Today it’s been exactly 26 years since Nine Inch Nails released Broken (EP)
Today it’s been exactly 26 years since Nine Inch Nails released its first EP Broken (September 22, 1992). The EP was produced by frontman Trent Reznor and Flood and entirely consists of new material. The synth-pop style from the band's 1989 debut album Pretty Hate Machine was replaced by a heavier sound that would act as a precursor to their second album The Downward Spiral (1994). One of the reasons for this drastic change in sound and style being TVT Records, who had signed the band, pressuring Trent Reznor to record a similar synth-pop album as follow-up after the success of the previous Pretty Hate Machine album. As a reaction to this attempt to interfere with his artistic and creative freedom Reznor secretly started recording with Flood under various monikers to prevent TVT Records from confiscating and releasing their recordings.
In the end, a deal was reached with Interscope Records to release future Nine Inch Nails releases.
The accompanying short movie Broken, filmed and directed by Peter Christopherson (Trobbing Gristle / Coil / …) and based on a scenario by Trent Reznor, was never officially released due to its extreme graphic content but was leaked as a bootleg which became heavily traded amongst fans.
Although the videos were widely censored from television airplay, the song Wish made the band win the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance (1993) while their Woodstock '94 performance of Happiness in Slavery won the same award at the 38th Grammy Awards (1996).
Broken peaked at the seventh rank on the US billboard 200 chart.
The original release of Broken was limited to 250.000 copies and included two bonus tracks on a separate 3" CD including a cover version of Physical, a song originally by Adam Ant, and Suck which Reznor had co-written with all-star industrial band Pigface.
A remix EP titled Fixed (with blue cover) was released late 1992.
Broken (EP)
1. Pionion
2. Wish
3. Last
4. Help me I Am In Hell
5. Happiness In Slavery
6. Gave Up
3" CD tracklist (Bonus)
1. Physical
2. Suck
Earlier this month NIN performed the Broken EP in its entirety on their Cold and Black and Infinite North America 2018 Tour (see video below).
Diane Grace releases first of three videos, 'Wedding', taken from their new EP 'Pan!c'!
Art punk rock trio Diane Grace releases its debut EP “Pan!c” on Starman Records. The three songs will be consecutively released on digital platforms in a 3 week span. Together with the three videos that make up the shortmovie “Pan!c”, directed by Kris Verdonck, and already selected for various film festivals such as FF Napoli.
Diane Grace got known and gained live notoriety during Humo’s Rock Rally, Belgium’s leading music contest. Anything could and did happen during theses performances in Trix and AB.
The Pan!c EP was recorded and produced by Pieter Van Buyten (known for his basswork for The Kids) in an abandoned 19th century country house.
Musically the band is on the same wave as Black Flag, Wire, Captain Beefheart, Birthday Party, Howlin’ Wolf and Suicide.
Diane Grace is Mauro B. (vox), Mr Pig (drums),.44 (guitars)
Dead High Wire release their debut single ‘Pray For Us’: an absurd, politically critical meta-pamphlet in considerably bad times, on 1st September, as the first single from the debut album with the same title. The full album will be released later this Autumn.
On this debut, Pray For Us, the gentlemen of the Antwerp-Malines Post-Punk band Dead High Wire sound more savage and raw than ever before.
This time they are entirely responsible for the idiosyncratic sound by themselves. # tapedeck, # DIY, # chorus-on-everything...
The recordings and mixing of the album happened at an undisclosed location in Antwerp with an Otari tape recorder and kilometres of tape.
Pray For Us is the lead single of the eponymous debut album. The trio shoots from the hip: "Wasting all those years, facing all those fears, wasting all my time, convicting all these crimes".
Darkish, maybe, but in the video Ruben, Sacha and Thijs show their true nature. Because this song - and by extension the whole album - is a 'meta-pamphlet' with a big wink to everything that is human and how man rather awkwardly tries to transcend his earthly limitations. And... that's okay. # ornot.
You can find the single online from 1st September (iTunes, Spotify...). The release of the debut album will later be available online and on vinyl.
Dead High Wire releases eerste single!
Pray For Us: absurd meta-pamflet in redelijke kuttijden
Dead High Wire lost op 1 september Pray For Us, de eerste single van het gelijknamige debuutalbum. De langspeler komt er later dit najaar.
Op hun debuut, Pray For Us, klinken de heren van de Antwerps-Mechelse postpunkband Dead High Wire snediger en rauwer dan ooit.
Voor de eigenzinnige sound zijn ze deze keer trouwens helemaal zelf verantwoordelijk. # tapedeck, # diy, # chorus-on-everything... Opnames en mix van het album gebeurden op een undisclosed location in Antwerpen met een Otari-bandopnemer en kilometers tape.
Pray For Us is de lead single van het gelijknamige
debuutalbum. Het trio valt met de deur in huis. “Wasting all those years, facing all those fears, wasting all my time, convicting all these crimes”.
Donker, mja, maar in de videoclip tonen Ruben, Sacha en Thijs hun ware aard. Want deze song – en bij uitbreiding de hele plaat – is een 'metapamflet' met een vette knipoog naar alles wat menselijk is en hoe de mens nogal onhandig zijn aardse beperkingen probeert te overstijgen. En... dat dat best ok is. # ofwelofni.
