Miranda Cartel is the electronic project of Polish artist Emmanuella Robak, who released the 14-track album “Amethyst” on 21 March 2026. In this Miranda Cartel interview for Side-Line Magazine, Robak speaks with Karo Kratochwil about the decade between her 2015 debut “Divert” and “Amethyst”, the crystal that gives the album its name, the voice training and literary study she pursued during a long recording gap, the Polish dark alternative scene, and her return to live performance.

Robak writes, produces and sings the material herself, and also fronts the Polish darkwave band Lily of the Valley. She holds a PhD in literature and a master’s degree in English with a translation specialisation, and worked through academia, dubbing, acting and the Warsaw music scene during the years between records. Kratochwil photographed her in Dresden in 2025. The album followed the 2025 single “Andromeda”, which reopened the project after a long pause.

Miranda Cartel interview

Karo: Miranda Cartel returned after a long silence connected with academic and literary work. Did that break change the way you understand electronic music itself, or mainly the way you understand your own reasons for making it?

Miranda Cartel: That break from releasing music ultimately confirmed one thing for me: I really did want to keep making music. It also gave me time to understand which direction I wanted to take and how I wanted to continue telling my musical story.

During that period, I moved to Warsaw and immersed myself in the music scene. I went to countless concerts, discovered new genres, and had the chance to observe how different artists create and work with music. I also became involved in various musical, vocal and acting-related projects. I took dubbing classes at Katarzyna Łaska’s dubbing academy, studied vocal performance with Magdalena Hamer, performed in karaoke competitions, and played in the band Emmanacje at Akademia Rocka.

So I never really left music behind. I simply explored it from a different perspective for a while. Looking back, it was an incredibly valuable experience. Everything I learned during those years has found its way into the music I am making today, and I am sure it will also shape my live performances.

Karo: “Divert” came out in 2015, while “Amethyst” arrives more than a decade later as a full 14-track album. What changed most between those two versions of Miranda Cartel: the sound, the discipline, the emotional temperature, or your relationship with visibility?

Miranda Cartel: During that time, my whole approach to making music definitely changed. I am much more intentional now when choosing samples, paying attention to the sound itself, its quality, and the rhythmic foundation of a track. I approach melody differently, and I work with sounds in a completely different way. I now have a much clearer vision of what I want to create, but I also have a deeper understanding of music itself. Over the years, I have worked with and met many musicians who introduced me to new ideas and new possibilities. I also started taking vocal lessons, and that made a huge difference. Now I am able to sing the melodic lines I actually imagine, instead of being limited by technique. Singing lessons removed many of the limitations I had ten years ago and gave me much more confidence as a vocalist.

Karo: The title “Amethyst” immediately suggests colour, mineral depth, protection, perhaps even a kind of inner alchemy. Was it chosen for its visual and symbolic qualities, or did the album already have that violet, crystalline character before the title appeared?

Miranda Cartel: I have always loved amethysts. I am almost addicted to the energy I feel from this stone. It gives me strength, comfort and reassurance, and it makes me feel capable of overcoming whatever challenges come my way. I believe in the energy of crystals, and for me the amethyst is a talisman. It is a source of strength and positive energy that I rely on in everyday life. That is where the album title comes from. I wanted it to suggest that this record can also become a kind of talisman for different moments in life. The album explores a wide range of emotions and experiences, both joyful and difficult, but I believe every song carries its own strength and can help someone through a particular moment. I chose the title with that symbolism in mind, and it actually came to me only after the recording process was finished. Interestingly, the album also includes a track called “Amethyst”, one of its most experimental songs. But when I decided to name the album “Amethyst”, I was not thinking about that individual track. I was thinking about the album as a whole, what it represents, and, as you said, its violet, crystalline character.

Karo: Miranda Cartel has appeared on compilations connected with Alfa Matrix, Side-Line, Orkus and Electrozombies, which means the project has existed partly inside an international dark electronic network, even while remaining rooted in Poland. Did that outside recognition give you confidence, or did it create pressure to define the project more clearly?

Miranda Cartel: Every time one of my songs was selected for a compilation, it felt like real confirmation that my music resonates with people. It is one thing for me to believe my songs are good. That is obvious. But when industry professionals who understand the music market choose your tracks for their flagship compilations, it is an incredible honour. I am genuinely happy that my music has been included on those releases, and I hope it will not be the last time. I would love for my songs to appear on more compilations like that in the future.

Karo: “Andromeda” marked the return of Miranda Cartel with both sound and image. Why was that particular track the right signal after the break? Did it feel like a new beginning, or like a message sent from a place you had never fully left?

Miranda Cartel: This song, and the vision for its music video, had been in my head for a very long time. I have always loved ballads, and I think writing them is one of my strengths. So when I decided to return to music after such a long break, I knew I wanted to do it with a ballad. Not long after recording the song, we started working on the music video. It was an incredible experience, but also a real challenge, because I had to step into an acting role and express a wide range of emotions, even though I have no formal acting training. Still, I think I managed to pull it off, and the video captures exactly what I wanted to express through the song.

Karo: Polish electronic and dark alternative music has often operated outside the main European centres of scene visibility. Does working from Kielce give Miranda Cartel a sense of distance, freedom, isolation, or a sharper need to build its own language?

Miranda Cartel: Kielce has always had a vibrant music scene. When I first started making music, there were plenty of opportunities to perform live, record cover songs, and take part in music and poetry events, for example those held at Czerwony Fortepian. Working on my music there gave me a great deal of creative freedom, but it also encouraged me to develop my own artistic voice. I needed to build my own language. Now I have been living in Warsaw for the past few years, and this is where I create my music. The city offers incredible opportunities to experience live music, from concerts by international artists to performances by alternative bands, from commercial club events such as Boiler Room to underground nights in Warsaw’s independent venues. Every concert, DJ set or live performance I attend becomes a source of inspiration. Experiencing music from so many different perspectives constantly fuels my creativity and influences the way I approach my own work.

Karo: Your background includes music, academic activity and literature. How do these forms interfere with each other in your work? Does language shape the music first, or does the sound usually reveal what the text has been trying to say?

Miranda Cartel: Without a doubt, the time I dedicated to academic development completely changed the way I think about music, interpretation and storytelling. The literary sensitivity I developed through my studies, I have a PhD in literature, allows me to write songs that are meant to carry and communicate emotion. At the same time, my background in languages also changed the way I approach lyrics. I earned a master’s degree in English with a specialisation in translation, and that made me much more aware of linguistic nuance and of how subtle word choices can express exactly what I want to say. My academic and literary work gave me much greater confidence as a songwriter and expanded the ways in which I can use language to tell a story and connect with listeners. Most of the time, I write the melody first and only then add the lyrics. There are exceptions, though. “Broken” is one of them. I remember walking to work when I suddenly began quietly reciting these lyrics to myself and humming a melody. The words stuck in my head so strongly that I knew I had to capture them before they disappeared. I immediately sat down to develop the idea. Work could wait that day.

Karo: Performing at Castle Party in 2018 placed Miranda Cartel in one of the most symbolic spaces for the Polish dark scene. Looking back, did that concert feel like confirmation, confrontation, or a threshold you only understood later?

Miranda Cartel: That was not actually my first performance at Castle Party. I had already played there with my first music project, Lily of the Valley. Then, in 2017, I attended the festival in a different role. I worked there as a journalist, covering the event live for Projektor, a cultural magazine from Kielce, where I am still part of the editorial team today. I also wrote a feature article promoting the festival that year.

A year later, I returned to the Castle Party stage as Miranda Cartel, performing alongside my friend Adrianna, who played keyboards. It is always a little less stressful, and much more enjoyable, to share the stage with someone rather than perform alone. Castle Party has always been a very special festival for me. It is where I discovered many of my favourite bands, met incredible people, and learned so much about music and music production. It is also where I had the chance to meet talented musicians, passionate artists and true professionals. Performing at Castle Party was, and still is, one of the most meaningful milestones in my musical journey.

Karo: A solo electronic project often means total control, but also total responsibility. Which part of Miranda Cartel is hardest to carry alone: production decisions, emotional exposure, visual identity, promotion, or the simple persistence needed to keep going?

Miranda Cartel: Self-discipline is the hardest part of working solo, because you know you do not have any deadlines. Nobody is waiting for the track so they can record their part, nobody will say “stop” when it comes to revisions, and nobody is speeding up the process of creating music. With everything I work on, I try to reach the point where I can say to myself: okay, this is good, it is ready to be released. But that takes time and persistence. Is rushing a good idea? Releasing something in a hurry and then not being happy with it at all? At the same time, Miranda Cartel is deeply personal to me. It is my emotions, my experiences and my perspective. I am not sure I could share that creative process with someone else. Being in a band is a completely different way of working and creating together.

Karo: After “Amethyst”, what should Miranda Cartel risk next? More directness, more abstraction, stronger stage presence, deeper literary structures, or something that would disturb even your own idea of what the project is supposed to be?

Miranda Cartel: One of my biggest goals is to perform this new material live. After the holiday period, I will announce some live performances. It has been a long time since I last appeared on stage as Miranda Cartel, and I think it is definitely time to start playing concerts again. I also feel much better prepared now. I have more experience, a stronger foundation and much more confidence as a performer. I am really curious to see how audiences will respond to these songs, so I am looking forward to their feedback. I am also planning more music videos, so there is plenty of creative work ahead. I already have several ideas I would love to bring to life. And I do know one thing for sure: we definitely will not have to wait another ten years for the next album.

About Miranda Cartel

Miranda Cartel is the solo electronic project of Emmanuella Robak, based in Kielce, Poland. Robak writes, produces and sings the material, mixing darkwave and synthpop, and also fronts the Polish darkwave band Lily of the Valley. Her debut EP “Divert” appeared in 2015 on Halotan Records.

In the years that followed, Miranda Cartel tracks circulated through compilations rather than a steady release schedule, including Alfa Matrix’s “Endzeit Bunkertracks” and “Electronic Body Matrix”, Side-Line’s Face The Beat: Session 2 with the track “The Way To Follow”, the Orkus Magazine compilation, and Electrozombies tributes to Apoptygma Berzerk (“Apop We Love You”) and Depeche Mode (“Universe > Spirit”). Robak performed at Castle Party in Bolków in 2018, one of the central festivals for the Polish dark alternative scene.

After a break connected with academic and literary work, including a PhD in literature and a master’s in English translation, Robak returned with the single and video “Andromeda” in 2025. The 14-track album “Amethyst” followed on 21 March 2026 and is available on Spotify, Tidal and Apple Music. As she confirms in this interview, live dates are planned, and she does not intend to leave another decade before the next album.

Swansea band Trampolene released a remix of “Storm Heaven” by Andy Bell on 3 July 2026. The Trampolene “Storm Heaven” Andy Bell remix reworks a track from the band’s 2017 debut album “Swansea To Hornsey”, with Bell, the Ride guitarist and Oasis bassist who records electronic music as GLOK, setting frontman Jack Jones’s spoken-word vocal against an electronic backdrop. The remix is available to stream through the band’s official release page, and arrived with a visualizer.

Andy Bell reworks Trampolene’s ‘Storm Heaven’

Bell has described what drew him to the track. He said the spoken-word vocal was the starting point: “Jack’s spoken word on ‘Storm Heaven’ was the catalyst for me choosing this track to work on. I wanted to set his marvellous speaking voice against an electronic setting, and this was a remix which came together easily and pretty quickly, which is always a good sign.“

Jones connected the original song to his family. He said the track was inspired by a phrase his grandfather used before he died: “‘Storm Heaven’ has always meant a great deal to me because it was inspired by something my grandfather used to say before he passed away. That made trusting someone else with it feel significant, but Andy was the perfect person. I’ve admired his music for years, and he found something in the song that even I hadn’t heard before. He kept the heart of the original while opening it up into something completely new. It feels like discovering the song all over again.“

“Storm Heaven” first appeared on “Swansea To Hornsey” in 2017 and has remained a fixture of the band’s live set. The remix follows a run of support slots over recent months, including dates with Inspiral Carpets, Ocean Colour Scene, Babyshambles and Public Image Ltd.

Trampolene tour dates 2026 and 2027

Trampolene have confirmed festival appearances and support runs with Republica, Ocean Colour Scene and Happy Mondays. The scheduled dates are:

• 5 July 2026 – Tunbridge Wells, Forum (with Inspiral Carpets)
• 6 August 2026 – Southend-on-Sea, The Fickle Pickle
• 8 August 2026 – London, Bring The Noise at Signature Brew, Haggerston
• 9 August 2026 – Silverstone, Moto GP Weekend
• 22 August 2026 – Devon, Beautiful Days Festival
• 16 October 2026 – Newport, Strings (with Republica)
• 17 October 2026 – Southampton, The Brook (with Republica)
• 23 October 2026 – Kendal, Brewery Arts Centre (with Republica)
• 24 October 2026 – Sheffield, Network 2 (with Republica)
• 29 October 2026 – Frome, Cheese & Grain (with Republica)
• 30 October 2026 – Birmingham, Hare & Hounds (with Republica)
• 31 October 2026 – Leeds, Brudenell (with Republica)
• 5 November 2026 – Tunbridge Wells, Forum (with Republica)
• 6 November 2026 – Brighton, Chalk (with Republica)
• 7 November 2026 – Norwich, Waterfront (with Republica)
• 12 November 2026 – Guildford, The Boileroom (with Republica)
• 13 November 2026 – Stroud, Sub Rooms (with Republica)
• 14 November 2026 – Belfast, Ulster Hall (with Ocean Colour Scene)
• 15 November 2026 – Belfast, Ulster Hall (with Ocean Colour Scene)
• 17 November 2026 – Dublin, Olympia (with Ocean Colour Scene)
• 18 November 2026 – Dublin, Olympia (with Ocean Colour Scene)
• 19 November 2026 – Dublin, Olympia (with Ocean Colour Scene)
• 20 November 2026 – Manchester, Gorilla (with Republica)
• 21 November 2026 – Glasgow, Oran Mor (with Republica)
• 23 November 2026 – Aberdeen, Music Hall (with Ocean Colour Scene)
• 24 November 2026 – Dunfermline, Alhambra (with Ocean Colour Scene)
• 26 November 2026 – Cambridge, Corn Exchange (with Ocean Colour Scene)
• 27 November 2026 – Bedford, Esquire (with Republica)
• 28 November 2026 – London, Garage (with Republica)
• 29 November 2026 – Bristol, Thekla (with Republica)
• 26 January 2027 – Leuven, Belgium, Het Depot (with Happy Mondays)
• 27 January 2027 – Utrecht, Netherlands, TivoliVredenburg (with Happy Mondays)
• 28 January 2027 – Maastricht, Netherlands, Muziekgieterij (with Happy Mondays)
• 29 January 2027 – Paris, France, Cabaret Sauvage (with Happy Mondays)

About Trampolene

Trampolene are a four-piece from Swansea, Wales, built around singer and guitarist Jack Jones, with Wayne Thomas on bass and vocals, Lee Thomas on guitar and Mr Williams on drums. The band pairs guitar music with Jones’s spoken-word writing. They released their debut album “Swansea To Hornsey” in 2017, followed by the double album “Pick A Pocket or Two” in 2018, “Love No Less Than A Queen” in 2021 and “Rules of Love & War” in 2023. Jones also plays guitar in Peter Doherty’s touring band and, in 2024, released a self-titled solo album and his second book, “Tour Diaries Vol.1”.

