Zentriert ins Antlitz

I dashed into the DJ booth, demanded to know what was playing, scribbled the name down and hit up Google as soon as I got home. The cause of this flurry of activity? Zentriert ins Antlitz, a dark electro band heavy on the ambient side.

If "Frames"/"Solutions For A Small Planet" era Haujobb floats yr boat then you need to check this stuff out. Thankfully, they've made that painfully simple by offering up their 2007 full-length, "Diametral", for download under a Creative Commons license, as well as assorted EPs and side project releases. Their actual CD releases often include access to entire discs' worth of remixes and bonus tracks. In short, they're on top of getting the goods to you quickly and with panache.

I haven't become so quickly obsessed with tracking down all of a dark electro band's releases in years. Sometimes it takes hearing true innovation and complexity to make you realise how lacking so much of the other material in a genre is. ZiA's music is a transmission from a wondrous alternate universe in which the 90s expeditions made by Haujobb into the coldest reaches of electro (as well as Forma Tadre's symphonic work, Klinik's dalliances with psy-trance, and Mentallo & The Fixer's sheer sonic overload) were acknowledged as the great leaps forward that they were and embraced, rather than being shunned for the sake of stale arpeggios and safe-as-houses club mixes.

-Zentriert ins Antlitz, "Der Zorn des Lammes"
-Zentriert ins Antlitz, "Jahr Fuer Jahr"