Sweden’s affair with EBM shows no sign of abating. The latest track from Strikkland, from the sequencer-loving West Coast, is a thumping, contorting piece of energy, wrapped in barbed wire. It precedes a new album, which is expected in 2024.
Juno Sandbæk-Jensen never intended her project, Pieces of Juno, to get this far. It was timed to coincide with the end-of-life of NASA’s probe with the same name; but, when the spacecraft was granted an extension, another – final – album was conceived.
Atlantis is not an extension of the Pieces of Juno tetrology that began with Kalopsia in 2017. It is a stand-alone work that brings together Jensen’s interests in classical mythology and the state of the planet.
I wanted to say something about our time in history where humanity is on the brink of self-extinction, where everything feels so hostile and vulnerable and unadaptable. I also wanted to say something about accepting the things I can’t change and ask myself; if I had little or no time left, how would I spend it?
So far, so “Eve of Destruction,” but Pieces of Juno hasn’t given up. Besides the album, she has a film doing the festival circuit that is a visual poem to the north of her native Norway and wider humanity. Øya [EN: The Island] is Sandbæk-Jensen’s second documentary, and it draws on music from Atlantis.
Stylistically, the album is recognisably a Pieces of Juno creation, but it brings in touches of Tom Waits, Nick Cave, and PJ Harvey. One of Waits’ collaborators, Bebe Risenfors, appears on the album, which might have something to do with it. Other contributions come from Magnus Nymo on nylon guitar, Freddy Holm on strings, and Åsa Ava Lange Fredheim. A special feel is added by the harp work of Aseta Koloeva, whom Sandbæk-Jensen found on social media.
Opening with the piano-led “The Musky Opulence of Summer,” the tone of the album is quickly established. Before you can get comfortable, the track is pitched down and brought to an end to to line up with “Juniper,” one of the songs that led the release. Here, we are treated to Sandbæk-Jensen’s vocals, which are as smooth and cool as freshly fallen snow. There are elements of jazz and blues in her approach, but this is lounge music from the edge of the world.
In one of the eco-friendly signals transmitted from the Pieces of Juno base, “Heaven’s Murky Brew,” we are invited to “Drink in the dew and breathe out the fumes.” It is a core part of the message, but social consciousness is also found in the instrumentation of “El Niño.” Whether with words or feelings, Pieces of Juno is invested with care for this lonely rock. The drowned city of Atlantis provides a metaphor for the fragility of humanity.
There are deep considerations of time and acceptance in “Sense of Self.” Sandbæk-Jensen explains that the track was inspired by coming to terms with aging and moving on from the easy beauty of youth. A friend once warned her that women become “unfuckable” as they grow, but the spirit of the song is summed up in her retort: “I’m not ‘fuckable’ – I’m irreplaceable.”
The excellent new album from Lucifer’s Aid has dropped with a bang. Destruction features ten potential singles, but our favourite candidate is this track.
“Obsession” brings the EBM point-and-thrust sequences and beats right up to date. Calle Nilsson’s growl has something of Cryo’s insistence about it, which is a good thing.
The spirit of resistance is strong with REIN. The Stockholm-based producer and songstress has fought to strike her own path in music, despite attempts to pigeon-hole her style. Like Björk, REIN has approached her art with a vision that she controls, and has grown with each new release.
REIN spent part of 2022 criss-crossing the United States with Front Line Assembly, and she has dates coming up with Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb in Sweden, but her electro/avant-pop style has never been confined to her EBM roots. Yes, she can construct beats from iron girders and hammer out bass lines with the ferocity of a Viking falling on a Saxon monastery; but, on Reincarnated, she showed a touch that was sensitive and tuneful enough for radio.
REIN’s new album, God Is a Woman, represents a new step in the evolution of her sound; levelling-up with influences from Robyn, Missy Elliot, Aaliyah, Eurythmics, The Prodigy, Depeche Mode, Christine and the Queens, Fever Ray, and Kraftwerk. With themes referencing biblical myths, Lennart Nilsson in utero photographs, and life in dystopia, REIN has collected her new material under a banner of empowerment:
I have always been fascinated by how powerful women are, that we can create life inside of our bodies. I am also fascinated by history and religion. Like why have we, as women, been so oppressed for such a long time
and still is to this day? I still can’t understand why. We should be the leaders of this world
The first track released from the album, “How’s It Gonna Be?”, is characteristically personal:
It’s about the experience of being together with a person that is hot and cold, and the conversations you have with yourself. You know that the relationship is going to end someday but you are still hopeful. I would also say ‘How’s It Gonna Be?’ is the twin of my older song ‘Bruises’, people like it when I sing soft and from the heart.