The remix marks the band’s first collaboration with Andy Bell. Bell, who plays guitar in Ride and played bass in Oasis and Beady Eye, has run the electronic GLOK project alongside that work, and his reworking of “Storm Heaven” brings the 2017 track into that electronic setting.

Electronic musician Adam Filip released the Berlin School and ambient album “The Returning Circle” on 3 July 2026 through the Buenos Aires netlabel Cyclical Dreams. The 10-track record, catalogued CYD 0161, is out in digital form and as a CD, and moves through evolving synthesizer sequences, ambient textures and themes drawn from pre-Christian Slavic ritual.

Adam Filip ‘The Returning Circle’ draws on Slavic ritual

“The Returning Circle” builds its ten tracks around the cycles of nature, time and ancient Slavic spirituality, taking cues from winter-solstice vigils, the fire rites of Kupala Night and the cult of Veles, the Slavic god of the underworld and magic. The sequence runs from “First Circle” through “Postrzyżyny”, “By the Fire”, “Between the Breaths of the World”, “The Light That Returns”, “Summer Flame”, “Return to the Circle”, “Parallel Rhythm” and “Jaryło” to the closing “Veles’ Night”. Adam Filip built the album on hardware synthesizers including the ASM Hydrasynth, Access Virus TI2, Korg Radias and Roland MC-101, with u-he software instruments, keeping to the classic Berlin School method of multi-layered, slowly shifting sequences. Cyclical Dreams describes the set as carrying “echoes of early Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre, while maintaining its own unique, organic, and emotionally resonant voice.”

The full album streams on video, and the digital edition carries a reduced price until 8 July 2026. The CD is available on demand through Kunaki.

About Adam Filip

Adam Filip is an electronic musician who composes Berlin School and ambient music, building long-form pieces from layered synthesizer sequences and drones. “The Returning Circle” places him on Cyclical Dreams, the Buenos Aires netlabel that specialises in Berlin School, ambient, drone and space music and issues its catalogue on Bandcamp with on-demand CD editions.

The label has released a steady run of atmospheric electronic records covered by Side-Line, among them DTime’s “Nightwoven” in May 2026 and French composer Christian Wittman’s deep-space ambient album “Andromeda”* in January 2026. “The Returning Circle”, out on 3 July 2026 as CYD 0161, adds a Slavic-themed, ritual-minded set to that catalogue.

Parallel 33 released “Sowe”, a dark post-punk single, on 26 June 2026 through Mania Records. The track runs 2:27 and is available on Spotify and Apple Music. “Sowe” is the sixth single from the project, which started releasing music in 2025.

Parallel 33 credit three writers on ‘Sowe’

On “Sowe”, Michael Zamora plays guitar and Limbert Palomino wrote the lyrics and sings, while ALEO produced the track and shares the writing credit. In the release announcement, ALEO describes the single as “a slow, dark, moody post-punk cut about falling in and out of love with the same person year after year”. The announcement lists Joy Division, She Past Away and Molchat Doma as reference points.

About Parallel 33

Parallel 33 is a dark post-punk project that releases through Mania Records. The single “Sowe” credits Michael Zamora on guitar, Limbert Palomino on vocals and lyrics, and ALEO as producer. The project describes itself as making “restless tracks for restless nights”.

Parallel 33 began issuing singles in 2025, starting with “Vampira” in March 2025, followed by “Fin” in April 2025 and “Come Alive” in August 2025. The project moved to a faster pace in 2026, releasing “The Calling” on 24 April, “Raquel” on 15 May and “Sowe” on 26 June. “Vampira” remains its most-streamed track on Spotify. With “Sowe”, Parallel 33 extends a run of dark post-punk singles into the second half of 2026.

Finnish artist Diana Ringo released her second vocal album, “Clowns in America”, on 3 July 2026. The Helsinki-based songwriter, film director and composer writes, produces and performs her own material, and presents the 11-track record as darkwave, post-punk and avant-garde electronic. “Clowns in America” is available on Bandcamp and Spotify.

Diana Ringo ‘Clowns in America’ follows the 2025 debut ‘CYBERWOLF’

The album runs to eleven tracks: “Reptile”, “Yesterdays”, “Price of Admission”, “Fracture”, the title track “Clowns in America”, “Scripture of Scars”, “Titanic”, “Touched”, “Teeth”, “Golden Waves” and “Alpha & Omega”. It continues the vocal direction Ringo opened on her debut vocal album “CYBERWOLF”, released on 17 October 2025 and preceded by the single “Happy Mealz” on 17 August 2025. As on that record, Ringo handled the writing, production and performance herself.

About Diana Ringo

Diana Ringo (born 8 March 1992) is a Finnish film director, composer, pianist and visual artist based in Helsinki. A classically trained pianist with perfect pitch, she studied under Janne Mertanen and Risto Lauriala and attended master classes with composer Lalo Schifrin and directors Paul Verhoeven and David Lynch. Her score for Sampson Yuen’s film “Million Loves in Me” won Best Original Score at the LAFA Awards in 2020.

Ringo directed the dystopian feature “Quarantine” (2021), for which she wrote 26 original score tracks and which Finland forwarded as a foreign entry in the 2022 Golden Globes process. She followed it with a film adaptation of George Orwell’s “1984”, released on 15 November 2023, and “The Curse of Modigliani”, her first English-language feature, shot in Helsinki and released on 7 December 2025.

She moved into vocal-led songwriting in 2025. The single “Happy Mealz” arrived on 17 August 2025 ahead of her debut vocal album “CYBERWOLF” on 17 October 2025, described as a post-punk record. “Clowns in America”, released on 3 July 2026, is her next album and carries that post-punk and darkwave direction across eleven new tracks.

This new EP serves as a teaser for the recently released full-length album by Belgian artist Cédric Wattergniaux, better known as Kilmarth.

Across three tracks, Kilmarth invites the listener into his uncanny sonic universe. The EP suggests that he has found a stronger artistic footing, revealing a more clearly defined style and a cohesive set of influences. Echoes of early glitch music are unmistakable, yet the compositions never feel nostalgic. Instead, they combine those foundations with contemporary production techniques and more refined sonic textures. These carefully sculpted soundscapes are contrasted by persistent layers of noise that run throughout the tracks, lending the music a raw, almost archaic quality. At the same time, Kilmarth has paid greater attention to the overall mix and production, resulting in a richer, more balanced sound and a significant step forward in quality.

As a preview of the full-length album, this EP succeeds admirably, leaving the listener eager to discover what comes next. (Rating:7).

Listen to “Avant De Céder… “ :

https://kilmarth.bandcamp.com/track/avant-de-c-der

Estonian industrial act Freakangel have released the “Control (Extended) EP” through Alfa Matrix on 26 June 2026. The seven-track edition expands the band’s earlier “Control” EP, issued in April 2026, with four new remixes of the title track.

What Freakangel add on the ‘Control (Extended) EP’

The EP keeps the original three tracks, “Control”, “Death Bloom” and “Suicidal (Break The Cycle)”, and adds four remixes of “Control” by Psycholies, PashaRav, Spankthenun and Implant. Freakangel’s D. Darling and Ocean Black wrote, produced and recorded the material, with mixing and mastering at Usoundworks Studio and cover artwork by Gobotoru.

The EP carries two official videos. Darling connects the clip for “Death Bloom” to the band’s live-driven sound, while the second video accompanies “Suicidal (Break The Cycle)”.

About Freakangel

Freakangel is an Estonian electro-industrial and rock project formed in Tallinn in late 2009 by Dmitry Darling, known as D. Darling, as an offshoot of his other band Suicidal Romance. The project mixes aggrotech, industrial and dark electro with rock, and released its debut album “The Faults Of Humanity” through Alfa Matrix, the Belgian label it has worked with since.

The band followed a run of EPs and free downloads, among them the 2024 “Death Bloom (extended version)” EP, before issuing the “Control” EP in April 2026. The “Control (Extended)” EP closes out that cycle by pulling the single’s remixes together with the original tracks.

Hungarian electro-industrial act First Aid 4 Souls have released the 25-track album “Totems In A Field Of Pain”, issued digitally through Alfa Matrix on 26 June 2026. Project mastermind István Gazdag steers the record back toward the harsh electro-industrial sound of the project’s early years, pulling together two decades of material with new 2026 compositions.

What First Aid 4 Souls gather on ‘Totems In A Field Of Pain’

The album runs to 25 tracks of corrosive electronics, militant rhythms and mechanical atmospheres, mixing brand-new pieces with older material rebuilt, remixed or remastered into harder forms. US-based vocalist Mortum, of Human Vault, returns across several tracks, including “Pre-Rendered Biological Evolution”, “Binary Defect”, “King Of Filth” and “The Fate Of The Tormentor”. The record also gathers a long list of collaborators from the industrial underground: Impurfekt, Stahlgeist, United Gods, K.I.F.O.T.H., Tor Marrock, V.E.N. and Svoid.

The release lands seven months after First Aid 4 Souls moved in a different direction on the post-punk and darkwave album “Progenitrix”, issued in December 2025 with a run of female guest singers. “Totems In A Field Of Pain” turns back to the project’s aggressive electro-industrial core.

About First Aid 4 Souls

First Aid 4 Souls is the electro-industrial project of Hungarian musician István Gazdag, who has worked in the electronic and industrial scene since the late 1980s. He formed the project in 2007 as a continuation of his earlier industrial and EBM band Vacuum, writing all of its music while bringing in a rotating cast of guest vocalists, which has led some to describe it as an international supergroup.

The project signed to the Belgian label Alfa Matrix in 2019 for the dark EBM album “Keep This World Empty”, which introduced its collaboration with US vocalist Mortum. Gazdag has also produced remixes for acts including Coil and Soft Cell. After the darkwave turn of “Progenitrix” in late 2025, “Totems In A Field Of Pain” returns the project to the corrosive electro-industrial sound it built over its earlier releases.

German electro-industrial band Tyske Ludder have confirmed the remaining Tyske Ludder tour dates for 2026, a “Weltenbühne” run of festival and club shows that crosses Germany, Norway and Sweden between August and November. The band also stated that no further German club shows are planned for 2027, making the current run the last chance to catch them on home soil in the near term.

The itinerary opens at Munich’s Free & Easy Festival on 5 August and takes in Mera Luna and NCN before a set of autumn club shows. The band flagged the free-admission Munich appearance for fans on a budget.

Tyske Ludder tour dates for 2026

• 5 August 2026 – Munich, Germany – Backstage (Free & Easy Festival)
• 8 August 2026 – Hildesheim, Germany – Mera Luna Festival
• 3 September 2026 – Deutzen, Germany – NCN Festival
• 16 October 2026 – Berlin, Germany – Slaughterhouse
• 17 October 2026 – Hannover, Germany – SubKultur (with Vomito Negro)
• 30 October 2026 – Oslo, Norway – John Dee (with DJ Alex Tjore)
• 6 November 2026 – Übach-Palenberg, Germany – Rockfabrik
• 28 November 2026 – Stockholm, Sweden – Debaser

The Hannover date is billed as a co-headlining evening with Belgian act Vomito Negro, and the Oslo show adds a DJ set from Alex Tjore. Tickets for selected dates are available through the band’s official channels.

About Tyske Ludder

Tyske Ludder formed in Lower Saxony, Germany, in 1989, when Claus Albers and Olaf A. Reimers, who had met at school in the early 1980s, moved toward an all-electronic sound. Ralf Homann joined in 1991. The band recorded its debut album “Bombt die Mörder?” for KM-Musik in 1994, followed by “Dalmarnock” in 1995, produced by André Schmechta of X Marks the Pedwalk. After the “Creutzfeldt” EP in 1996 the group paused until reuniting in 2003, then issued a series of albums for Black Rain beginning with “Sojus” in 2006.

The band’s recent activity has centred on the Weimar-era themes of its 2025 album “Weltbühne”, a project drawn from the writing of Kurt Tucholsky and released through emmo.biz. Side-Line also covered the 2026 reissue of the “Creutzfeldt” EP as a limited vinyl pressing. The 2026 “Weltenbühne” dates extend that cycle across Germany and into Scandinavia.

German EBM project Endzustand release the single “Maschinenangst” on 3 July 2026 through Echozone, issued together with a video. The track is the first preview of the band’s coming album “Macht Gesellschaft” and turns its theme of technology and control into pounding EBM.

Endzustand set ‘Maschinenangst’ against machine anxiety

“Maschinenangst” takes aim at artificial intelligence, social networks and the growing weight of technology on daily life, posing the release’s central questions about truth, manipulation and control. Echozone describes the track as “a grim truth embedded in raw, pounding EBM rhythms and an uncompromisingly brutal sound”. The single lines up as the opening single from the album “Macht Gesellschaft”, with Ralle on vocals and Rudi on drums.

About Endzustand

Endzustand is the EBM project of Ralf Rönckendorf, a former German soldier who lost his eyesight and three comrades during a 2010 mission in Afghanistan. He built the project around classic electronic body music, drawing on 1980s reference points such as Nitzer Ebb, Die Krupps and DAF.

Endzustand issued the album “Werk des Krieges” through Echozone in 2020, followed by the “Roter Freitag” EP in 2021 and further releases on the label. The project now records as a duo, with Rönckendorf joined by Rudi on drums. “Maschinenangst” opens the campaign for the next Endzustand album, “Macht Gesellschaft”.

US electronic act Futant have premiered the video for “The Third Way”, the first single from their coming album “Occultist”, set for release on 31 October 2026. The Washington, D.C. duo issued the single on 30 June 2026 and plan a limited vinyl edition of the album with six extra tracks.

Futant line up ‘The Third Way’ ahead of ‘Occultist’

“The Third Way” is the first of five videos Futant plan to release on the last day of each month up to Halloween, when “Occultist” arrives. The duo describe the album as a darker turn shaped by themes of Magick and secret societies. As with the rest of their catalogue, the record will be offered as a free download through the band’s site, alongside the paid limited vinyl pressing.

About Futant

Futant is an electronic duo from Washington, D.C., made up of Luxe and F. Tyler. The pair have worked together since 2005 and have released music publicly since 2008, building a large catalogue that runs through cyberpunk and synth themes on records such as “Cyberpunk”, “TransHuman”, “Holografik” and “Deep Space”. The project offers its releases as free downloads through its own site.

“Occultist” will be Futant’s 29th studio release. The Halloween album steers the duo toward darker, occult-themed material, with “The Third Way” and its video opening a monthly run of previews through the autumn.

