Hailing from Toronto, Canada, Glenn Love is a sole underground musician and successful live performer at some dark raves in his home country. With this full length CD now released under the wing of the German Sonic-X label he presents his second official studio release. It is music based globally on Dark Electro themes which plays and combines with several different elements like Electronica, Trance or Ambient. Instrumental music more designed for some Chill-out areas than any straight dancefloors – I would recommend the use of a good pair of headphones. This CD features 11 original tracks done by Glenn Love plus two remix works constructed by ANTISTASIS and T.H. INDUSTRY to make sure a straighter and dancefloor-friendly attitude. The best tracks here are to my taste the more darker pieces like "Walking Dreams" because of the thick synth layers, and the easy-listening "Airships", which features some Trance elements. I like the own identity of the sounds and the ideas behind this project. This music is something special asides all hyped styles and trends. Congrats to the artist and Sonic-X for this courageous release – moreover because I think that any bigger commercial success will not happen in our "short-hair-rivethead" generation. I see it quite difficult to earn any recognition without the use of vocals – so is life and unfortunately an unwritten rule of the scene. Nevertheless it is nice and enjoying – I hope it will enter unforeseen success!

This new Snog CD on the German Hymen Records label features ten different versions of the same song, "Real Estate Man Plus", originally available on the "Third Mall from the Sun" album. If you are afraid that ten versions of one song might sound boring or excessive, rest assured that David Thrussell's infinite creativity's got you covered: altough overall you'll recognize many similarities between the different versions, you'll get electronica, rave sounds, short-spaced rhythmical edits of voice and vocal bits, an ebm version and even a folk version of it with a trashy vocal and an acoustic guitar. The CD also features a ROM track with the 2002 "Ubin mix" version (the opening track of this CD) video clip of the song, which brings us the political side of Snog that we are well accustomed to.

The A.L.P.H.A. compilation (which stands for Altered.Lives.Producing.Humanoid.Atmospheres.) is a two CD release by the Canadian label Geska Records featuring 27 tracks and some multimedia content spacing between power-industrial/rhythm noise and dark electronic music. The "Modus Vivendi" CD features Remain Silent, Empusae, Y P Y Wai Pi Wai, AQL, H.I.V+ vs C/A/T, Stendeck, Iszoloscope, PerfectionPlastic, Converter, Nos Royaumes, Nimp, Lambwool, Koin and S:Cage while the "Fatum" CD features Squale, Re_Agent, Synapscape, Communication Zero (feat. Princess_Coldheard), Lith, Lapsed, OTX, Displacer, Shizuka, Mlada Fronta, Flint Glass, Stendeck, again, and Komplex. I am only familiar with a third or so of the bands, but the level seems to be pretty consistently high, there are no major dull moments, mostly just good stuff and stuff that is maybe a little less interesting or original at times; but overall an outstanding collection of shady digital music. The ROM track of the CD features a nice flash interface with cretis, links, pictures and other info as well as two video clips by Converter and by Flint Glass (of the same track present on the CD, which is one of the most obscure and myserious tracks). The CD's art work features photography of Rik Allen's glass scultpures by Jenny Sturgis (www.dislocationphoto.com).

Swiss Alessandro Zampieri's one-man project Stendeck (whose name is inspired by the last morse code sent by the Stardust plane before it crashed in '47) debuted with "A Crash Into Another World" in 2002 and after doing some sound designing for a short-film called "The Birdge" (directed by Gaston Dupuy), he's back with "Can You Hear My Call?", an album that is allegedly about falling in love and about the "celebration of death who is still breathing life", whatever that means... Interestingly enough, his music does sound very cinematic and perfect for soundtracks: I guess it is true that a man is the sum of all his experiences... This full length album is completely instrumental and taps into multiple areas of the electronic genre, mostly drawing from the school of ambient and dark-ambient made with lo-fi beats, layers of pads, loops a canadian-inspired minimalistic attitude. Sliding back and forth from electronica and ambient into power electronics and rhtyhm noise, Stendeck packs in over a full hour of music for the enjoyment for those who are in search of very atmospheric and yet spiced up music who can make them dream, wake them up and then take them away all over again...

A new label from Germany on the horizon presents here its first release, the debut of a new EBM/Electro duo called EXILANATION, a band which maybe some of you have seen as a support act for FUNKER VOGT on their last tour. "Trancey sounds and hard edged rhythms", so the description in a promotional slogan and indeed – some of the presented tracks fit with this. This also means that real classic EBM is hard to find here – the music of this duo can be more placed into the currently up-to-date Hellektro/Futurepop-inspired scene. I find it quite annoying to share this thinking in categories for only one real style of music, but some hard and maybe elitist old-school EBM fans could stand on this. So if I have to do comparisons to describe the music of this duo, I would name acts like ACCESSORY or yet FUNKER VOGT to be the most in their vein. The band tries a lot to fill in diversity into their music and compositions, hard and danceable rhythmic tracks here with "Killer Application", "Confusion" or "Apocalyptica", ranging to a female leaded track ("Destiny"), up to a Futurepop-like live version of the title track. They do well and flawless on the hard mentioned pieces here, but my favorite track is "Decision", which is a collaboration with GODS FUSION, a project more based into Dark Electro music which will soon release its debut on Codeline-Records. Some flaws are also present here, the use of boring and repetitive speech samples ("Stronghold") could need some improvements, also the female vocalist on the track "Destiny" sounds more sweet than strong enough to win the duel with the rotating sequences. As a bonus you’ll get here five remix works by this band produced for the like SERO OVERDOSE or PANDIQUE to name the best known acts. Nothing outstanding here – the better tracks of EXILANATION are their own compositions. This CD is an up-to-date produced release which finally cannot make clear the question if EBM is dead or not. Nevertheless it is strong and diverse enough to grab some attention. Check also back the website of the label if you are interested in a different kind of copy protection – a project they seem to work hard on...