With rhythms inspired by Computer World and a lifting vocal line, the result is a cross-over that will work on your FM dial as easily as it does live. Full of hooks and stabs, and with long-term collaborator Djedjotronic joining proceedings, it is a prime candidate for the dancefloor.
The full album drops on 30 November 2023. It comes in two limited editions of black or pink vinyl, which can be ordered from REIN’s Bandcamp.
REIN has four confirmed dates around the new album and the coming single tracks:
- 2 November 2023: “Rockefeller” Oslo with Front 242 + Nitzer Ebb
- 3 November 2023: “Trädgårn” Gothenburg with Front 242 + Nitzer Ebb
- 25 November 2023: “Slaktkyrkan” FutureRetro Weekender Stockholm
- 9 December 2023: “Club Meet Factory” Prague
In normal years, the transition of foliage from rich greens to burned orange and gold occurs over a period of weeks; turning the trees into the colours of the Sun before the darkness really sets in.
This is no ordinary year. The havoc caused by the relentless pursuit of profits has put the forests on a different schedule. Reset your mental calendar with this offering from Nille Nyc. The Danish chanteuse returns for the changing of the season with an elegant, infectious piece, accompanied by Kristian Gaarskjær on guitar.
The impossible beauty of Lau Nau’s work combines water from many wells: womanhood, motherhood, the sea, isolation, togetherness, Polar light, Northern darkness… In her work, the inheritances of the Finnish archipelago and forest take human shape and are relayed through magical resonances.
“Nukahtamislaulu” means “Lullaby” in Finnish, but the first track from the forthcoming Lau Nau album reminds us that adults need soothing, too.
An ornamental swan wrapped in cellophane. A worker knocking down a mountain in Switzerland. A collective farmer in a field. A marriage in the lights of a Midlands factory. An imposing building covered in banners with a foreground of tulips. These are the images that defined the image of Depeche Mode through their first five album covers. All shot by the legendary photographer, Brian Griffin, they represented the band on the shelves of record shops, in the collections of fans, and in the music press. There were critics who (unfairly) thought the group’s pop lightweight, but their cover art was decidedly serious.
It was fine art, at a time when many record covers showed a band’s latest hairstyles. Griffin’s image for A Broken Frame – the album released into the gloom of 1982 after the departure of Vince Clarke – was selected by Life magazine to front its collection, The World’s Best Photographs (1980-1990). Daniel Miller had resolved to give the band the best resources he could, when he took on producing them for his Mute Records imprint, and his choice of Griffin gave them visuals as distinctive and iconic as their music.
Speak & Spell cover art by Brian Griffin
Griffin came to Miller’s attention because his agent had an office above Mute’s. At the time, Griffin’s work was prominent in record shops, featuring on releases from Iggy Pop, Echo & The Bunnymen, Ian Dury, Simple Minds, and Elvis Costello. The commission to create an image for Depeche Mode’s first album, Speak & Spell, led to an abstract but striking image of a plastic-wrapped swan that has come to be interpreted, with hindsight, as a commentary on consumer capitalism. Griffin’s working class politics were given fuller reign with the next two albums, which featured the sickle (A Broken Frame) and hammer (Construction Time Again) as core elements of the cover photos. That led to an excited journalist at Melody Maker trying to get Dave Gahan to come out as a fellow traveller, when he was more interested in Kerrang! than the Communist Manifesto.
There have been other sources of confusion between the band and Griffin’s artwork. In 1982, some said that the peasant on the cover of A Broken Frame was a man – perhaps even Daniel Miller in Slavic farmer’s drag. In 1984, rumours circulated that the cover of Some Great Reward showed Alan Wilder getting married. Both were wrong. The hunger for information about the band, and the need to interpret the images in light of its evolution, led to pre-internet speculation fuelled by the multiple layers of meaning in Griffin’s work.