Dark electro project Kllsignl has released its debut EP “Wendigo” on 2 July 2026 through Out Of Line Music. The five-track set mixes industrial, trap, phonk and EBM, and is led by the track “Gimme that Kllsignl”. Physical CD and T-shirt pre-orders are available alongside the digital release.

What Kllsignl gathers on the ‘Wendigo’ EP

“Wendigo” collects five tracks: “I AM THE”, “Wendigo”, “Feed the Crows”, “Zero Me” and “Gimme that Kllsignl”. The EP pulls together recent Kllsignl singles with new material, tracing the project from its 2023 debut “You Ain’t Gonna Make It” through “Sinister”, “Wendigo” and “Feed the Crows”. Side-Line covered the “Wendigo” track in 2025, when Kllsignl joined Out Of Line Music and released the single and video; the EP now sets it in a fuller run.

The project heads into a summer of German festival dates, with confirmed slots at Amphi Festival on 25 and 26 July in Cologne and at Summer Breeze Open Air from 11 to 15 August in Dinkelsbühl. Kllsignl also guested on Erdling’s “Zerspreng die Ketten (Wendigo Cut)”, released on 27 March 2026.

About Kllsignl

Kllsignl is a dark electro and industrial project that fuses industrial, trap, phonk and electro into a bass-heavy sound. It is signed to Out Of Line Music, the Berlin-based label whose roster includes Aesthetic Perfection and The Bloody Beetroots. The project made its live debut at the Out Of Line Weekender in Berlin in 2025 and has built a run of singles since its 2023 debut.

Lyrically, Kllsignl returns to imagery of fracture and transformation, threading obsession and self-destruction through its tracks. The “Wendigo” EP is the project’s first extended release, and it arrives as Kllsignl steps up to festival stages across Germany.

The Montréal solo project No has released the album “Escaping Heaven”, a 12-track record issued on 8 June 2026 as a co-release between Tonn Recordings and Kernkrach Records. No builds the album from cold synth lines and driving beats, topped with dark, minimal vocals rooted in early synth and post-punk.

No maps synth and post-punk on ‘Escaping Heaven’

“Escaping Heaven” runs 12 tracks, opening with “Waste My Time” and closing with “Cold Red Moons”. It gathers the advance singles “Make-Up”, released in April 2026, and “Escaping Heaven (This Is a Love Song)”, released in June 2026, alongside tracks such as “Kill All the Lights”, “The Damage Is Done” and “Fallen Angels”. The record was mastered by Dea Hydra at Les Jardins de Verre, with design by Nieuw NDG and cover image by Eugene Schlumberger.

The album is available on Bandcamp through Tonn Recordings and Kernkrach Records.

About No

No is the solo project of a Montréal-based musician who pairs synth and drum-machine arrangements with dark, driving vocals. The project cites early synth and post-punk as its main reference points, naming Fad Gadget, Public Image Ltd and The Cure among its influences.

No has released five albums on cassette, vinyl and digital through Tonn Recordings, along with a collaborative EP with Ana Gartner issued as NO+ANA and several self-released singles. The project has also appeared on compilations from labels including Young and Cold Records and Cold Transmission. Recent singles run from “Desire Kills Desire” in January 2025 and “Ghost In Dreams” in November 2025 through to the two 2026 tracks that lead into “Escaping Heaven”, the project’s latest full-length.

The House of Love have confirmed a headline London concert at Scala on 6 December 2026. Promoter AGMP has the House of Love London concert on sale now, the band’s exclusive London date within a run of 2026 UK shows.

House of Love London concert at Scala

The Scala show is the London stop on the band’s 2026 UK schedule, which also lists a Brighton date at Concorde 2 two nights earlier. Confirmed December dates are:

• 3 December 2026 – Brighton, England – Concorde 2
• 6 December 2026 – London, England – Scala

Tickets for the London concert are on sale now through the promoter and the band’s official channels.

About The House of Love

The House of Love are an English alternative rock band formed in London in 1986 around singer and songwriter Guy Chadwick. The group released its debut album through Creation Records in 1988, then signed to Fontana the following year for a run of releases that carried it into the mainstream.

Early singles such as “Shine On”, “Christine” and “Destroy the Heart” were followed during the Fontana years by “Never”, “I Don’t Know Why I Love You” and “Beatles and the Stones”. The band has continued to record and tour in the decades since, and the 6 December date brings the group back to London for a headline show at Scala.

Belgian electronic dance act Lords of Acid have released a music video for “Dream Boy”, the single issued through Metropolis Records on 15 May 2026. The video went online on 2 July 2026 and arrives with a second leg of the band’s “Cheeky Freaky” US tour, adding 15 dates in October. Director Vicente Cordero, who has worked with Ministry, 3TEETH and Black Veil Brides, shot the clip in Las Vegas.

Lords of Acid pair ‘Dream Boy’ with a Vicente Cordero video

The band had earlier described “Dream Boy” as a dialogue between desperation and seduction. Co-founder Praga Khan sets out how the shoot matched that idea: “The video was shot in Las Vegas with a cool mix of fans, friends and family, which gave the whole thing a really loose, fun and slightly chaotic energy. We filmed it in crisp 4K, but also used an old camcorder from the ’90s to give parts of it a grainy, timeless, almost otherworldly feel.”

Khan connects the imagery to the band’s current line-up, with Carla Harvey in the vocalist role the group calls the Acid Queen: “There’s a broken soul caught in the middle of the chaos, while our Acid Queen comes through like a dangerous angel floating in the smoke. The mix of modern and old-school footage makes the video feel a bit like a dream, a memory and a hallucination all at once.”

“Dream Boy” is the third Lords of Acid single of 2026. It followed the Princess Superstar collaboration “Karaoke Superstar” and “El Mundo Está Loco”, a track recorded with the New York duo Tony & The Kiki. All three are set to appear on the band’s seventh studio album, expected in late 2026 on Metropolis Records with further guest vocalists alongside Harvey.

Lords of Acid October 2026 tour dates

The single first appeared while Lords of Acid were midway through a 30-date “Cheeky Freaky” US tour, the run Side-Line covered when the band announced the trek and a new album for 2026. The group has now added 15 further shows in October 2026, with tickets on sale through the band’s official site.

About Lords of Acid

Lords of Acid formed in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1988 around producer Praga Khan (Maurice Engelen). The project emerged from the Belgian New Beat scene with the single “I Sit On Acid” and released its debut album “Lust” in 1991, mixing acid house, techno and industrial elements with explicit lyrics. Later albums placed the group on the Billboard dance and alternative charts and established a long touring history across the United States and Europe.

The band has cycled through several vocalists over its run. US singer Carla Harvey, previously of Butcher Babies, joined as the group’s new vocalist in early 2025. The “Dream Boy” video continues the run of 2026 singles leading toward the band’s seventh album on Metropolis Records.

Swiss post-punk and darkwave band Lone Assembly have signed to Metropolis Records, which will release CD and vinyl editions of their debut album “Knots & Chains” on 18 September 2026. The band self-released the record digitally on 27 February 2026 and confirmed the Metropolis deal on 1 July 2026.

Metropolis Records to release Lone Assembly’s ‘Knots & Chains’

The agreement puts Lone Assembly’s “Knots & Chains” on Metropolis Records for a wider physical run. The band first issued the album on 27 February 2026 in three forms: a digital download, a three-panel CD digisleeve, and a limited black-and-white splatter vinyl pressing of 799 copies with a two-sided poster. Metropolis follows on 18 September 2026 with new CD and vinyl editions.

“Knots & Chains” runs to ten tracks, opening with “Call of the Swift” and closing with “A Dark Score”. The record examines control in several forms: the control others exert, the control people cultivate in themselves, and the control imposed by the places they live. Vocalist Raphaël Bressler describes the sequence as one arc rather than a set of separate songs: “The album takes shape like a cycle, moving from suffocation to openness, from closed spaces to greater, albeit fragile, breathing space.”

The album’s third single, “You’re Pulling at the Same Strings”, arrived with a music video in February 2026. It followed the earlier singles “The Pain Keeper” and “In the Open”, both released in 2025 and both carried onto the album alongside “Nocturnal Vision”, “The City Works Like This” and “My Life’s Solid”.

Metropolis Records, the US independent label, has added other European post-punk and electronic acts to its roster in recent years. Side-Line reported the label deal when Then Comes Silence signs to Metropolis Records and announces new post-punk album, and again when Hunter As a Horse signs to Metropolis Records and drops new single ‘Lighthouse’.

Lone Assembly are playing European festival and club dates through 2026, including the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland on 3 July and Nocturnal Culture Night in Deutzen, Germany, on 4 September, with further shows in Germany and Poland into November.

About Lone Assembly

Lone Assembly are a four-piece from Switzerland: Raphaël Bressler on vocals and keyboards, Glenn Le Meur on guitar, Jim Bodeman on bass, and Romain Segu on drums. The band mix cold, 1980s-rooted new wave, post-punk and darkwave with romantic synth-pop.

They began releasing music in 2023 with the single “Seven Souls”, followed by “All Around Me” in early 2024 and the debut EP “That Never Happened” in April 2024 through Irascible Distribution, a release dedicated to the memory of a lost loved one. An extended version of the EP appeared in 2025, alongside the singles “The Pain Keeper” and “In the Open”, both of which carried onto the first album.

“Knots & Chains” arrived on 27 February 2026 as the band’s first full-length, released on digital, CD and limited splatter vinyl through their own channels. The Metropolis Records signing, confirmed on 1 July 2026, sets a wider CD and vinyl release for 18 September 2026 and places the debut on the US label.

Swedish-Norwegian artist Karin Park released her EP “EVO” on 8 May 2026, the first part of a three-part cycle she calls “EVO-LUT-ION-(EN)”. In this Karin Park interview for Side-Line Magazine, she speaks with Karo Kratochwil about that record and the ideas behind it: evolution as a costly process, motherhood surfacing in the songs without sentiment, the anger she found inside “Explodera”, the everyday field recordings and pump organ woven through the tracks, her parallel work with the band Årabrot, and the pull of the painter Hilma af Klint.

Kratochwil first saw Park perform as part of Lustmord at the 2024 Wrocław Industrial Festival, the encounter that shaped this conversation. The two spoke over Zoom between family duties, Park waiting outside her daughter’s circus camp, a setting that sits deliberately against the record’s themes of transformation, darkness and spiritual pressure.

Karin Park interview

Karo: Now that “EVO” is out in the world, do you feel more understood, more exposed, or more misunderstood?

Karin: Good question. I really have not thought about that at all. When I think about it, I do feel more understood, because it was a while ago since I released my last thing, and I am very much in that musical place of this EP.

I feel like I get to show where I am right now, which is important, because when I come and play live, I feel people do not know exactly what to expect from me. I have done a lot of different kinds of live shows, but now with this live show I have incorporated my whole musical history in a more danceable way, because that is kind of where I am with myself right now.

More than anything, when I play live now, people get to understand where I am in my life right now. There was a period where I had really small children, I was super tired, and everything I did in the studio was super slow. But now I have a lot more energy and the live show is a lot more energetic. So I do feel, with the EP and the live show combined, that I get to show where I am right now.

Therefore, I feel more understood. But it is not an easy thing to understand me as an artist, because I am so many things, and people want to put you into different boxes: “Oh, she is like that,” or “she is like that.” I play loads of different instruments. I have so many different interests, musically and in art and different things. So I do not think it is an easy task to try to understand. But over a long period of time, when you look back on my career, it is going to be easier to see where it was. When you get it just piece by piece, it is harder.

Karo: Did any reaction surprise you?

Karin: It always surprises me when people who loved my first album also love my last thing, because I have done this for like 20 years now, and my first record was quite different from what I am releasing now. But people still like my records. The same people like my records. And I find that quite amazing, that people kind of grow with me in that sense. That always surprises me a little bit: people who have been following me through my whole journey and have not fallen off at some record.

Maybe it is less different than I would like to think, because I am the same person after all. But other than that, no, I am not too surprised.

Karo: You have spoken about needing a frame for this project. Once that frame becomes public, does it still give freedom, or can it start becoming something like a cage?

Karin: I think that I do not care enough about where people want me to be. I cared a bit more when I was younger. I did a pretty big turn from my first and second album into a more electronic vibe, and I think that was my biggest change. But now, when I make music, I cannot make anything that I do not like. I am very bad at doing things that I do not like doing. So I do not think I could make music just to please someone else. I have tried, because I have tried to please people so many times, but I just do not know how to do it.

For some people, they have always stuck to their guns and chosen to be really different. But for me, ever since school, I moved to Japan when I was a kid, and when I came home from Japan, I was like a different person from everyone else. I tried my hardest to fit in.

I would do anything to fit in, but I realized quickly that I just had no idea how to fit in, so I was going to have to go the other way. It was not really a choice for me. That is kind of what I have done my whole music career. I have no idea how to fit in, so I might as well just do my own thing until I die.

Karo: So what is the drive for you?

Karin: The drive for me is to create. When I create something, it does not matter if it is music, or if it is a little short film, or if it is something I am building in my home. I just love the action of: there is nothing there now, and then suddenly there is something there. The most amazing thing with music is that there is nothing there, and suddenly there is something out of thin air. It does not even take any space.

Where there was silence, there is now music. I think that is such an incredible thing. It amazes me every day when I am in the studio. I made this. How cool is that? And also on stage. I love, love, love being on stage. When I am singing, when I am doing my thing, when I play my synthesizers live in front of people, it is like I am truly the person I want to be. I do not think about anything else. I am totally in the moment. So those are the two things. That is why I get up every day. I love doing that.

Karo: You seem to be working from a very immediate place now. Do you trust your first instincts more now than before as an artist?

Karin: Yes, I think I do. I think I have learned to. When I start something, when I start a song, there is always a mental choir that goes: “Boo, boo, stop doing this.” In my head, it is like a very critical ensemble of mental ghosts that are always criticizing what I do: “Oh no, not that chord again,” “We have heard this before.” Things that you tell yourself. But I have learned that if I can just quiet those mental ghosts for a while and get on with my thing, then suddenly I get sucked into the project. Before, maybe I would stop doing something and listen to those voices.

But now I know that is just a mental thing that a lot of people have, and that I have, and that I just have to deal with it. If I can just quiet those inner critical voices, then I can get to something good. I trust more now that I will get over myself and get sucked into the song.

Karo: Motherhood appears on “EVO”, but not in a soft or decorative way. It feels loving, pressured, exhausted, protective, and sometimes almost violent. Did you want to resist the clean story people often expect around motherhood?

Karin: I did not think that I was even writing about motherhood. I think that I wrote the songs, and then I realized what they were about after I had written them. Sometimes I try: “Oh, I want to write about this.” But then when I make the song, it does not want to be about that. The creative process is put down brick by brick, and then I am like: “Oh, this song became a song about motherhood.” With the song “Explodera,” I did not even know what it was about when it was finished. I was like: “What is this song? I do not even recognize what it is about.”

