Seabound, "Scorch the Ground (Forma Tadre remix)"

I've always quite liked Seabound, their style of synthpop has always seemed more thoughtful and emotive then many of their contemporaries for lack of a better description. They've also always maintained a pretty high degree of quality in their releases. The band has just released a b-sides and rarities comp When Black Beats Blue which is a bit disappointing, coming as it does on the heels of a live record, but does have a few gems for those folks who are waiting on the next album length platter of original music. Of specific note are a version of their club classic "Hooked" with a distinctly different vocal and a nice live version of "Watching Over You" that Reagan Jones of Iris lends his vocals to. The real exciting bit for me though is a Forma Tadre remix of "Scorch the Ground", leveraging as it does DiJ's general FT stannery and specifically my love of his remixes (especially the ones for Assemblage 23's "Document" and haujobb's "Penetration".)

On a side note, I would very much have liked to see Seabound's "Day of the Century" make the cut for the disk, due it being a b-side that is in serious contention for the group's best song. I guess since Metropolis decided to tack it on to their rerelease of No Sleep Demon that it didn't need to appear again. But hey, at least that gives me a reason to mention that that record along with most of Metro's catalogue has been uploaded to eMusic, my own personal favorite digital music retailer.


Seabound, "Scorch the Ground (Forma Tadre remix)"

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"