Kangarot - Starborn Architects (Holy Page, 2012)

We've all witnessed the new pandemic of John Carpenter worship. Many are tired of it, many have just discovered it. Personally, I saw my first Carpenter flick around 1984, so this music is branded into my psyche. Anything in said vein works for me. This is not to say everyone does it well, and the phenomenon is to the point where current artists are not only imitating the past, but they're imitating their contemporaries, causing a dull stagnancy that corrupts any collective innovation.

There are a few that are innovative with the nostalgia love. Josh Reed is one of them. Kangarot takes cinematic elements and adds a nice backbone of 80's electro / hip hop, ebm and industrial beats. I see NYC kids in the subway breakin' when I listen. He's a breath of fresh air for this genre. There's also a perfect fluidity throughout the recording, which by the way,  is all hardware. No laptops here.

I've tried to come up with clever tags to distinguish what he does... horror breaks, body rock menace... um, ok, I'll leave that up to someone else.

Also check his personal Bandcamp HERE

Evil Madness - Super Great Love (Editions Mego, 2011)

To be honest, I'm kind of frustrated with Editions Mego at this point. How can a label only put out top notch material? I read about this act and thought this would definitely be the one to show that no label is perfect. Wrong. They got me again. This time its with something completely different. Brace yourself for an unusual record from some unusual guys who are ordinarily very cerebral. This is a super-group made up of BJ Nilsen (Swedish experimental sound artist and composer), Johann Johannsson (Icelandic musician who's written and produced for Marc Almond, The Hafler Trio, Pan Sonic and Barry Adamson) and members of Stilluppsteypa (Icelandic abstract / experimental electronic band).

Apparently, these very serious composers needed an outlet. What we have here is an album ready for the European dancefloor circuit. In fact, if you didn't know better, you'd assume this was another unknown early 80's act unearthed by Veronica and crew for the Minimal Wave comp. Not to limit the record to that sound, there's also a solid EBM representation here, along with industrial, coldwave and chillwave. This is tribute music for the most part with a dash of over the top modern trance and techno. Its very reminiscent of some of those later Kraftwerk tracks that were a bit silly but you loved them anyway.

I highly recommend this.

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