But then, when I was making the video for it, I was in the process of doing a script for the video, and I was like: “How can I make a script for the video when I do not know what it is about?” Then I saw “Raging Bull” by Martin Scorsese, and I was like: “Oh my God, this song is rage. I am angry.” When I listened to the lyrics with that in mind, it was so obvious, but it is almost like you cannot see the forest for all the trees.

Sometimes I just write the lyrics that I feel should be in the song. When I try to write a lyric to a song and it is not right, sometimes I just scrap it entirely. Or if I want to write about a subject and there is resistance, it just does not happen. Then I am like: “Okay, it does not want to be about this. So what do you want to be about then? Show me.” Then I write word by word.

Sometimes I write it backwards. I write the end part first, and then I go back and feel my way into what the song wants to be about. In the end, it makes more and more sense. By the end of it, it is like: “Okay, there it is.” I always write the melody first, and parts of the music. I almost never start with the lyric.

Maybe just a line or something, but most of the time I let the melody decide what the song is going to be about. Sometimes it is stuff that I do not even want to write about, but I do not have a choice, because this song is about this and there is nothing I can do.

Karo: With “Explodera,” you recognized anger and frustration underneath what first felt like a love song. Do you think anger sometimes tells the truth before the conscious mind does?

Karin: I think the unconscious mind tells the truth all the time, and that is kind of where you dip in when you write lyrics. Does it feel true or not? The unconscious mind is always right.

Karo: The use of your children’s voices is powerful because family enters the record physically, not only lyrically. What was the role of those samples for you?

Karin: I just have a lot of samples that I had recorded on my phone, and there are a lot of different samples. I use samples of my everyday life all the time. It was not like: “Oh, now I am putting my sacred son’s sample in here.” It was more like: “Oh my God, it would sound great if my son was laughing in that little gap,” or: “I heard this thing on the radio and I recorded it, can we just put it in here?” It is more about the use of different sounds.

I actually do not think too much about whether it is my children. It just sounded nice. It is not any more sacred than that, really. Sometimes a horse is neighing, or loads of different things. I have gone through like 700 recordings on my phone of different sounds.

Karo: So there are traces of everyday life, church space, hymns, pump organ, electronics and darker club textures?

Karin: So many things. It is more like: I was at this party, and my uncle and his friends came in and they were playing the violin, and I was like: “This sounds amazing, let us put that into a song.” When my father’s ashes were buried, we sang this hymn in church, and I recorded that. That is also a texture. There are lots of different things that people do not really hear, but they are from my life in different settings. Or if I do the dishes and the glasses touch each other and it sounds cool, then I just record it and use that in the song.

Karo: What about the pump organ? Does it bring memory, faith, architecture, or is it simply one more sound from your life?

Karin: No, they sound really special. They really do. Especially when you mix them with more electronic music, they have a different soul. I also play the flute, and when I play the flute, it sounds so warm and so human. Sometimes in an electronic track, if I use the flute, it is just a texture and you do not hear what it is, but you feel something. It is almost like someone reaches out and touches you, because it is so human. I feel that with the pump organ too. It is such an organic sound. It brings a whole different texture of organic feeling to the sound, which I love.

Karo: Your melodies can be very beautiful, but this beauty rarely feels innocent. Do you trust beauty more when it carries a wound?

Karin: Yes. I think I am very drawn to the darker side of beauty somehow. Always. I do not know why, but it is just the way it is. My first record sounds more innocent, I guess, but I was also the same then, to be honest. It was just that I tried to make a song.

I was not in a grown-up enough state so that I could ask myself: “What do I really like? What kind of melodies?” I was just like: “Can I write the song? Okay. This is a song that I could hear on the radio.” That was kind of just my attempt to write actual songs. But now, when I feel: “How do I get touched?” If I hear a melody and I am going: “Oh, that is so beautiful,” then I can trust that more.

Because I know now that I can write a song. It is no problem. It is just: what kind of song do I want to write? I have developed more, but I have always been drawn to the darker side of the melody. I think that is something that runs in my family too.

I grew up in church, but when I listen to what kind of music my family made, the hymns, and my grandmother’s uncle, who used to write a lot of the stuff and was the organist in the church that I grew up in, his melodies are so melancholic. There is a more folky touch to it because he wrote folk music, but it is still so dark and beautiful in a way. I just think that runs in my DNA somehow.

Karo: You have both the solo work and Årabrot, and they seem separate but connected. Are those worlds still clearly divided, or has the border between them become useful because it leaks?

Karin: I think it has become very useful. The big difference between Årabrot and my solo project is that in Årabrot, Kjetil writes all the music. I do not write anything. He is always 30 songs ahead of me. He writes every day. The creative process in Årabrot for me is to arrange the songs and to produce them. So it has a lot of influence from my production over the years. We obviously work together and talk every day, so we have a lot of influence on each other. We are very different, but we have a lot in common as well.

I was a small part of what I wrote for many years, but when we decided to kind of front the band, both of us, it became more useful, because I could take a bit more space there and find my own personality in the band. Now I feel like it is two different sides of me that I get to show. I feel like they complement each other in a good way. When I am with Årabrot, I get to be the second opinion a bit.

I can look at it from an angle. It is not all about inside of me all the time. I can look at Kjetil’s songs with a bit more distance. It is also nice to be able to rock out when I am in Årabrot. I can crowd surf, I can play bass, and focus more on the production side of things and the live part of things. I do not have to put all my personality in it at all times, which is kind of nice.

Karo: Evolution sounds beautiful as a word, but real evolution usually costs something. What has this current evolution cost you?

Karin: I think I am too close to it now to know that. But I think it cost a lot. It always does. To evolve is my trademark. I feel like my whole life is kind of a quick evolution, and it does cost a lot to do that, but you also gain a lot. I think I will see it more clearly once these three parts are out.

But it takes everything. It takes all the energy out of me to do and release all of this. I do not think people who are not artists can understand how much we put into it. It is everything. Everything. I feel like it costs a lot, but it gives you a lot too. Sometimes I wish I would just not be interested in being an artist anymore, because I think it would be an easier life. It takes so much: the passion, how personal it is. I do not think music is necessarily that personal for everyone, but for me it really is.

I do not know how to describe it, but sometimes it feels like it destroys you. It burns a hole inside of you when you give this much. But on a good day, it feels cathartic also, to be able to do that. And as you said, you mentioned that I create in a very immediate way, and I have not really thought about that.

But I am going to be grateful for that, because I do. I take it for granted sometimes, but I should not, because I am very lucky that way. I can create exactly what I want. I do not have to take any expectations into consideration. I just release exactly the kind of songs that I want to release, and I have the power to do so. That is great. But sometimes to have all of that freedom is also daunting.

Karo: Is this trilogy about becoming someone new, or becoming less afraid of who you already are?

Karin: I think in many ways the journey is to be closer to who you really are. As close to who you really are as possible. I think that is the quest in life: to really allow yourself to become that person that you want to be. I do not want to become someone new, but I want to be closer to the person that I am. Sometimes I am in touch with that person, but not always. That is what I want. Sometimes I want to get closer to myself, and I want to remind other people of who they are as well. I feel like music can do that.

Sometimes you go for a long time and you feel like you have forgotten who you are. Then suddenly you get a glimpse of the real you, and then you remember. Especially when you get older, you can lose yourself. When you are a child, you know who you are, and then you get distracted. There are so many things in life that try to distract us from who we really are. That is the journey that we all are on in a way. And because “EVO” is inspired by Hilma af Klint, she was on a spiritual journey to also reach her higher self, which I can relate to.

About Karin Park

Karin Park was born on 6 September 1978 in Djura, Sweden, and began her career in Bergen, Norway. She works as a singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist whose music moves between synthpop, electronic and darker, industrial-leaning pop. Her early full-lengths “Superworldunknown” (2003), “Change Your Mind” (2006) and “Ashes to Gold” (2009) preceded the shift toward electronics that defined “Highwire Poetry” (2012) and “Apocalypse Pop” (2015), both on State of the Eye Recordings. She also wrote “I Feed You My Love”, Norway’s 2013 Eurovision entry performed by Margaret Berger.

Later work moved toward sparser, more personal settings: “Church of Imagination” (2020) on her own Djura Missionshus, and “Private Collection” (2022) on Pelagic Records, which paired her voice with minimal pump-organ arrangements. In 2021 she released the collaborative album “Alter” with Lustmord, also on Pelagic, and performed the project live, including at the 2024 Wrocław Industrial Festival. Park is married to Kjetil Nernes of the Norwegian band Årabrot, where she plays keyboards and co-produces; as she describes above, Nernes writes the music while she arranges and produces it.

Park last spoke with Side-Line in March 2026, in an earlier interview about touring small and intimate venues. Her EP “EVO” arrived on 8 May 2026, trailed by the singles “Sing Your Sorrow” and “Explodera”, the latter released with a video. “EVO” opens the “EVO-LUT-ION-(EN)” cycle discussed in this interview, a set she describes as three parts still to be completed.

Danish electropop project enter.me releases the new single “When Love and Fear Collide” on 3 July 2026 through Town & Towers Records. The track arrives on major streaming services on release day and follows the project’s late-2025 single on the same Danish label.

Town & Towers describes the single as “electropop for reflective minds” and “cinematic electronic music exploring love, fear, identity and the human condition.” enter.me is the solo project of Claus, a Danish producer who mixes the driving basslines and punchy drums of EBM and electro-industrial with the melodic, vocal-led approach of classic synthpop.

enter.me follows ‘It’s Only Sex’ with ‘When Love and Fear Collide’

“When Love and Fear Collide” is the project’s second Side-Line-covered single on Town & Towers, after the November 2025 release enter.me drops new single ‘It’s Only Sex’ via Town And Towers. The new track continues the project’s studio run, written and produced by Claus in a fully software-based setup. Town & Towers, the independent Danish label that also handles the wider enter.me catalogue on Bandcamp, issues the single; the label’s YouTube channel hosts the project’s videos.

About enter.me

enter.me is the solo project of Claus, a producer from Bornholm, Denmark. Drawn to electronic music in the mid-1980s, he bought his first synthesizer and co-founded what he describes as Bornholm’s first synthpop band. A 1988 Depeche Mode concert in Valby, with Nitzer Ebb as support, pointed him toward the darker, German-rooted end of electronic music, and he moved through EBM, industrial, ambient and trance, including a self-produced ambient/new age album.

In 2005 Claus joined with Jan Brink to form the synthpop duo deZeption, which released the self-produced debut album “Human Eyes” in 2008, featuring the tracks “Puppet” and “No Sense”, and played shows in Denmark, Norway and Germany. After the duo split in 2011, Claus continued alone, composing, mixing and producing entirely in software. Under the enter.me name he pairs rhythms drawn from Front 242, And One and Nitzer Ebb with melodies rooted in New Order, Depeche Mode, Human League, Ultravox and Tears for Fears, writing lyrics that draw on his years in the Danish Armed Forces, including a deployment in Bosnia, and later work as a health-care teacher. “When Love and Fear Collide” is the latest single in that catalogue, released through Town & Towers Records on 3 July 2026.

Spanish producer DJ Moderno self-released “Dark Sessions Vol. I”, a five-track mashup album that reworks post-punk and new wave songs through UK garage and contemporary electronic production, on 1 July 2026 on Bandcamp. The set is the work of Germán Ormaechea, an independent DJ and producer from Spain.

Each track pairs a source song with a club-facing electronic counterpart: “The Killing Diamond” sets Echo & The Bunnymen against Overmono, “Nowhere Girl on the Floor” pairs B-Movie with Jamie xx, “Lost in the Disko” combines The Cure, BICEP and Shiny Toy Guns, “Swamp Thing vs Chemtrails” places The Chameleons alongside Beck, and “She’s in Parties vs Hope” runs Bauhaus into Alex Metric. DJ Moderno describes the album as “exclusive reinterpretations of post-punk and new wave classics through the lens of UK Garage and contemporary electronic music,” mastered for DJ use and issued with WAV and MP3 downloads.

DJ Moderno’s ‘Dark Sessions Vol. I’ and the reinterpretation approach

The producer cites Bicep, Jamie xx, Overmono and Fred again.. as reference points for the electronic side of the reworks, and describes the project as new electronic versions built to keep the atmosphere of the originals rather than straight mashups. Alongside the album, DJ Moderno has issued a separate standalone reinterpretation that combines Front 242’s “Headhunter” with “¿Quién mató a Laura Palmer?” by the Spanish electronic act Megabeat, a former Front 242 support act in Spain.

About DJ Moderno

DJ Moderno is the alias of Germán Ormaechea, an independent DJ and producer based in Spain who self-releases club edits, remixes and mashups through his Bandcamp page. His catalogue collects dancefloor reworks of pop, electronic and alternative material rather than original compositions. “Dark Sessions Vol. I” is presented as the first volume in a series and gathers his post-punk and new wave reinterpretations, released on 1 July 2026.

GIO, the gothic rock project of Georgia-based singer-songwriter Blake Carpenter, released the double A-side single “I Am Crying / Holy War” on 1 July 2026 through Morella Records, with streaming from 2 July. The single precedes the second album “Sanctified Hunger”, set for 17 July 2026 on the same label.

The release carries two tracks, “Holy War” and “I Am Crying”, written from opposing vantage points on religious violence. Carpenter describes them as “two perspectives on the same wound”: “Holy War” as the account of the project’s immortal narrator, and “I Am Crying” voiced from the position of the figure whose name recurs across centuries of conflict. Carpenter builds the songs on guitar-driven, atmospheric goth rock under Carpenter’s production.

GIO’s ‘I Am Crying / Holy War’ leads into ‘Sanctified Hunger’

The double A-side sets up “Sanctified Hunger”, a twelve-track concept album that Morella Records describes as taking an anti-religion position across a three-act structure. It follows the debut album “The Geometry of Ruin”, released on 22 May 2026, and arrives on digital, CD and Deluxe CD on 17 July 2026, with a pre-order on Bandcamp. Morella Records, the independent label Carpenter founded in Georgia, releases goth rock, deathrock, darkwave and post-punk; Side-Line recently covered label-mate Vampire Valentine set second single ‘Cutting Ties’ for July 10 on Morella Records.

About GIO

GIO is the project of Blake Carpenter, a singer, songwriter, musician and producer based in Georgia, USA, and the founder of Morella Records. The project is built around the fictional character Giordano Paulo Orsini, an immortal narrator used as a vessel for songs about systems of faith and civilizational cycles. Carpenter launched the project under the GIO name in November 2025, having previously worked in The Minstrel’s Ghost, Max Nova and Voice of the Enslaved.