Depeche Mode promotional shot by Brian Griffin
There is a chance to set the record straight with the release of MODE, Griffin’s latest book. With a preface from Gareth Jones, an interview with Griffin that explores all of his work for the band, and an essay by Roger Butler that tells the story of the video for “Only When I Lose Myself,” it is the definitive history of a relationship that helped to define the image of the band.
Backed by fans of Depeche Mode and Griffin through a Kickstarter campaign, and with energy provided by DM-interpreter Vaughn George, MODE is designed by the same team who created Griffin’s biographical work, Black Country Dada. It collects previously unseen images from his shoots for the records and promotional materials, showing Griffin’s striking style. It also includes pictures of artefacts from the archives, which give Depeche Mode fans more of the context of the work. Photographers will be awed by the technical skills and creative techniques used by Griffin. Fans of the band will be enveloped in the experience of working with the band and label. It is an exquisite and badly-needed window into a period when one of the world’s most important bands was finding its voice and commercial success.
Page (Photo: Jonas Karlsson)
When Gary Numan first encountered a synthesiser, it changed the way he made music. It was the same for Eddie Bengtsson, who traded in his new drum kit for two synthesisers after he heard Silicon Teens singles that had been imported to his native Sweden. The concept of four teens making covers of rock classics using only synthesisers inspired Bengtsson to start his own band, – giving one of the synthesisers to his girlfriend, Marina Schiptjenko, and inviting another friend to join the proceedings.
What Bengtsson didn’t know was that there was only one member of Silicon Teens – the same man who had given the world “TVOD/Warm Leatherette” as The Normal. When he wrote to the Teens, in care of Mute Records, to share his admiration, Daniel Miller came clean and explained that Daryl, Jacki, Paul, and Diane were all him. Never mind – Sweden could have its own version in Page. Live shows and original songs followed, giving a Scandi twist to the sounds of Synth Britannia. Page became the house band of the local synth scene, creating world-class poptronica from their Baltic Sea base.
Page (Photo: Simon Helm)
Fast forward four decades, and Page are still carrying the torch for the sounds of 1978-1980. Over the years, Bengtsson’s compositions have acquired the distilled spirit of Ultravox! and Gary Numan; increasingly, channelling the feeling of those transitional days when post-punk was becoming something electronic. It is that moment that is captured across En ny våg [EN: A New Wave] – a feeling reinforced by the presence on the album of Chris Payne and Rrussell Bell. Two of the legends who helped to lead the transition from punk rock to poptronica, Payne and Bell have worked together previously as part of Gary Numan’s touring band and Dramatis. On the evidence of the material contributed here, the respect shown by Bengtsson and Schiptjenko for their British peers appears to be mutual.
The title track features Payne’s violin, which gives a minor key frisson to a classic slice of bouncy Page pop. The depth of Bengtsson’s well of melodies has never been plumbed, but his ability to draw dynamic and emotional lines is unmatched. “En ny våg” is laden with tension, mysterious beauty, and a presence that most electronic bands would struggle to reach in a lifetime of work.
The point is made dramatically with tracks like “Förloraren” [EN: “The Loser”], which tap into the ability of Bengtsson’s Moogs to resonate with both force and sensitivity. It comes up again on “Stopp-Vänta-Nu” [EN: “Stop-Wait-Now”], in which powerful strings and a growling funk bass signal the strength of the electricity fizzing through his instrumentation. It’s the kind of material that keeps crowds enthralled at Page’s live shows.
“Vi kommer tillbacka” [EN: “We Are Coming Back”] was our Single of the Year for 2022. As we wrote in our year-end review:
When John Foxx left Ultravox!, they lost more than their punctuation mark. Foxx’s presence gave the band bite. Midge Ure made excellent, soaring pop but left no teeth marks–well, apart from the time he kicked Warren Cann out of the band he had founded. Musically, at least, there is something to be said for having an edge.
Page could have reissued Glad and been happy with the enthusiastic response, but Eddie Bengtsson has some of that 1970s UV spirit in him. “Vi kommer tillbaka” [EN: “We Are Coming Back”] arrived as a single just as the year was running out, easily outpacing the competition with a slice of golden poptronica.
In “Det här är mitt sätt” [EN: ”This Is My Way”] there is something of the throbbing passion of Magazine and Pete Shelley. The song is also a statement, which captures Bengtsson’s determination to maintain his true path. “It can go wrong / It can go right / This is always – my way.”
