This day forty-two years ago Jean-Michel Jarre released the electro-ambient masterpiece known as Oxygène.
It was the French-composers first release which was not intended as a soundtrack, a front-runner in electronic music, the album which brought Jarre into the mainstream almost overnight was also overlooked in certain parts of the world upon release, as it coincided with the surge in the punk-movement but unmistakable in the delivery and synth advances.

Though it did go on to sell fifteen-million copies, a remarkable feat for an album without a singer, lyrics or even a guitar, in the nineteen-seventies this was almost unheard-of, Kraftwerk had incorporated guitar, drums and violins into their work as to did Tangerine Dream, then again these are bands and Oxygène was composed, constructed and produced by a single individual.

The modern-day Mozart created a landscape of sound embedded with his own unique charm, created through the VCS synthesizers, mellophonium, mellotron and programmed rhythms it was a complete electronic production unlike those of his counterparts such as Mike Oldfield, this was a record relying solely on technical advances. However, the studio used to record the album was Jean-Michel Jarre’s own kitchen in his apartment using an eight-track recorder,

Without a track-list as such only a breakdown of six-segments (Parts I-VI) the most famous of course the dance-floor filling “Part IV” released as a single in 1977 and going top-ten in most European-territories, this joyous crescendo is another instantly recognized piece of music.

The inspiration for the album came from a painting by Michel Granger, that painting adorns the album cover, instantly recognized , a precursor to the climate-change movement revealing death as the earth is ravaged, as resounding an image as it is, Jarre also foretold the future in the very-fresh sounding album.


Original 1976 Track List;

Side One
Oxygène (Part I) – 7:40
Oxygène (Part II) – 7:39
Oxygène (Part III) – 3:20
Side two
Oxygène (Part IV) – 4:03
Oxygène (Part V) – 10:26
Oxygène (Part VI) – 6:22

Kevin Burke Nov 2018

This month it’s 34 years ago Canadian industrial act Skinny Puppy released their very first EP Remission, a six track record, on Nettwerk Records (December 1984). In 1986, after their first full album Bites was released, Skinny Puppy released a cassette version of Remission with additional tracks expanding the release to a full-length album. In 1987 both albums Remission and Bites ended up together on one single CD album called Bites And Remission containing 17 tracks while the European PIAS version named Remission & Bites had only 14 tracks on it.

Besides the already recognizable and typical Skinny Puppy style the EP is filled with vocal samples taken from, amongst others, the 1943 Hitchcock movie Shadow Of A Doubt and even a sample of president Ronald Reagan’s speech about pornography as art.

The original release already contained some of Skinny Puppy’s classics songs like Smothered Hope, Far Too Frail and Solvent, tracks that still can be heard at many underground parties today.

Remission (original 12" vinyl version)

Back (Side A)
A1 Smothered Hope
A2 Glass Houses
A3 Far Too Frail
Side B -

Forth (Side B)
B1 Solvent
B2 Sleeping Beast
B3 Brap...

DISCOGS

This month it's 31 years since Canadian industrial band Front Line Assembly released their first official album The Initial Command (December 1987) on the since discontinued Belgian cult label KK Records. In fact it was also the first KK record release bearing the catalogue number KK001.
Before this album the band released only two demo tapes called Nerve War and Total Terror. The music on this release was mainly composed by Bill Leeb, but also with help from his future partners in crime Rhys Fulber and Michael Balch on some tracks.

On The Initial Command we can hear a very dark and deep EBM sounding Front Line Assembly which may remind you of the sound of Cabaret Voltaire during their Crackdown era but even more deep and dark. The tracks Black March and No Control are certainly a sort of forecast of the harder tracks they were about to release in the following decades.

Since the 1987 release of The Initial Command, the album has been re-issued twice. The first re-release, in 1992 by Third Mind Records, contained no changes. The second re-release, in 1997 by Cleopatra Records, contained two new tracks and new cover art.

The Initial Command (1987)

The Initial Command (1997)

DISCOGS

SLOVENSKA TELEVIZA are a minimal electronics duo from Valladolid and Barcelona. Wladyslaw Trejo and Lunademayo stay close to coldwave then expand to avant-garde and experimental approaches. In a permanent exploration to achieve a proposal that is both strange and fascinating, our commitment extends beyond the musical to other artistic disciplines that allow not only to complement but also to create a more complex and coherent work.

SLOVENSKA TELEVIZA is not about doing things in the usual way, they go against any commercial criteria and choose an instrumental song. This one is titled the same as the band's name, 'SLOVENSKA TELEVIZA', since it's the one that best collects the spirit of the project, a study on nostalgia and that strange melancholy of unknown origin that inhabits everyone and that goes back to the advent of these sensations in very first childhood.

The video-art piece has been produced by YANNET BRIGGILER, illustrator and animation director born in Argentina, although she lives in São Paulo (Brazil), where she works. Yannet Briggiler manages to amplify the mood with such a level of beauty and sensitivity that it even hurts. The animation has a narrative construction by means of ellipses. The viewer who articulates the fragments can create/observe/read/find a plot that connects the scenes. There are also elements that cause a strange impression, because they invite to travel through ambivalent territories. In this sense, montage is based on intuition and the displacement of cognitive patterns by the mechanics of the illusion of the traditional 2D-animation technique.

Enjoy the minimalism!

Black Nail Cabaret informed us they arrived at a very important moment in their lives, with the release of their 4th studio album.

"Pseudopop" is a turning point for Black Nail Cabaret. We have crawled out of a box we were so attached to, but we are heading towards a goal that we always wanted to achieve. We don't want this record to be labelled, because genre labels are equivocal and arbitrary at best. We believe that pop music can be meaningful and avant-garde, and that alternative music can reach a wider audience and not just a group of people. Nowadays some genres overlap each other, giving a chance for something new to be born - and we think this is exciting as there is so much to learn!

"Pseudopop" is a summary of all the music that had a huge impact on our lives. We couldn't exactly tell which melody or sound comes from which influence. We just emptied our brains, dropped the genres and let it loose. It is a nice hybrid of the chaos inside both of us and we like to think that it's avant-garde contemporary pop with dark alternative roots.

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