AGENT SIDE GRINDER

This is one of the bands I've been following since the beginning, as they really impressed me with their raw take on new wave and electro. They also experiment a lot (check out Transatlantic Tape Project). You can relive their energetic European tour with a few recent live outputs like this CD. I sadly haven't had the pleasure of seeing them live, even though they’ve visited Belgium more than once. After listening to this CD I'm shocked I missed all those wonderful moments. 

I highly recommend Hardware Comes Alive! I love the singer's energy and his brilliant voice! Sometimes he sounds like recalls Ian Curtis, other times he sounds as raw as Iggy Pop. Add some of the finest Suicide-synth melodies and Hooky guitars and you've got yourself a groovy, sexy and relentless winner. Good songs featured off the Hardware album are “Look Within,” “Sleeping Fury,” “Rip Me” and “Wolf Hour.” "Mag 7" is a very nice and even psychedelic minimal trip with its slowly developing analogue tune. “Die To Live” and “Telefunk” are great underground hits you’ve probably heard before. The live atmosphere is captured by people cheering and howling along, although this never gets annoying because you can hear that this was a magical night. There's another new ASG release, SFTWR (software), a remix album (more on that later). 

Chris KONINGS
17/03/2013