considered one of the most active of the underground Italian scene, as he also shared the stage with legendary names of the international music-biz such as Covenant, Massive Attack, Funker Vogt, Einsturzende Neubaten, Hocico, Lacrimosa and many others. A lot of respectful ackonwledgements which are justified not only by his enthusiastic way of promoting his devil-like eyebeam and his guessed figure for introducing to darkish dancing masses as well as by his bumpy sets and his philosophical excerpts giving a conceptual framework to his musical "mission" (... and we could not anything but wink when he states that "performance is the physical expression of music. Often, a musical work is performed once its structure and instrumentation are satisfactory to its creators; however, as it gets performed more and more over time, it can evolve and change in any number of ways"... have a look to Noorgloâ??s myspace to get bodies of evidence of its nite and clear statements, folks!), but also for his good music taste confirmed by this work, which could be ideally detached in two parts: the first one contains a plenty of impressive catching rhythms, progressively gathering (high) speed â?“ but please donâ??t fine him or his sample machines for excess of speed!!! â?“ oscillating between the experimental grasps on well-sequenced beat storms of Waratah â?“ a reference to the Australian beautiful flower whose extract is supposedly able to give courage and heal from depression and anxiety â?“ and the suffocating Arena â?“ a clashy way to start the fire on dancehalls -, the "aspirated" suctions of Lashes, the harsh idiosyncratic beats of Hyerarchy â?“ a nervous and powerful techno mayhem which I didnâ??t hear since a lot of time!!! -, the ironic gabber movement (do you wanna Debord?!?!?) of Bedroom Corrosion and some good slices of sad-istic divertssment in the remix of Oph â?“ reminding to us some cranium-clastic issues by Venetian Snares and the first Aphex Twin -. The second part of the record seems to be less refined than the first one, but weâ??re almost sure a lot of people loving technomantras will love it: the trumpet announcing a charge in Beast (a quote of Lumukanda?!?!?), the ultradistorted ready-to-chew brass in Concrete Flesh and the violently sucked tribal-techno stepping in Hbmopera32 reminded to us some acts of Belgian techno music and Rotterdam(ne-R-d) old school. And after the doors of hell have benn disclosed, Mr.Noorglo proposes a Biosphere-like nice cameo in 12 with lovely trembling and tension-filled atmospheres. A really concrete -!- way to modulate noise in-shape-of something musical to train your sinews and go mouldy on a dancehall.

This provocative record by the young Greek (from Old Athens) producer Georg aka Cygnosic (an acronym maybe referring to the famous neutrinosâ?? storm related to the disappearing of Cygnus X-1, a supernova supposedly turned into a black hole discovered in 1964 and responsible for the mentioned storm which hit even Planet Earth in 1981, grabbing the interest by a lot of scientistsâ?? symposiums, according to which it was the first astronomical object widely accepted to be a source of massive X-rays, useful to explain and study the phenomenon of black holes) could be the musical answers to the Kitamoriâ??s dilemma according the double divine personality (a piece of good news for psycho pills' factories!), as Georg chooses this religious references picturing a sort of portrait of an angry and unmerciful divinity to enwrap his well-crafted and catchy music, constantly oscillating between EBM, techno and music for movies (an attitude featuring Georgâ??s music confirmed by his recent collaboration with the emerging and promising Greek film-maker Fokion Bogris for the soundtrack of a movie entitled Catharsis... ). His distorted use of voice could be associated to this painful godâ??s complaints about human race (it could be fitted to Kitamoriâ??s quoting stating that "when the pain of man becomes the symbol of the pain of God and unites with the pain of God, manâ??s pain is in turn healed. What heals our wounds is the love rooted in the pain of God"... hope I donâ??t look too intellectually snobbish to our beloved readers!), its rhythmical electromechanical patterns seem to initiate to ritual dances for forgiveness and for the praise of this dreadful deity which lose its patience. Thereâ??re some references to the funny fake believing of Discordianism, when Georg identify one of the sign (and reaction... ) of divine pain in the aim of spreading chaos in the first powerful track, in references to the moon eclipse in the second one entitled Luna Obscura (a well-done "chaotic" remix ends up this cheeky tracklist for people which usually enjoy dancing on this kind of hard rhythms in darkish dancefloors), in the geometrical basslines and catastrophic sequences of Zero Tolerance (the structure of the track reminds to us Juno Reactorâ??s "Bible of Dreams" as well as some pieces of Klinikâ??s repertoire... itâ??s not so difficult to fix into memory the lyrics of this song... just repeat the title continuously!). Some slices of terrifying dialogues and malevolent sneers in the filmic You Stink Of Fear, a sort of interlude evoking the awakening of this deity in pain (donâ??t be afraid!), and an adamantine EBM hurdy-gurdy with a reversed sample of breaking chains in Throw Away My Dust anticipate one of my favorite tracks, Neva55 â?“ we sincerely ignore the reason why Georg tribute this track to an old Russian radio!!!-, an highly-danceable track well seasoned with samples of distorted typewriting and anti-aircraft alarms which will surely shake your bodies... This deity looks really disappointed in the soteriological One O Two, a really suggestive track which should not to be heard by people affected with persecution manias! As Far As We Can Go with his catchy gripping could be alternatively entitled As Far As You Can Dance, while a distorted horn and metallic bumpy rifle-shots enrich the nice techno movement of In The Lag Of Time! There are some bodies of evidence confirming the theory according to which some Greek composers looks to be devoted to seraphic choruses, inserted everywhere in this album... it should arguably be a sort of trademark of music coming from Greece â?“ a sort of devotional tribute to the Hellenic respectable descendents?!?!? -! Weâ??re not sure that this record could lenify this deityâ??s wound, but weâ??re almost sure about the fact the this deity in pain is going to get possession of your body!!! Are you ready to get into the terrible will of a deity in pain, men?!?!?