Tense. This is the first adjective that is coming to my mind while listening to the latest Foretaste's album "Happy End!". Their sixth album has been deeply influenced by the feelings the pandemic events raised in all of us. Most of the lyrics are dealing with a feeling of uncertainty and self-preservation. Since the cover which is showing two people holding hands while the worlds collide, one can think that Creature XX and Creature XY are trying to make the best out of the time left. Some examples? Here are some excerpts: "In this day I'm terrified. I'm feeling like I just can't hide", "Living fast but I'm not scared. Fighting soldiers in the air. Welcome to my dream. Welcome to my dream.", "I love the way you're not scared. Cause we don't need to hide again. We don't need to lie. Into the night." or "I don't even know your name. I'm a dead star, in a black world.". Musically I appreciated the rich rhythmic structure which is a good counterpart to the vocal parts which are approached in a way to create a sort of synthpop torch song (Jb Lacassagne a.k.a. Dekad helps singing on "Robotic Blues") where passion and detachment are battling while the synths paint a web made of minimal melodies. My preferred songs are the opening "Welcome", "Pure Madness" (on this one the melody is a bit more catchy), the instrumental "Bored To Death", "Dead Star" (which recalls me a bit Depeche Mode of the 80s) and the closing "Happy End!" (this one is almost a techno tune and I found it really intriguing and I'd like they would have played a bit more in this key just to give to the album a wider palette of sounds). A usual for Foretaste, the album needs more listenings to be fully appreciated

Andrey Sinitsin is a guy coming from Moscow who in the past played the drums in a rock band. Since his interests aren't limited to rock music, he explored also electro, i.d.m. and techno, finding his place creating a mixture of the previous genres under his moniker sin:it:sin. During 2020 he self-released six EPs (available at his Bandcamp https://sinitsin.bandcamp.com/ at a pay what you want basis along with an EP of his new techno project New Terrain), two digital EPs for Urban Connections, a split with The Droid for Crobot Muzik and a tape for Raw Russian. That's a lot of music for one guy but maybe the lockdowns helped to find inspiration and time. The new year finds Andrey back on track producing new music and he just release for Ukonx Recordings his new four tracks EP titled "Borderline State". "Pathfinder", "Borderline State", "Digitize" and "Maschine Learning" are the tracks that you’ll find on the release and they show mostly the electro space side of sin:it:sin, while singles like "Fire/Tunnel" (available at his Bandcamp) were more focused on techno. I think that the tracks born from jams, as he did for the "Checkbox" EP, because they tend to revolve around one idea and then the sounds and rhythms come and go creating movement. The sound is the classic one you would expect to find on Ukonx: rich, powerful and upbeat.

"Hyperborée" is the second album by Signal-Bruit, the second solo project of Celluloide's keyboardist Member U-0176.
"Hyperborée" is also the second release of productionB, sub-label of BOREDOMproduct which is dedicated to the release of projects sounding a bit more experimental compared to what BOREDOMproduct is releasing usually.
This album contains nine new tracks which are chapters of a story based on the journey of Pytheas, a Greek sailor lived in the 4th century BC who embarked toward the northern seas, aiming to prove that the Earth is a sphere and that if someone was standing on the top of it, he should be able to see the sun all day.
Each track is a soundtrack to a different moment of the travel: if "Lacydon" shows the start of the trip, on "Pentécontère I" he's heading to the pillars of Herakles just to pass to the open Atlantic on "Atlantique".
At every stop, he's meeting new people or strange creatures until on "Baltique" he's facing the cold and the ice.
His travel ends with "Nuit Blanche" where the sunset and the sunrise melt in only one moment.
Musically the tracks ideally melt the '70s Berlin/French school of electronic music.
Most of the rhythms are produced by sequencers (if you have in mind the early Klaus Schulze albums, you know what I mean) while melodically I hear echoes of early Jarre and I'm not saying this because Member U-0176 is French.
Think about that mixture of styles and add also a modern production that gives a fresh approach to classic sounds.
Nice release!

Isolated Material is the project of a mysterious 25 years old French producer who now lives in Berlin and "Aliased" is his first release.
The EP released by Ukonx Recordings contains six tracks that you can file under the electro genre.
The titles "Control Your Mind", "Programmatic", "Dotted", "Ritual", "Root Cause" and "Spinning" give to the idea of a dystopian society and the anxious atmosphere of the tracks are the right soundtrack of such theme.
Musically we have a rich rhythmical sound palette which usually is distorted, where fragmented patterns are joined by warm pads and an upfront bass line which on most of the tracks follows the drum pattern creating a hypnotic dangerous feeling.
The tracks create the effect of being in the middle of a thunderstorm: do you remember the weather in a "Blade Runner" typical day? Ok, something like that, but worse.
Electro, a bit of acid and a pinch of glitch sounds, stir and "Aliased" is ready for you to taste!

"Dunklewissenschaft" is the new album by DVS Enemy which is coming less than a year after "Trans Asia Express".
While the latter was a tribute to Kraftwerk passing through all the musical passions and influences of Johan Sebastian Bot, "Dunklewissenschaft" is a sort of tribute to Gerald Donald's projects and in particular to Doppleffekt.
Johan created the graphics for this release having in mind "Gesamtkunstwerk", the collection of the first three Dopplereffekt's releases.
Also, the title "Dunklewissenschaft" ("Dark Science"), born from that tribute idea.
What about the music?
First of all, "Dunklewissenschaft" is massive as it contains thirty new tracks recorded between 2018 and 2020 and if you think about that, if it would be a vinyl release, it would be a triple album!
The sound of the album relies on classic synths that made the history of electro music.
Mono/Poly, MS-20, SH-101, Jupiter-8, Juno-106, JX-3P, TB-303, Polysix, TR-606, OB-8, TR-808, ARP Odyssey, and TR-909, basically almost all of them are machines made by Roland, helped to create tracks in balance from cold robotic mid-tempo electro (check "Dimensionality Reduction", "Thought Crimes", "Marimé", "Emission Spectrum", "Accomplices", "Singularity", "Pathosis" or "Nicht Kampfbereit"), acid inspired ones ("Ghosts Of Detroit", "The Synergist", "Means Of Production" or "Death Ray"), electro-funk ones (like "Shallow Sea Dweller", "Skip Distance", "Hydrographic Design", "Means Of Production") or cinematic melancholic synth-wave ones ("Scientific Process", "Analog Tsunami" or "Together Alone").
The thirty instrumental tracks will keep you busy for 138' and Johan will lead you on an inspired tour through his many moods.
He also did the same during the past ten years, with his radio show/daily blog called "Dark Science Electro".
Nice work for a dude who picked up "Devious Enemy" as his monicker!