The project issued four singles in late 2021 – “Fallen Angel”, “Dark Roads”, “Embrace the Darkness” and “Buried” – and returned with “Hate Love” on 3 October 2025. The first single of the Morella Records era, “Vex Velour”, followed on 27 February 2026, ahead of “Black Sun Rising” on 24 April 2026. The debut album “The Geometry of Ruin”, a twelve-track concept record produced and mastered by Carpenter, appeared on 22 May 2026. “I Am Crying / Holy War” is the lead double A-side from the follow-up album “Sanctified Hunger”, released on 1 July 2026.

Shadowlands festival will hold its first edition from 1 to 4 July 2027 at the Gulbenkian Arts Centre in Canterbury, England. The four-day event covers alternative, electronic, avant-garde and experimental music, and its opening line-up features Foetus, Lustmord, Test Dept, Clock DVA, The Wolfgang Press, Githead, Regis, Portion Control, :Zoviet*France:, hackedepicciotto, People Like Us and Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan, among others. The event is co-founded by David Sefton, who launched the Meltdown festival in 1993. Early-bird tickets are on sale, and further acts are due to be announced in August.

Initial line-up for the Shadowlands festival

JG Thirlwell’s Foetus tops the first wave. Thirlwell will perform as a 20-piece chamber orchestra in what the organisers describe as a European exclusive and his first UK appearance as Foetus in more than 25 years. The set draws on “HALT”, the final Foetus album released in December 2025, alongside earlier material. The announcement bills it as only the second time this music has been presented in a large orchestral format.

Two other acts return after long absences. Lustmord plays a UK stage for the first time in almost two decades, while Githead – Colin Newman of Wire, Malka Spiegel of Minimal Compact and Robin Rimbaud, who records as Scanner – reunite after a 13-year break.

Several of the booked artists have featured in recent Side-Line coverage. Clock DVA appear months after issuing a remastered “Thirst” for the album’s 45th anniversary on The Grey Area of Mute. Test Dept, who collected early studio and live recordings on the 2025 box set “Industrial Overture”, also join the bill. The Wolfgang Press, who announced the album “Asylum Variations” in June for release on Downwards, also feature. The rest of the first announcement gathers Regis with Liam Andrews, Portion Control, :Zoviet*France:, hackedepicciotto, People Like Us, Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan, Ex-Easter Island Head, Immersion, Nad Spiro, Benedict Drew, Riotmiloo, Shape Navigator and Sophie Sirota, with more names due in August 2026.

Dates, venue and tickets for Shadowlands festival

The festival runs across three performance spaces at the Gulbenkian Arts Centre, on the University of Kent campus in Canterbury. Alongside live sets, the programme includes panel discussions, Q&As and a film strand. The organisers cap the event at 450 tickets and offer on-site accommodation, bookable from September 2026.

• 1-4 July 2027 – Canterbury, England – Gulbenkian Arts Centre, University of Kent

Early-bird tickets cost £240, with the option to split the cost into three monthly payments; standard tickets are £280. Tickets are sold through the Gulbenkian, and further details are published on the official Shadowlands festival website.

About Shadowlands festival

Shadowlands is co-founded by David Sefton, former Head of Artistic Development at the Royal Festival Hall and South Bank Centre in London. Sefton launched the Meltdown festival in 1993, the annual event programmed each year by a single guest curator, and later ran UCLA Live in Los Angeles and the Adelaide Festival in Australia before becoming Artistic Director of the Gulbenkian Arts Centre in 2021. Shadowlands is the first full UK festival he has launched since Meltdown, and the organisers describe its remit as “The Outside Of Everything”.

Sefton describes the festival as a home for artists working outside current trends rather than a platform for new names. “The idea is to bring something new to the festival landscape that is genuinely original,” he stated. “There are many great independent events in the UK, but all to an extent are tied into a ‘next big thing’ pattern. However, there are so many extraordinary artists out there who are as unique and exciting as the day they started, whether six months ago or forty years ago. Shadowlands is all about them.”

With the first names confirmed and further additions promised for August, the Canterbury debut sets the template for how Shadowlands intends to build its programme.

Cold Spring releases “Cafe OTO”, a live album by Keiji Haino and Steve Noble, on CD on 17 July 2026. The record documents a duo performance the two improvisers gave at Cafe OTO in London on 28 February 2012, and it is the first time that recording appears on a physical format. The concert previously circulated only as a digital release.

Keiji Haino and Steve Noble’s ‘Cafe OTO’: a 2012 set across four movements

For the CD, Cold Spring splits the roughly hour-long performance into four untitled parts, running from about twelve to eighteen minutes each. Haino plays electric guitar and feedback and, at one point, sets the guitar down for a wooden flute; Noble answers on a full percussion set-up. John Chantler recorded and mixed the show, and Martin Bowes of Attrition mastered it for Cold Spring, with sleeve design by Abby Helasdottir. The release comes as a CD in a matt digipak.

The album is Side-Line’s first coverage of the pairing, and it lands close to another Cold Spring reissue of Japanese experimental music, Sun Ra | Merzbow ‘Strange City’. The label has drawn on the same well before, as with its vinyl reissue documented in Cold Spring reissues cult Japanese noise release by Maso Yamazaki on vinyl.

About Keiji Haino and Steve Noble

Keiji Haino, born in Chiba, Japan, in 1952, is an experimental musician who works across electric guitar, feedback, percussion, wind instruments and voice. He first turned to performance through theatre before forming the group Fushitsusha in 1978, and has since appeared on more than 200 recordings under his own name and with projects including Nazoranai and Sanhedrin. His playing moves between extreme volume and near-silence, often within a single piece.

Steve Noble is a London-based drummer and percussionist active in free improvisation since the early 1980s, when he worked with Rip Rig + Panic and the Bow Gamelan Ensemble. He has recorded and performed with Derek Bailey, Peter Brötzmann and Stephen O’Malley, and leads the groups N.E.W. and Decoy. His work centres on the acoustic drum kit and extended percussion.

Cold Spring, the UK label releasing “Cafe OTO”, has issued industrial, power electronics, dark ambient, noise and experimental music since 1988. Recorded at the Dalston venue Cafe OTO, which opened in 2008 as a home for improvised and experimental music, the album brings a long-unavailable Haino and Noble meeting to CD for the first time.

Gnoomes have set a release date for “Losey”, the new album from the psych and electronic duo who formed in Russia and now live in Slovenia. “Losey” arrives on 4 September 2026 on Rocket Recordings, on vinyl and digital, and lands with a video for the title track and an autumn tour of the UK and Europe. It is the follow-up to 2023’s “Ax Ox”.

Gnoomes are Sasha Piankov and his creative and life partner Masha Piankova, who left Russia for Slovenia and built most of the record at home. The drums were recorded by their former bandmate Pasha Fedoseev in Perm; the rest, in Sasha’s words, came together “without leaving the house.” The duo mix krautrock, shoegaze and electronics, and name Stereolab, Joy Division, Chris & Cosey and Paul McCartney among the reference points for the new songs. The digital album is sold through Bandcamp, with the vinyl available from Rocket Recordings, the UK label whose recent roster also includes The Utopia Strong’s “The Atavist”.

The seven-track album runs from opener “Foreign Agent” through “May Night”, the title track “Losey”, “Repeat Repent”, “Shakshuka And Pie”, “Satan’s Ball” and “Crangonyx”. Piankov ties the move to the music itself: “The life of an immigrant is a strange thing, but luckily, that glow music brings us has never faded, even though the emotional landscape has definitely shifted. We often say that moving from Russia wasn’t just a political decision, it was a nervous system decision.”

Gnoomes ‘Losey’ title track and video

The title track, built around what the band call an “acid stomp,” takes its cue from Chris & Cosey, and the video was made by the duo from years of personal iPhone footage. Masha Piankova describes it as a walk through the moment before sleep: “It’s that strange threshold before sleep, when your brain is completely overloaded and reality begins to slip. Hallucinations, memories, nightmares, impossible landscapes, euphoric dance scenes, and dreams that blur the line between fear and desire all end up in the same room, dancing together until morning. It’s basically a glimpse inside my sleepless brain.”

Gnoomes tour dates 2026

Gnoomes follow the album with a run of European and UK shows through autumn:

• 10 Sep 2026 – Ljubljana, Slovenia – Channel Zero
• 16 Oct 2026 – Budapest, Hungary – Niche
• 23 Oct 2026 – Padova, Italy – Nadir
• 24 Oct 2026 – Bologna, Italy – Bauhaus
• 30 Oct 2026 – Norwich, UK – The Holloway
• 03 Nov 2026 – Sheffield, UK – Delicious Clam
• 05 Nov 2026 – Newcastle, UK – Lubber Fiend
• 11 Nov 2026 – Bristol, UK – The Lanes
• 12 Nov 2026 – Northampton, UK – The Black Prince
• 13 Nov 2026 – London, UK – Strongroom Bar
• 20 Nov 2026 – Berlin, Germany – Arkaoda

About Gnoomes

Gnoomes formed in Perm, Russia, in 2014 as a trio of Sasha Piankov (vocals, bass), Pasha Fedoseev (drums) and Dima Koniushevich (guitar), with all three also playing synthesizers. The band described their sound as “stargaze”, a mix of krautrock, shoegaze and techno driven by motorik rhythms and pulsing electronics. Their first release was the cassette EP “It’s Moonbow-Time, Boy” on the Russian label Pikkalma Product in 2014, which drew the attention of the UK psychedelic label Rocket Recordings.

Rocket issued the band’s debut album “Ngan!” on 16 October 2015, followed by “Tschak!” on 10 March 2017. Keyboardist Masha Piankova joined for “MU!”, released on 31 May 2019, expanding the group to a quartet. “Ax Ox”, released on 3 March 2023, was the first Gnoomes album sung entirely in Russian. The band later left Russia and relocated to Slovenia, continuing as the duo of Sasha Piankov and Masha Piankova. “Losey”, out on 4 September 2026 on Rocket Recordings, is their first album since that move.

Melbourne darkwave act Chiron release their new album “A Dark Beauty” on 17 July 2026 through Germany’s Dark Vinyl Records. The label handles the European CD and digital edition, while the band issues the record on their own Bandcamp as a 24-bit download, CD and vinyl. It is the follow-up to 2022’s “The Sun Goes Down”, also on Dark Vinyl.

“A Dark Beauty” runs to 13 tracks: nine songs followed by four remixes. The band mixes darkwave with gothic-rock and modern-metal elements, built on driving basslines, downtuned guitar and electronics under Michael Aliani’s vocals. The set opens with the title track and moves through “Flesh and Blood”, “The Hunted” and the closer “Oblivion”, which features guest vocals from Yvette Winkler of the Dutch act Vaselyne. The remix section reworks four of the songs, with versions by Paradox Obscura, Imbibe, SIRUS and Mansfield Mourning. Ernie Oppenheimer mixed, produced and mastered the album at his studio in Melbourne.

The album continues a run of releases the band has placed through Dark Vinyl Records, the German independent label that also reissued material by Chiron’s parent act Ikon. Side-Line previously covered the last Chiron album in Post-punk act Chiron (ex-Ikon) to release all new album in January: ‘The Sun Goes Down’.

About Chiron

Chiron formed in Melbourne, Australia, in 1997, founded by vocalist Michael Aliani after he left the Australian darkwave band Ikon. The project debuted with “Eve” in 1999 on the Italian label Energeia, and followed it with “Slipping Away” (2005, Apollyon Records), the “Breaking Point” EP (2009) and the album “We Own the Night” (2015), which leaned further into electronics. A compilation, “Chiron: The Best Of”, appeared on Brazil’s Wave Records the same year.

The band’s 2022 album “The Sun Goes Down” marked its move to Dark Vinyl Records and brought founding Ikon bassist Dino Molinaro back into the lineup. For “A Dark Beauty”, the band worked as a trio of Aliani on vocals and electronics, Molinaro on bass and Ivan Bullock on guitar and electronics, with Ernie Oppenheimer contributing production, electronics, drums and backing vocals. The new album extends the darker, guitar-forward direction the band set on its previous release.

IAMX, the solo project of Chris Corner, have announced the Recollections Tour, a European run that mixes darkwave, synthpop and electronic material from across the project’s catalogue with reworks and recent tracks. The tour opens on 31 July at the Unter dem Himmel festival in Thale, Germany, and runs through to a two-night close at UNITY in Berlin on 2-3 October 2026. IAMX Productions describe the Recollections Tour as a “best of” set drawn from more than two decades of the project.

The itinerary pairs festival appearances with a block of headline shows in the Nordic region. Corner takes the IAMX live band to the German festivals Unter dem Himmel, alongside VNV Nation, and M’era Luna in Hildesheim, then on to Extramuralhas in Leiria, Portugal, and a headline slot at Infest in Manchester. Two Turkish dates follow in Izmir and at Istanbul’s Rock’n Park festival, before the band rejoins VNV Nation at the UNITY events in Oberhausen and Berlin. The run builds on the Artificial Innocence Tour, which took the band across Central and Eastern Europe in March and April 2026.

On the Nordic dates, support comes from Aux Animaux, the Stockholm-based solo project of Gözde Düzer, who also plays bass and theremin in the IAMX live band. Side-Line spoke with her earlier this year about that dual role in Gözde Düzer (Aux Animaux) interview on joining IAMX, touring with Chris Corner, and balancing two worlds.

The Stockholm stop carries an extra event. On 18 August, the day before the Kollektivet Livet concert, Corner and Düzer host Intimate Conversations With IAMX at the same venue, a discussion session on mental health, neurodivergence and sexuality interspersed with stripped-down acoustic reworks. The band has also announced a first Brazil appearance later in 2026, at Madame Club in São Paulo through Wave Festival Brasil.

Running parallel to the tour, the “Bernadette” EP collects seven renditions of the IAMX song on vinyl, from reworks and instrumentals to acoustic versions, available to preorder through Boutique IAMX. Tickets for the tour are listed at tickets.iamxmusic.com.

IAMX tour dates: the Recollections Tour 2026

• 31 July – 1 August 2026 – Thale, DE – Unter dem Himmel
• 9 August 2026 – Hildesheim, DE – M’era Luna
• 18 August 2026 – Stockholm, SE – Intimate Conversations With IAMX, Kollektivet Livet
• 19 August 2026 – Stockholm, SE – Kollektivet Livet
• 21 August 2026 – Leiria, PT – Extramuralhas
• 23 August 2026 – Manchester, UK – Infest
• 11 September 2026 – Izmir, TR – Sold Out Performance Hall
• 12 September 2026 – Istanbul, TR – Rock’n Park
• 18 – 19 September 2026 – Oberhausen, DE – UNITY
• 23 September 2026 – Oslo, NO – John Dee
• 24 September 2026 – Malmö, SE – Plan B
• 25 September 2026 – Helsinki, FI – On The Rocks
• 2 – 3 October 2026 – Berlin, DE – UNITY

About IAMX

IAMX is the solo project of British musician and producer Chris Corner, founded in London in 2004 after his years as a co-founder of the trip-hop group Sneaker Pimps. The name comes from the Sneaker Pimps debut album “Becoming X”. Corner writes, produces and performs the project’s music, which mixes electronic pop, darkwave, synthpop and industrial and experimental textures with cabaret-influenced staging.