De single vind je vanaf 1 september online (iTunes, Spotify...). De release van het debuutalbum volgt later dit najaar. Het album is dan online en op vinyl verkrijgbaar.
HOLYGRAM
MODERN CULTS
Music for the lost: HOLYGRAM‘s music blends post-punk and new wave with Krautrock and shoegaze elements into a headstrong, multi-layered and thoroughly contemporary homage to the sound of the 1980s, including a resolute look to the future: driving, dark and full of catchy moments. The wide range of influences of the five band members, who got together in Cologne’s vibrating musical landscape in 2015, are unmistakable: New Order meets NEU!. Their unpretentious approach to their own icons proves that references to the past must always be future-oriented, too. Previously impossible-to-combine elements come together cleverly to become the soundtrack of a city that appears threatening in the twilight.
The band who always wrap themselves in dense wafts of mist and cool lighting on stage have played numerous festivals, such as the Mailfeld Derby, Wave-Gotik-Treffen and New Waves Day and accompanied British act OMD on their 2017 European tour. At the end of the year, HOLYGRAM are set to embark on an extensive support tour with VNV Nation through Europe and the US to introduce their debut album Modern Cults live.
The recording takes up where their self-titled 2016 EP left off and intensifies HOLYGRAM‘s contemplation of themes such as big cities, alienation and anonymity, hope and memories, love and identity: These constant reflections always interact closely with the band’s unmistakable sonic guise. The atmosphere oscillates between the brutal sounds of the big city and the fragility of the people that lose themselves in it – intelligently observed scenarios of a world falling apart in which individuals have long ceased to play a leading role. The eleven songs were created over the past few years and some of them have already been tested in a live context. Numbers such as the title track Modern Cults or the spherical Still There follow their protagonist on a nocturnal trip through clubs, flashbacks, run-down neighbourhoods and the abysses of the human psyche. The diversity of the cityscape as a reflection of the people who live in it seems like an Ariadne‘s thread that the five musicians offer to their listeners to help them navigate this broad stylistic range. Because HOLYGRAM don’t see themselves as representatives of a specific genre. Melancholy walls of guitar sounds (Distant Light) interchange with uplifting bass runs (Hideaway), chilly synthesizers meet stoically driving rhythms and together make up the projection screen for the ambivalent stories that HOLYGRAM tell in their music. While 1997 wanders through forgotten places in a broken-up relationship, the song She’s Like The Sun is an ironic confrontation with the failure to achieve unreachable targets. Autobiographical elements blend with fiction, the past melts into the present and they all become a simultaneously oppressive yet hopeful vision of human (co-) existence: a person caught in the mist of their own dreams at the intersection of outer and inner world, between fiction and reality.
This is also where the first single release Signals (scheduled for release on 7 September) comes in, featuring a new-wave guise that belies an emotionally torn lyric, elevating the deeply melancholy chorus (“Sometimes when I close my eyes I see you walk away / And everytime the sun comes up the feeling is the same”) to a pop-like anthem, illustrating that in this world people are only cogs in a much bigger, increasingly autonomous machine.
For the production of their album, which was recorded at Cologne’s Amen Studios, Patrick Blümel (vocals), Sebastian Heer (drums), Marius Lansing (guitars), Pilo Lenger (synthesizers) and Bennett Reimann (bass) enlisted the support of Maurizio Baggio, who also produced The Soft Moon’s albums Deeper and Criminal. Together they worked on the band’s established sound, enhancing it with a myriad of facets.
VNV NATION - NOIR TOUR + HOLYGRAM - EUROPE 2018
12.10 Alter Schlacthof - Dresden - D
13.10 Stadtgarten- Erfurt - D
14.10 Im Wizemann - Stuttgart - D
16.10 Futurum - Prague - CZ
17.10 Progresja - Warsaw - PL
19.10 Effenaar - Eindhoven - NL
20.10 E-Werk - Cologne - D
21.10 De Casino - St-Niklaas - B (TICKETS)
23.10 Melkweg - Amsterdam - NL
24.10 Ringlokschuppen - Bielefeld - D
26.10 Columbiahalle - Berlin - D
27.10 Altes Theater - Magdeburg - D (SOLD OUT!)
28.10 Muffahalle - Munich - D
30.10 Batschkapp - Frankfurt (AM) - D
31.10 Haus Leipzig - Leipzig - D
01.11 MAU Club - Rostock - D
02.11 Mehr Theater am Grossmarkt - Hamburg D
Daft Records has a long tradition of releasing some special and high quality releases for decades now and strikes back with two highly anticipated releases from two of their latest signed artists.
The first one:
KnK - Dead Body Music III (D1070CD)
On their 2nd full length album this Belgian duo takes you once again on a remarkable dark experience with their DBM (Dead Body Music), a perfect blend of old skool industrial with haunting vocals from the grave.
The second one:
ALVAR - I Sew A Blanket Of All The Broken Clouds D1071CD
The long awaited and brand-new 11 track album from Swedish dark-noise and EBM act ALVAR, who made an impressive performance at last year's BIMFEST, stunning friend and foe!
ALVAR, pulsing, shadows, thrilling rhythms, furious loops and a feeling of total takeover of your soul.
Both releases are due 15 October 2018
More info and previews at www.daft-records.com