Dramatis, from back in the day
“Korridoren” [EN: “The Corridor”] is the closest that Page have come to Kraftwerk, with the echo of “Hall of Mirrors” and the longing of OMD’s “Distance Fades Between Us” fusing to trigger the sympathetic nervous system. Fight, flight, or dance? None of them emerge with clarity, but each has a place.
“Frusen” [EN: “Frozen”] finds Rrussell Bell’s guitar completing Page’s phrases with intensity. Page have, from time to time, played with guitar sounds, but usually by exploiting the Moog’s filters. The Dramatis man lifts the dynamics of Bengtsson’s rhythms in a fierce, celebratory way. And this is rather the point of the album: after punk had burned itself into a parody of pub rock, young musicians needed new ways to express their alienation and raw energy. The synthesiser provided that opening, and the sounds of guitars were adapted to fit with them. Page and their guests are out of their teens, but they are still young lions. The flow of electricity doesn’t stop until they do.
Myrkur returns with a new album, Spine, on 20 October 2023. “Mothlike” is the second single from the album, and it comes with a video by David Pitt.
Amalie Bruun’s last album, Folkesange, represented the Danish artist’s connections to traditional folk song, but her black metal sound seems to have returned. Capable of stirring emotion with the lightest of touches and the heaviest of winds, Bruun’s voice works powerfully with either style. Still working through the experience of becoming a mother, she has birthed Spine in Sigur Ros’ Iceland studio; unleashing storms of emotion that Jonsi rarely gets to express himself.
Trevor Horn never wanted to learn to read the manual and learn how to program a Fairlight. At the time, one of the most powerful and expensive synthesiser systems, the Fairlight impressed its sound and sequencing on the biggest hits of the 80s thanks to Horn’s team of technicians and producers. One of them, JJ Jeczalik, became accomplished at working the machine’s primitive sampling and looping capabilities. Add producer Gary Langhan, composer Anne Dudley, and you have the Art of Noise.
Paul Morley wanted in the project, too – lifting the group’s name from the writings of the Fascist artist, Russoli. It was never clear what Morley added, other than words on record covers, but Horn’s contributions are also difficult to detect. The project used his tools and studios, and his label released its first records, but the Art of Noise eventually moved on.
There is more history before we get to the present day, but for the moment we are interested in the emergence on streaming services of various versions of the band’s first hits, “Moments in Love” and “Close to the Edit.”
“Share (Moments in Love)” appeared on 1 September 2023 with eight tracks. From “Moments in Love (Original, Part One)” to “The Spring Flowers,” established fans will be familiar with the material, but it is a solid reminder of how ahead of the times the group were. If this isn’t one of the most beautiful love songs ever written, then the heart is dead.
The rhythms of “Close (to the Edit)” should be firmly embedded in the heads of any electronic music fan from the 1980s. The Art of Noise team worked on Malcolm McLaren’s b-boy/world music crossover with Trevor Horn, and they both borrowed the feeling of the streets and returned phrases for sampling by the original hip hop generation. Class.
From the band’s FB post:
Two tracks arrive on download and streaming platforms for the first time: the original 7″ A-side mix (“altogether now”) and the 12″ picture disc A-side mix (“Edited”).
Three tracks from the various original 12″ vinyl editions of Close (To The Edit) return to digital platforms: Close-Up, Close-Up, Closely Closely (Enough’s Enough). The single’s classic B-side, originally titled A Time To Clear (It Up) on the 12″ picture disc rounds out the set.
All tracks featured are taken from the original master tapes. In the case of Edited, that’s a copy master from Good Earth Studios of Dean Street, London dated 05 February 1985. And in the case of the 7″ A-side mix, that’s the original Town House cutting master by Gordon Vicary from 17 September 1984.
The 7″ version itself was edited together by Nicholas Froome, assisted by Dave Meegan, on 05 April 1984 at Sarm East studios working with tapes originally recorded by Dudley/Jeczalik/Langan on 12 May 1983.
Art of Noiseologists will note that, when the Influence compilation was released in 2010, the ‘single version’ of Close (To The Edit) it included was, in fact, the earlier, slightly longer 04:11 edit. This will arrive on digital platforms later this month, under its original title, Beat Box (Diversion Seven).