Since 2004, Corner has released ten IAMX studio albums, from “Kiss + Swallow” (2004) and “The Alternative” (2006) through “Kingdom of Welcome Addiction” (2009), “The Unified Field” (2013), “Metanoia” (2015), “Alive in New Light” (2018) and, most recently, “Fault Lines²” (2024). He relocated from Berlin to Southern California in the 2010s, building a desert property into a studio and creative base, and has kept a direct line to listeners through recurring reworks, acoustic versions and remixes of the catalogue.

The 2026 tour continues that revisiting of the back catalogue. Its combination of festival sets, Nordic headline shows and the Stockholm conversation event turns the Recollections Tour into both a retrospective and a lead-in to the project’s next chapter.

The summer edition of Hands Label Night Berlin felt like a very different organism from the January one. I do not mean this in the tired festival-review sense where every edition is automatically described as unique, because that usually says almost nothing. I mean that the whole nervous system of the evening seemed altered: the heat, the audience, the way people entered the room, the way bodies moved, the relation between the music and the air around it.

January had carried another kind of severity. Winter in Berlin gives this music a different setting: closed jackets, darker streets, bodies folded inward by cold, a more concentrated kind of listening, the sense that sound has to cut through weather before it reaches the skin. The summer edition worked in another register entirely. Urban Spree was hot, RAW-Gelände was breathing outside with its usual mixture of dust, concrete, posters, walls, bodies and noise, and the audience felt looser, more mixed, more permeable. People seemed to receive the music differently, perhaps because the body had already been pushed into awareness by the temperature before the first proper sonic impact arrived.

That difference does not make one edition better and the other weaker. It says something far more interesting about Hands Label Night itself: the format is able to hold different atmospheres, different audiences and different kinds of intensity without losing its centre. The winter edition had density and inward pressure. The summer edition had exposure, sweat, movement and variety. Both made sense. Both belonged to the same label universe, where rhythm is never just rhythm, but also architecture, instruction, endurance, physical argument and, sometimes, a kind of controlled damage.

The running order on this Hands Label Night moved with its own internal logic: Supersimmetria opened with a DJ set, followed by Sans-Fin, Siamgda, Monya, MS Gentur + Sven Phalanx and Statiqbloom. I did not stay for Mono No Aware, because the heat eventually defeated me, and I would rather say that honestly than pretend to review something I did not experience properly. Even this felt oddly appropriate for the summer edition: January allows you to disappear deeper into the night; June reminds you that the body, however devoted to sound, still negotiates with oxygen, temperature and fatigue.

Supersimmetria

The evening opened with Supersimmetria, and Armando delivered exactly the kind of opening DJ set that does not need to dominate in order to establish authority. I first saw him at Hands Label Night, one of the winter editions, and since then I have had a particular weakness for the way his music seems to develop live in front of the listener, as if construction and perception were happening at the same time.

That quality was present again at Urban Spree. His set did not behave like a practical prelude, the kind of functional DJing used merely to fill the room before the first live act. It felt more like a gradual tuning of the space. Rhythms appeared, settled, shifted their internal weight; textures moved along the edges of the room; details accumulated without becoming decorative; the whole thing thickened with patience and precision.

Supersimmetria understands repetition in a way that is much more interesting than repetition as looped insistence. Bad repetition stays dead. Good repetition changes because the listener changes inside it. Armando’s set had that ability: it slowly altered the room’s temperature, not by force, but by induction. It invited the audience into a state where rhythm could become hypnotic without becoming passive, and where structure could remain strict while still feeling alive.

As an opening, it respected the architecture of the night. It did not throw the audience immediately against a wall. It opened a corridor, adjusted the ears, prepared the body for stronger forms of pressure and reminded everyone that the HANDS language is not only about impact. It is also about patience, control, tension and the very precise pleasure of hearing sound organise space.

Sans-Fin

Sans-Fin followed with a very different kind of intensity, one that worked less through frontal assault and more through persistence, concentration and immersion. In a line-up where later performances would use severity more openly, Sans-Fin created pressure by narrowing the room slowly, almost methodically, until the audience found itself inside the sound rather than simply in front of it. That kind of set can be easy to underestimate if one expects industrial performance to constantly announce its own brutality. Sans-Fin did not do that. The music did not chase impact every few seconds, did not swell in predictable gestures, did not treat heaviness as a requirement to be fulfilled on schedule. It occupied its own space and allowed density to become the main instrument.

There was something procedural in the way the set moved. The sound created a field, and once inside that field, time seemed to stretch slightly. The body adjusted to a different breathing pattern. The mind stopped looking for obvious peaks and began following pressure as a continuous state. This is a difficult form of intensity because it requires trust: from the performer, from the audience, and from the material itself.

In the wider shape of the evening, Sans-Fin played an important role. After Supersimmetria’s hypnotic opening, it pushed the night further inward, making the room more attentive before Siamgda shifted everything into something more violent and ritualised. It was a set of controlled gravity, less spectacular than some of the later explosions, but very effective in the way it prepared the nervous system.

Siamgda

Siamgda changed the state of the room completely. This was a brutal sonic attack, and I mean that as praise, although the word “brutal” is almost too narrow for what the project does, because it suggests force alone, while Siamgda’s music seems to come from a place where rhythm, invocation, bodily endurance and spiritual pressure have not yet been separated into clean categories. My first deeper contact with Siamgda happened in May 2025, when I was preparing an interview around “Resistanz”, and what stayed with me from that conversation was the way the project spoke about drums. Not drums as decoration, not drums as an exotic surface added to industrial music, not drums as tribal colour pasted onto electronics, but drums as the centre: an ancient tool of elevation, calling, possession and transformation. Siamgda’s years of living among and studying different drum traditions in Asia clearly matter here, because the live sound carries that understanding physically. The drum is not there to support the track. The drum is the spine, the pulse, the door.

At Urban Spree, this made the set feel terrifyingly alive. The sound was severe, heavy and physically demanding, but it did not behave like standard industrial aggression. It had ritual gravity. The rhythms seemed to come from a place before genre, before club function, before the safer terms we use to organise music into categories. Electronics, abrasive pressure and vocal shadows gathered around that central percussive force, and the result felt less like a performance in the ordinary sense and more like a controlled ordeal. In that May 2025 conversation, Siamgda also described “Resistanz” as an album that had been almost ready for a long time, yet still lacked something until Marie’s voice gave it the ethereal touch it needed. Marie was not performing here, and I do not want to imply otherwise, but the idea behind that collaboration still helps explain the project’s internal tension. Siamgda is clearly interested in the point where weight and elevation meet, where impact and spirit do not cancel each other, where cruelty and purification can exist in the same sound.

This is where Siamgda becomes more than another harsh industrial act. The brutality is real, but it is not empty. It does not perform darkness as style. It uses darkness as passage. The set was harsh enough to feel almost punitive, yet underneath the violence there was a strange invitation: not to relax, not to be entertained, but to endure long enough for rhythm to change the internal temperature. For me, this was one of the strongest moments of the night because Siamgda refused the easy version of industrial intensity. It did not offer noise as spectacle. It offered percussion as elevation, rhythm as ordeal and brutality as a doorway into something disturbingly alive.

Monya

Monya was one of my absolute highlights of the night, and to be honest, I expected that. She is one of those artists whose sets make the tired distinction between club pleasure and experimental intelligence feel completely useless. She can give the room momentum, heat and drive, but she never reduces energy to a service product. Her sets feel alive because they keep thinking while they move.

There is something queenly in the way Monya handles sound, though not in a distant or decorative sense. It is command, instinct, risk, the ability to read a room and still refuse to become obedient to it. Her improvised sets bring together the best impulses of club music and harsher electronic culture: pulse, surprise, density, brightness, abrasion, acceleration, release. Their power lies in the refusal to settle into one predictable emotional lane.

At Urban Spree, she built a set that felt dynamic, energising and beautifully unstable. It could turn suddenly, sharpen its edge, open into something more luminous, then darken again without losing its internal logic. Complexity did not become a wall between herself and the audience. It became movement. The music remained physical, but the physicality was intelligent; it did not insult the body by assuming it only wants the most obvious beat.

Her set brought the best kind of euphoria into the night: not cheerful, not easy, not sugar poured over machinery, but that more serious excitement that appears when a room realises it is being led somewhere without fully knowing the route. It was invigorating, sensual in its own metallic way, and completely absorbing. For me, Monya was a reminder that electronic music can be generous without being simple, and intense without becoming narrow. She does not merely play for the room. She alters the room’s behaviour.

MS Gentur + Sven Phalanx

MS Gentur + Sven Phalanx were one of the real discoveries of the evening for me, perhaps because it was the first time I saw this configuration live, and perhaps because their energy was simply impossible to resist. Some acts arrive with severity, some with ritual distance, some with technical command; they arrived like a powerhouse with a pulse and a grin, which gave their set a very specific charge.

What struck me first was the stage dialogue. This did not feel like two people standing near each other while the machinery did the main work. It felt like exchange, friction, answer, provocation, acceleration. One impulse would be thrown from one side and immediately transformed from the other. The sound attacked relentlessly from the stage, but the performance itself carried visible pleasure in its own force, especially in Sven Phalanx’s presence, which had that irresistible quality of someone who does not merely operate inside the music, but animates it, pushes it outward and dares the room to keep up.

There was a lot of power in the set, but the power did not become dull or heavy in the wrong way. It stayed mobile. It had momentum, humour, aggression, impact and a very direct relation with the audience. Industrial music sometimes traps itself in seriousness, as if intensity required a permanent refusal of joy. MS Gentur + Sven Phalanx proved the opposite. Their set had mass, but it also had play; it had muscle, but it also had movement. It was relentless without becoming monotonous, loud without becoming stupid, energetic without slipping into simple entertainment. They inhabited the sound fully, and the audience felt that difference.

Statiqbloom

Statiqbloom was my personal favourite, the set that felt as if the whole body had been caught inside sonic barbed wire and then electrified through every loop. This is the image I always return to with this project, because it captures something essential: the sound does not merely hit; it wraps, tightens, cuts, shocks and keeps the listener inside its structure.

There is brutality in Statiqbloom, but it is never crude. That distinction matters very much. Harsh music can be painfully stupid when it mistakes volume for thought or abrasion for meaning. Statiqbloom does neither. The aggression has architecture. The textures scrape and burn, the rhythms apply pressure with a nearly surgical cruelty, and yet beneath the surface there is an emotional intelligence that prevents the whole experience from turning into empty sonic domination.

Every time I hear Statiqbloom, I feel that the project does not treat the ears, body, heart or nervous system kindly, and yet it gives something back that gentler music often cannot. It is invigorating precisely because it refuses comfort. The set at Urban Spree had that quality: damaged metal, dry rhythmic punishment, static, breath, electricity, urban dread, all pressed into a form that felt severe but alive. The sensitivity inside this violence is crucial. Statiqbloom’s soundscape is brutal, yes, but the brutality seems to know about fragility. It feels connected to alienation, exhaustion, fear, systems pressing too close to the body, the strange modern condition of being overstimulated and emotionally underprotected at the same time. The set did not tell that story in any literal way. It made the body understand it. In the context of Hands Label Night, this was perhaps the most precise expression of rhythm as psychological pressure.

Mono No Aware

I did not stay for Mono No Aware. The heat defeated me before the end of the night, and I would rather write that honestly than pretend to review a set I did not experience properly. Still, the project’s presence on the poster mattered, because Mono No Aware is one of the names that carry real weight within the HANDS universe.

Leif Künzel’s long-running project, rooted in German rhythm’n’noise and connected with the HANDS catalogue for years, represents one of the label’s most recognisable approaches to industrial body mechanics: repetition, impact, severity and that particular sense of rhythmic pressure where the body is not so much invited to move as instructed. Even without writing about this specific performance, it is worth acknowledging how the name shaped the expectations of the night. Mono No Aware is not a decorative addition to such a line-up. It is part of the language.

Final thoughts on Hands Label Night

Hands Label Night Berlin worked because it refused to present industrial culture as one uniform mood. The night moved through hypnotic construction, sustained pressure, ritual violence, improvised club intelligence, performance joy and harsh electronic overload, while never losing the basic HANDS premise: rhythm as something serious, bodily and transformative. The summer edition was completely different from the January one, and that difference was valuable. It showed that this label night can stretch. It can hold different audiences, different temperatures, different bodies and different approaches to sound without losing its identity. HANDS remains very clearly HANDS: physical, rhythmic, intelligent, uncompromising. Yet uncompromising does not have to mean narrow.

At Urban Spree, inside RAW-Gelände, with Berlin heat sitting heavily in the air and the audience moving between concrete, noise and sweat, the evening felt alive in a way that cannot be reduced to a line-up. Supersimmetria opened the evening with hypnotic intelligence, Sans-Fin worked through sustained atmosphere, Siamgda brought ritual brutality, Monya ruled through risk and movement, MS Gentur + Sven Phalanx turned force into performance electricity, and Statiqbloom delivered the kind of harsh, precise overload that remains in the nervous system after the sound is gone. And then the Berlin heat finished the job.

About HANDS and the Hands Label Night

HANDS (Hands Productions) is a German label founded in 1992 by Udo Wiessmann, specialising in rhythmic noise, power noise and industrial body music. The label has shaped that strand of the scene for more than three decades through artists such as Mono No Aware, Imminent, Orphx, Tarmvred and many others, and stages its recurring Hands Label Night events as showcases for the roster. The Berlin summer edition reviewed here gathered Supersimmetria, Sans-Fin, Siamgda, Monya, MS Gentur + Sven Phalanx, Statiqbloom and Mono No Aware at Urban Spree.

Words and photos by Karo Kratochwil.

The first album by the Icelandic duo Gjöll was released in 2006. Several other albums followed, but with “On The Forgetting Of Language”, Jóhann Eiríksson and Sigurður Harðarson present their first new opus in eleven years. The album is deeply introspective, serving as a kind of meditative reflection on the human spirit in a world that relentlessly continues to move forward.

Musically, Gjöll combines a variety of dark elements. Industrial percussion underpins waves of ominous soundscapes, repetitive electronic sequences, overwhelming effects, and an array of chaotic noises, buzzing textures, and even a muffled growl that functions as a vocal presence. All of these components are expertly fused into a cohesive whole that feels particularly tormented during certain passages.

What appeals to me most about this release is its dark atmosphere, which seems to awaken the hidden corners of the psyche. It is a true sonic maelstrom that captures the imagination and leaves a lasting impression. (Rating:7½).

Listen to “The Tongues Of Smoke And Ashes”:

https://ant-zen.bandcamp.com/track/the-tongues-of-smoke-and-ashes

“The Shadow Of The Torturer” is a Franco-Belgian collaboration between Gwenn Trémorin (Flint Glass) and Herman Klapholz (Ah Cama-Sotz). Both artists are seasoned veterans of the vast Industrial, Tribal, and Ambient landscape, and this opus marks their third collaboration. Inspired by “The Book Of The New Sun” by Gene Wolfe, the duo has transformed the story’s dystopian atmosphere into nine expansive compositions.

