We Have a Technical

This episode's Pick Five theme is a bit tricky to define - we're talking about band's we often splash out for. Now, that could just be a simple expenditure of money but could also encompass travel or time spent researching and keeping up with. To use wrestling parlance, which specific bands are we marks for? We hope it'll become clear over the body of the episode. We also have a whole slew of live business to discuss, with Bruce catching the Immortalis tour in Vancouver and Alex heading out to Toronto to see the long awaited live incarnation of The Tear Garden.

On this episode we're discussing the life and legacy of Das Ich's Bruno Kramm in the wake of his tragic passing as well as the one LP released under his solo project, Coeur by Kramm. We're also recapping a couple of shows from this past weekend.

Our monthly commentary podcast takes a slightly autumnal turn with the ethereal wave mastery of California's Claire Voyant. Their sophomore LP Time And The Maiden isn't just a watershed moment for the band, but arguably for an entire wave of likeminded 90s acts who never quite reached the depths of composition and subtlety that Claire Voyant did here.

Get Mean, the new LP by Boy Harsher, is up for discussion on this week's episode. We're talking about the record's shift away from the oft-imitated sound pioneered by the duo, its releases on a major label, and the new metrics by which its sound and songwriting need to be evaluated.

We're dancing with the ones that brought us to the podcasting hoedown on this episode, as we discuss a pair of industrial records from the might aughts: Landscape Body Machine's Manifest Destiny and Haujobb's Vertical Theory. There's loads to be said about each LP in their own historical moment, and how we're now looking back at that time decades on, as well as within the catalogs of the artists themselves.

It's Pick Five time, folks, and dare we say this one turned out pretty well. The "one hit wonder" moniker can be something of a vague appellation when it comes to a niche scene, but we're not naming those tracks or bands, but instead flagging songs other than the Big Hit (not the Nitzer album) which we enjoy by artists predominantly known for one song.

Alex is back and recharged after his trip to the UK and is recapping all the acts from this year's Infest in Manchester. He's talking festival highlights as well as the larger culture the fest's cultivated across its multiple decades. Which hitherto unknown to us acts made an impression? How did a rubber match performance from IAMX fare? Which members of the British music cognoscenti make cameos? Which acts triggered Bruce's FOMO and which made him recoil instinctively?

The second half of our commentary on Synthetic Symphony's "EBM Club Classics" picks up immediately where Thursday's look at the first disc left off. We're looking at familiar favourites from Nitzer Ebb and the Klinik, flagging the likes of Poesie Noire and Inside Treatment for further research, and scratching our heads at the inclusion of Cancer Barrack on an EBM comp.

Our monthly We Have A Commentary bonus podcast works a bit differently this month; with Alex being off in the UK we've prerecorded a double dose of discussion of Synthetic Symphony's 1998 comp "EBM Club Classics", with the first disc dropping today and the second this coming Sunday. Disc one functioned as a handy DJ tool in the late 90s and early 00s, linking some of the first cuts from the likes of And One, Leaether Strip, and Bigod 20 with contemporary state of the art from Covenant, while also throwing in some left-field choices and proto-EBM cuts which have us speculating about the genre and the idea of an EBM canon at large. Tune back in this Sunday for the second half!

As we've been telling anyone who'll listen, seeing EBM legends Portion Control attack the Terminus stage with unaging menace and aggression was one of the main highlights of our recent trip to Calgary, and we were able to interview John Whybrew and Dean Piavanni about their legacy as electronic pioneers and, perhaps more importantly, what's compelling them to push forward into the present, with much of the strongest Portion Control material having been released in recent years. We're also discussing our showcases at Edmonton's Purple City Festival, as well as a recent Dark Chisme show.