Anyone familiar with the work of these two musicians will already know that their creativity and talent have long been established. Yet collaboration always presents a different challenge: a meeting of artistic visions where individual ideas must merge into a coherent whole. Once again, they have succeeded admirably. The result is a restrained yet captivating work, built around slowly evolving tracks enveloped in an aura of mystery. Tribal elements, Cinematic textures, and touches of Dark-Techno blend seamlessly with languid, hypnotic rhythms. As the album progresses, harder beats gradually emerge, particularly during the closing tracks. A pervasive darkness hangs over the entire work, conveying feelings of torment and hopelessness, while at the same time remaining deeply fascinating. The more dynamic passages draw the listener into an almost trance-like state.

This is a compelling album filled with compositions that patiently build tension before erupting into powerful climaxes, especially throughout the second half of the record. For my part, I can only hope that these two artists continue to collaborate in the future, as their creative partnership continues to produce remarkable results. (Rating:8½).

Listen to “Red Sands Of The New Sun”:

https://ant-zen.bandcamp.com/track/red-sands-of-the-new-sun

Diary of Dreams have announced a new live format. Adrian Hates and Felix Wunderer will appear on selected international stages as Diary of Dreams – the electronic duet, focusing on the purely electronic side of the project.

As Adrian Hates comments: “the Electronic Duet” concerts are additional to playing live with the normal line up – NOT a replacement! – I was just sick and tired of not touring anymore in so many territories due to generally rising costs. This is my way of dealing with it. of course you still have a point here: after all, concerts are essential to survive as an artist, by slowly more and more unaffordable for so many of us. dead end dreams.”

The explanation is honest enough. Rising costs for flights, hotels, travel, crew and staff have made some international shows difficult, sometimes impossible, to finance in the usual full-band format. According to Hates, the alternative would be fewer concerts, fewer countries, fewer chances to reach people outside the safer touring routes. So the project is being reduced for certain shows, at least physically. Smaller team, lower costs, more mobility.

What I appreciate about the announcement is that it does not dress the problem up too much. This is not presented as a sudden artistic revelation after decades of misunderstanding. It is necessity. And maybe because it is necessity, the phrase “back to the roots” lands in a more complicated way.

In a sense, yes. Diary of Dreams were never far from electronics. The programming was always there, under the voice, under the drama, under that particular DoD sadness. The band’s early identity was already built around atmosphere, pulse, repetition and a very controlled kind of darkness. Nobody can seriously argue that Diary of Dreams are now discovering machines for the first time.

But still, I hesitate.

What the Diary of Dreams electronic duet changes

For me, Diary of Dreams always worked on several levels at once. Adrian Hates’ voice, of course. That voice is almost a genre in itself: severe, elegant, wounded, commanding without ever becoming theatrical in the cheap sense. Then the lyrics, often more intelligent than the usual dark-scene vocabulary allows, full of inner conflict, accusation, distance, self-observation. But the guitars mattered too. They were not decoration. They gave the songs a body, a pressure, a grain. They stopped the music from becoming too smooth.

That is probably why this news produces mixed feelings. Electronic music is not the problem. It would be absurd to complain about electronics in a scene built on synthesizers, programming and machines. The problem is different. There is a difference between choosing electronic reduction because the songs demand it, and accepting electronic reduction because the economics of touring have become brutal.

Adrian Hates has experimented before. Coma Alliance with Torben Wendt of Diorama opened a different shared space, more collaborative, more cross-pollinated. .com/kill with Gaun:A moved into a colder, more direct electronic form. Some experiments worked better than others, which is normal. What they all showed is that Hates is not an artist trapped inside one fixed arrangement. He can strip things down, bend the language, move sideways from Diary of Dreams and still remain recognisable.

But Diary of Dreams is not just another vehicle. It carries history. It carries the weight of rooms, tours, records, line-ups, arrangements, expectations. It carries that strange bond between programmed melancholy and live force. A Diary of Dreams song can survive in a purely electronic version, yes. The question is whether it changes character when the physical band body is reduced.

And it will change. Of course it will. A live guitarist is not just the guitar sound. A drummer is not just the beat. A musician on stage is movement, friction, timing, small mistakes, resistance, heat. A laptop can carry the arrangement. It can do it cleanly, sometimes more reliably than a tired band in a difficult venue. But it cannot look back at the singer. It cannot push against the room. It cannot make the same kind of risk.

This has been happening for years with drums. Many bands in the darker electronic scene no longer tour with live drums. Some never did, some use hybrid setups, some rely on backing tracks, and in many cases it makes sense. Nobody wants to be naive about money. But now one wonders whether guitars are next. Is this where underground touring is going: two people, a laptop, a few controllers, and the ghost of a full band behind them?

That may sound harsh, but it is not meant as an attack on Diary of Dreams. Quite the opposite. Their announcement is interesting because it says aloud what many artists are probably already calculating in private. How many people can we still afford to take on the road? Which parts of the live sound are essential? Which parts can be programmed? Which parts will the audience miss? Which parts will they accept losing because everyone knows how expensive everything has become?

There is sadness in that. Not melodrama, just sadness. Artists who spent decades building entire musical worlds now have to redesign those worlds around hotel prices, flight routes, fuel costs, crew fees and promoter risk. That is the part that hurts. It is not the laptop. It is the reason the laptop becomes the solution.

So yes, “back to the roots” is partly true. Diary of Dreams have an electronic root. Adrian Hates can stand inside that reduced format without betraying the project. Felix Wunderer is not a random technician added to make the files run. If the duet is carefully shaped, it could become something genuinely strong: colder, more intimate, perhaps closer to the skeleton of the songs. Less rock pressure, more nerve. Less full-band drama, more exposed architecture. But if it becomes simply the cheaper version of the full show, people will feel that too.

The important detail is that Diary of Dreams are not announcing the death of the band. Hates makes it clear that the full line-up continues to exist, and that the duet format applies when the show is billed specifically as Diary of Dreams – the electronic duet. That distinction matters. It keeps the door open. It says: this is another form, not the final replacement.

Still, the announcement leaves a question hanging over the scene. What do we lose when live music becomes more portable? What do we gain? More countries, more shows, more chances for people to see artists who might otherwise skip their region completely. That matters. But we may also lose some of the human surplus that made concerts feel different from playback with lights.

Maybe the future of underground music will be more modular: full band where possible, electronic duet where necessary, acoustic or semi-acoustic versions when the setting demands it, festival versions, club versions, survival versions. Maybe that is not entirely bad. Flexibility can be creative. Limitation can produce focus.

But I would rather we name the pressure honestly. This is not only an artistic turn. It is also a financial wound. And Diary of Dreams, by speaking about it so directly, have given us more than a tour-format update. They have given us a small, uncomfortable picture of where live music stands now. Back to the roots? Maybe. But also forward into a future where even established bands have to travel lighter, count harder, and hope that what remains on stage is still enough to carry the dream.

Diary of Dreams 2026 live dates

• July 4, 2026 – Hude, Germany – Burning Pants Festival
• July 17, 2026 – Bolków, Poland – Castle Party 2026
• July 18, 2026 – Königstein, Germany – Festung Königstein
• July 26, 2026 – Köln, Germany – Amphi Festival
• September 6, 2026 – Deutzen, Germany – Nocturnal Culture Night 2026
• September 12, 2026 – Rotterdam, Netherlands – Baroeg Open Air 2026
• November 19, 2026 – Schwerin, Germany – Zenit Schwerin
• November 20, 2026 – Braunschweig, Germany – KufA Haus
• November 21, 2026 – Bielefeld, Germany – Stereo Live Club
• November 22, 2026 – Oberhausen, Germany – Kulttempel
• November 25, 2026 – Karlsruhe, Germany – Die Stadtmitte
• November 26, 2026 – Wiesbaden, Germany – Schlachthof Wiesbaden
• November 27, 2026 – Jena, Germany – F-Haus
• November 28, 2026 – Bremen, Germany – Kulturzentrum Lagerhaus

About Diary of Dreams

Diary of Dreams is the darkwave project of Adrian Hates, formed in Düsseldorf, Germany in 1989. Built around Hates’ voice, programmed rhythms and guitar, the project became one of the central names in German dark-scene music across albums such as “Cholymelan”, “Bird Without Wings”, “Nigredo” and “Nekrolog 43”. Hates has run the project through its own label, Accession Records, and remained its constant creative centre while the live line-up changed over the years.

Recent Diary of Dreams activity includes the orchestral reworking “Under a timeless Spell” and the “Dead End Dreams” series on Accession. The electronic-duet format adds another live configuration alongside the full band, applied to shows billed specifically as Diary of Dreams – the electronic duet, beginning with the project’s announced 2026 dates.

Words by Karo Kratochwil.

Cherry Red Records collects two decades of shoegaze on “We Are The Beautiful”, a 4CD box set of 67 tracks subtitled “Two Decades of Shoegaze 1991-2011”. The set is physical only and is available to pre-order through Projekt’s Bandcamp at $38, with Projekt’s stock shipping by mid-August 2026.

The compilation traces the genre from the UK underground of the early 1990s through its later international spread. It runs across four discs, ordered loosely by era.

The first disc leans on the genre’s UK origins, with Ride, Lush, Curve, Catherine Wheel, Pale Saints and Kitchens of Distinction. The second adds Slowdive, Chapterhouse – whose song “We Are The Beautiful” gives the box its title – Cranes, Ultra Vivid Scene and Brian Jonestown Massacre. The third reaches into the 4AD-adjacent and US scenes with Cocteau Twins, Bowery Electric, Asobi Seksu and Skywave, and the fourth moves toward the late-2000s revival with A Place To Bury Strangers, School of Seven Bells, Ringo Deathstarr, Tamaryn and Pinkshinyultrablast.

Inside the ‘We Are The Beautiful’ shoegaze box

Two Projekt acts appear in the running order: Lowsunday, with “She Follows Rain”, and Mira, with “Cayman”. Side-Line has followed Lowsunday’s recent run, including the “Low Sunday Ghost Machine – White EP”. The box gathers single and album tracks from across the 1991-2011 window rather than rarities, drawing many of the period’s labels into one set.

There is no digital edition. Orders run through Projekt’s Bandcamp store, and Cherry Red Records handles the wider physical release.

About ‘We Are The Beautiful’

“We Are The Beautiful” is a various-artists compilation issued by Cherry Red Records, the UK label known for genre and scene retrospectives. Its 67 tracks span 1991 to 2011, the two decades in which shoegaze moved from a small group of British bands – Ride, Slowdive, Chapterhouse, Lush, Pale Saints – to a wider international style taken up across Europe, the US and beyond.

The set sits close to the darkwave and dream-pop lineage Side-Line covers, through acts such as Cocteau Twins and Cranes and through Projekt’s own roster. Projekt, the Philadelphia label founded by Sam Rosenthal, contributes Lowsunday and Mira to the box and handles the North American pre-order. The compilation pulls those threads together for a single chronological overview of the genre.

Belgian-American act Lords of Acid have announced the “Cheeky Freaky Tour – Pt. 2”, a run of 15 US dates this October. The second leg of the Lords of Acid “Cheeky Freaky Tour” opens October 15 in Norwalk, Connecticut and closes October 31 in Philadelphia, with a festival appearance at Sick New World Texas in Fort Worth on October 24.

The dates follow the first Cheeky Freaky Tour, which ran in spring 2026. Founder Praga Khan ties the return directly to demand from that run.

Praga Khan describes the second leg as a response to the first tour’s reception: “We’re doing Cheeky Freaky Part 2 for one simple reason: the fans asked for more. The energy, the sold out shows, the incredible response – it all made us realize one thing: we weren’t ready to say goodbye just yet. So we’re coming back louder, freakier and more outrageous than ever.”

Princess Superstar, Tony & The Kiki and MZ NEON join the package, the same support bill that appeared on the first leg; the Fort Worth festival date and the Philadelphia closer are Lords of Acid only. Tickets and VIP meet-and-greets are available through the band’s official site, lordsofacid.com.

Lords of Acid tour dates: ‘Cheeky Freaky Tour – Pt. 2’

• October 15 – Norwalk, CT – District Music Hall
• October 16 – Lancaster, PA – Phantom Power
• October 17 – Rochester, NY – Photo City Music Hall
• October 18 – Columbus, OH – The King of Clubs
• October 19 – Milwaukee, WI – Vivarium
• October 21 – Lincoln, NE – Bourbon Theater
• October 22 – Denver, CO – Oriental Theater
• October 23 – Wichita, KS – Wave
• October 24 – Fort Worth, TX – Sick New World (Lords of Acid only)
• October 25 – Tulsa, OK – Vanguard
• October 27 – St. Louis, MO – The Golden Record
• October 28 – Indianapolis, IN – The Vogue
• October 29 – Nashville, TN – Hit Parader
• October 30 – Raleigh, NC – Chapel of Bones
• October 31 – Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts (Lords of Acid only)

The second leg extends the touring cycle around “Acid Reign”, the band’s first studio album since “Pretty in Kink” (2018), and follows recent singles “Karaoke Superstar” with Princess Superstar. Side-Line covered the original “Cheeky Freaky” US tour and the “Acid Reign” announcement earlier in 2026.

About Lords of Acid

Lords of Acid is the project of Belgian producer Praga Khan (Maurice Engelen), formed in 1988. The group helped shape acid house and industrial dance with debut album “Lust” (1991), followed by “Voodoo-U” (1994), “Our Little Secret” (1997), “Farstucker” (2000), “Deep Chills” (2012) and “Pretty in Kink” (2018). Across those records the band cycled through several vocalists while Praga Khan remained the constant writer and producer.

Carla Harvey, previously co-vocalist of Butcher Babies, joined as the group’s singer in January 2025 and fronted the 2025 “Praise The Lords” tour before the “Cheeky Freaky” run. Lords of Acid have announced “Acid Reign” as their next studio album, their first full-length in eight years, and released the singles “Karaoke Superstar” and “Dream Boy” ahead of it. The “Cheeky Freaky Tour – Pt. 2” carries that cycle into the autumn with a second wave of US shows.

Bliss My Heart and Cliff Estatof, the Paris-based post-punk duo, have released the single “Love Lies” through Cleopatra Records. The Bliss My Heart “Love Lies” single features Frank Ferrer, the ex-Guns N’ Roses drummer, on drums and arrives with an official video.

The track moves into darker, sharper territory than the duo’s earlier work, built on tense guitars and post-punk textures. Ferrer, who has also drummed for The Psychedelic Furs, Love Spit Love and Draco Rosa, guests on the recording. The press release describes the single as a step where “the influences of Depeche Mode, Talk Talk and Alice in Chains converge.”

Bliss My Heart and Cliff Estatof share the ‘Love Lies’ video

The single follows “Sugar Kapel”, issued in January 2026 through Cleopatra Records, and continues the partnership between vocalist Jen Wolf and producer Cliff Estatof. “Love Lies” is available through streaming services, including Spotify.

About Bliss My Heart

Bliss My Heart was founded in Paris in 2020 by Jen Wolf, beginning with a synthwave aesthetic on the EP “Morning Star” and the single “Latigo Canyon”. The project took a darker, more spiritual direction in 2025 with the arrival of producer Cliff Estatof, who shaped the singles “Suffer Well” and “Sinner Sinner”.

In January 2026 the duo released “Sugar Kapel” through the American label Cleopatra Records. In February 2026 they opened for The Depeche Mode Experience at the Dôme de Paris and Le Silo in Marseille, joined on stage by Kevin R Scarf on guitar and Mike Estatof on drums.

“Love Lies”, featuring Frank Ferrer, is the duo’s latest single for Cleopatra Records and follows “Sugar Kapel” in their 2026 run of releases.

Die In Eclipse, the new EBM and darkwave project of Darkrad‘s Jana Komaritsa, has released its debut EP “Sexwave,” pairing two original tracks with five remixes from the electro-industrial and rhythmic-noise scene. Komaritsa is better known as Darkrad, the dark ambient project she has run since 2009. Die In Eclipse turns the other way, toward beat-driven dark techno and EBM.

The EP arrived on 14 June 2026 as a digital release, available on Bandcamp. Komaritsa describes the project’s sound as “a fusion of dark techno, contemporary EBM and darkwave, infused with sensual vocals.” The name is not new to her catalogue: “Die in Eclipse” was also the title of a two-track Darkrad release she issued in 2014.

“Sexwave” runs to seven tracks. It opens with the two originals, “Sexwave” and “Unholy Dark,” then hands both songs to a roster of remixers. “Sexwave” gets three reworks, by Iszoloscope, Antigen Shift and Cervello Elettronico. “Unholy Dark” gets two, by Horroh and Spherical Disrupted.

About Die In Eclipse and Jana Komaritsa

Die In Eclipse is the EBM and darkwave project of Jana Komaritsa, a Russian-born, Netherlands-based musician and multidisciplinary visual artist who also runs the WonderCat art space in Leiden. She started her first musical project, Darkrad, in 2009, mixing dark ambient and noise built around quiet, whispered vocals.

Darkrad’s release history runs through the dark ambient underground. The debut album “Abnormal Love” came out in 2012 on the Swedish label Cold Meat Industry. “Little Black World” followed in 2014, issued as a limited tape on Komaritsa’s own Mrakmur imprint and later through audiophob. The same year she released the two-track “Die in Eclipse,” the title she has now revived for the new project. The album “Heart Murmur” arrived in 2018, and in 2022 she paired with Flint Glass for “Cold Solitude,” a collaboration released as an art book with a CD, drawn from her own series of paintings.

Die In Eclipse marks a clear change of direction from that catalogue. Where Darkrad sits in dark ambient, the new project moves onto the dancefloor, built on dark techno rhythms and EBM. Komaritsa launched it on stage in late 2025 and kept it touring the dark-music festival circuit into 2026. “Sexwave” is its first recorded release, and the remix-heavy tracklist places her new work alongside the electro-industrial and rhythmic-noise names that built the sound it draws on.

Ecce Shnak, a five-piece art-rock band from New York City, have released the video for “Eddie, Legalistic Homeslice”, the second single from their forthcoming album “Dandy Variances”. The single arrives on 1 July 2026 through Records, Man Records, and the Ecce Shnak “Eddie, Legalistic Homeslice” video premieres alongside the band’s earlier single “Vincent”.

Jeff Lucci recorded and produced the track, and Mario McNulty mixed it; McNulty’s credits include David Bowie, Prince and Nine Inch Nails. Frontman David Roush, who writes and composes the band’s material, plays bass and sings baritone, with Bella Komodromos on vocals, Chris Krasnow and Gannon Ferrell on guitars and Henry Vaughn on drums.

Ecce Shnak premiere the ‘Eddie, Legalistic Homeslice’ video

Roush describes “Eddie” as a garage-rock tribute to a friend, exploring “big themes in great friendships: their gnarly ambivalences, their absurd misunderstandings, their inside-jokes, and their contradictory mix of irreverence with utmost care.” The clip casts the comedic duo Syd and Olivia as the song’s two characters. Vocalist Bella Komodromos calls it a “Wes-Anderson-hued buddy-comedy music video, directed and produced by DJay Brawner.”

The single follows “Vincent”, the lead track from “Dandy Variances”, which set operatic vocals against heavy rock. Its video pays homage to Meshuggah’s “Bleed” and 311’s “Down”.

“Eddie, Legalistic Homeslice” arrives on 1 July 2026 on digital platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp. The band’s next show is on 12 July 2026 at Cassette in New York, with DHÄRÄ, Jawaun Neal and Backflips; the 21+ show starts at 7:30pm.

About Ecce Shnak

Ecce Shnak, pronounced “Eh-kay sh-knock”, is a five-piece art-rock band from New York City, formed in the mid-2000s in the city’s experimental scene. The current lineup is David Roush (composer, bass and baritone vocals), Isabella “Bella” Komodromos (vocals), Chris Krasnow (guitar), Gannon Ferrell (guitar) and Henry Vaughn (drums). The band describes its music as “one part pop music, another part classical music, and a third part punk music”.

Earlier releases include the 2019 EP “Joke Oso”, which features the track “Larry, Sleepover Friend”, and the 2025 EP “Shadows Grow Fangs”, recorded and produced by Jeff Lucci, mixed by Nicholas Vernhes and mastered by Joe LaPorta. The band contributed vocals to EMF’s track “LGBTQ+ Lover”, with Roush and Komodromos featured, and toured the United States West Coast in 2025 with Spacehog before further US dates with EMF in spring 2026 and UK shows together.

“Eddie, Legalistic Homeslice” is the second single from “Dandy Variances”, the band’s forthcoming album for Records, Man Records, following “Vincent”.

Ben Christo is a guitarist who has learned that volume is rarely the most dangerous thing a guitar can do. Sometimes the sharper weapon is restraint: three notes placed with intent, a riff stripped until it stops showing off, a melody dark enough to carry memory without collapsing under its own drama. That sense of control runs through his long tenure with The Sisters of Mercy, where guitar often works as atmosphere, pressure and architecture rather than simple attack. Yet Christo’s musical life is much wider than one band’s mythology.

With Ricky Warwick, he returns to a more instinctive rock language, closer to the teenage thrill of classic guitar energy. With Diamond Black, the emotional centre moves closer to his own life, touching mental health, chronic pain, alcoholism, recovery and the difficult work of making hope sound earned. His phrase for the thread running through it all is “dark, gritty melody”. It is a useful key to this conversation. In this interview for Side-Line Magazine, Ben Christo speaks with us about The Sisters of Mercy, Diamond Black, sobriety, songwriting as narrative movement, Andrew Eldritch’s lessons in restraint, the way new songs change on stage, and what fans may expect from the next tour.

Ben Christo interview

Karo: Ben, thank you for taking the time. We have around 30 minutes, so I will try to stay focused. I wanted to start with your recent tour with Ricky Warwick. It seems like a very different musical environment from The Sisters of Mercy: more direct rock’n’roll energy, more organic movement, and a different relationship with the audience. What does a run like that give you as a player before you move back toward something more controlled like The Sisters?

Ben: Yeah, that’s such a great question. To see that very clear contrast between the two performance styles. As you’ve pointed out with the Ricky Warwick show, it is very much what feels right in the moment. The last show that we played was this fantastic festival called Bonfest, and that was the last show we played. It was a big stage, big audience, and it really gave me a good chance to connect with something very inveterate, I think, in my own playing, which is simply playing three chord rock on a Gibson SG to an excited crowd. And that’s something that I think is very much in the roots of where I’ve come from as a player, where I’ve come from in terms of my influences and my very early influences being things like AC/DC and Def Leppard and these more classic rock bands. So I did feel during those shows a real connection with myself as a teenager and a child again. It was a very joyful feeling and a very different kind of enjoyment than I get from playing The Sisters of Mercy shows, where I feel within that that I’m stepping more into an existing personality of the band’s aesthetic, which does have perhaps more guidelines, even unspoken guidelines, than something like a classic rock, rock and roll show like Ricky Warwick, where the guidelines are kind of: there are no guidelines, just rock. Just have a good time, just enjoy yourself. And so, yeah, it is a very different dynamic. And both are freeing and liberating in different ways.

Karo: Would you say that Ricky Warwick reconnects you more with a more instinctive guitar language?

Ben: Absolutely. That’s a very good way of putting it. That instinctive guitar language is very much where I feel that I am with the Ricky Warwick dynamic. Absolutely.

Karo: What about Diamond Black? It gives you a different kind of exposure, because the songs, the emotional centre and the visual identity sit much closer to you personally. What does Diamond Black allow you to say or risk that would not belong inside, for example, The Sisters?

Ben: Well, it’s very much talking lyrically about the experiences that I’ve had of issues around mental health, alcoholism, chronic pain, and being able to talk very directly to the audience. Not necessarily going into detail about: this happened to me, this was this thing. The songs talk about that in-between. I get to just talk more generally about mental health and give guidance, but without it being, I’d like to think, preachy in any way. It’s just suggestions and it’s just my experience. And one of the things that I was often saying during the last tour before the final song was that “this song is dedicated to anybody who felt quite nervous about coming out tonight. Maybe they felt like they couldn’t face the world, that they didn’t have the confidence, but they still did it and they’re still here tonight. So whoever overcame that demon, this song is dedicated to you.” And it was really, really enriching that many people would come up to me afterwards and say, “I was that person. That was me. I almost didn’t come because I was too nervous. I felt too self-conscious, but I did it. And to be recognised for that, I feel seen.” And that’s such nice feedback to get, particularly as I imagine a lot of people feel like that. I’ve felt like that. I still feel like that, of overcoming that anxiety to come out for a night, come to an event, put yourself out there. So, yeah, things like that, where it’s not specifically talking about, hey, “this is what happened to me.” It’s more like “these are the observations that I’ve made through my experiences, seen through a lens of what I hope are shared experiences that people can connect with and relate to.”

Karo: You have posted very openly about sobriety, and I was following those posts because they were very encouraging. Alcohol is often treated as part of the music scene, or at least part of its mythology. Do you feel that sobriety changed your relationship with performance, recovery, discipline and the emotional rhythm of being on the road? Of course, only if you are comfortable answering.

Ben: Well, firstly, thank you for reading those or watching those so carefully. And that feedback you’ve given me is very encouraging. I definitely think it was a very happy accident that very naturally the necessity for me to move into sobriety then became part of what I wanted to present within my music. What’s really interesting was that in the first bunch of songs that the band released, Diamond Black, we had a song called “If You Kill My Demons”. And the idea about that was, the lyric was written about the idea that “without destructive behaviours, I am not the real me. Those destructive behaviours are the real me.” The voice of the protagonist of the song was saying that “if you take away the demons of alcoholism and self-sabotage, then I stop becoming myself. I need those things in order to be me.” And that was how I felt back then. That was when I was still drinking heavily and engaging in self-sabotaging behaviours. And then I was able to look back at that lyric, still perform the song and go, “this is the way I used to feel. This is a voice of a previous attitude, an incarnation of myself.” But when we entered a newer era of the band, the songs very naturally became about looking at things like alcohol, alcoholism and self-sabotage, and then looking at the positive aspects of overcoming those things in a slightly oblique way, because some of those songs were still written in a time when I was still drinking alcohol. However, what’s great is that the new album that we’re working on is 10 songs that have all been written in sobriety and therefore are able to reflect stories retrospectively regarding alcoholism, chronic pain, self-sabotage, and in a much more progressive way. Because the starting point of the song is one of struggle. But for each of the songs, there is a sense of a journey, that by the end, there is an element of hope, an element of progression that says, “okay, so we started in this place in verse one. By chorus three, we’re somewhere else. We’re still looking at the problem, but we’re looking at some solutions at this point.” And there’s a glimpse of a way out, which is something that previous songs didn’t have. They just existed within the same scene for the entirety of the song. The new songs all have this narrative arc where we go from the initial setup of “this is the status quo at the start – the destructive element. By the end of the song, there’s progression.” And not only do I think that reflects my beliefs well, I think it’s just kind of a cool thing to do with songwriting, to take people on a journey from the start to the end. I never really used to think of it like that. I used to think a song, basically, you start and you end in the same place. Maybe you make some changes to one of the lyrics, or you have an extra guitar at the end or some more vocal harmonies or whatever. That’s the change, not the story. The story isn’t changing. It was pointed out to me by someone who’s very good at lyrics that that was one of the weaknesses in my lyrics: they didn’t have a narrative arc. Anything that’s any piece of art, like a movie or a music video, there’s a journey. Songs are different because they don’t explicitly say, “let us tell you a story.” They say, “let us tell you a feeling.” But you’ve got the opportunity there to observe that feeling from different vantage points from the start to the end. And I find that was a really interesting and fun thing to do with the song, to say: “okay, how can I change this by chorus three so that it still is the same kind of a chorus, but there are little subtle changes in the words that mean that we’ve moved somewhere else?”

Karo: That is a beautiful kind of progress to show. It gives the listener a chance to participate in this journey, even from the outside. Moving to another area of your work: you work across very different contexts, Diamond Black, session work, touring with other artists and The Sisters. When you move between these worlds, what changes first for you as a player?

Ben: That’s a very interesting question. And I wonder if it’s just been something out of necessity, that due to the nature of how my career has developed, I have by necessity had to fulfil different roles. If I was someone like, let’s say, Dave Gahan from Depeche Mode, that’s what I do. I write the songs like that, I sing like that, I perform like that. That’s it. For myself, however, I have a number of different substrata to my brand or my identity as a musician that I can step into, whether that being something that’s more moody or something that’s more energetic or even something that’s a bit heavier and more aggressive. I love all those things. Therefore, I’m able to step authentically into all of those things. I can play in a hardcore metal band. I can play in a dark indie band. I can play in an emotional, acapella vocal band. Because as long as there’s an element within it that I engage with, then I can feel authentic and excited. And that element for me always is: dark, gritty melody. That’s my kind of keystone of: “do I like this music?” It doesn’t matter what genre it is. “Does it have dark, gritty melody?” If it does, I like it. That tends to be my guiding star. And that means that I can like anything from some singer-songwriter folk that is impassioned and dark and moving to something that is a lot heavier, as long as I still feel it’s got melody. I still feel the lyrics mean something. And I’ve got that whole spectrum because, as I said, that same key thing is there. So all of the projects that I’ve been involved in that I’ve really enjoyed the most generally have a sense of dark, gritty melody. Some of the songs that that band has or that project has might not be completely within the Venn diagram of what I like. There might be some stuff on the periphery, but most of it is in the middle. So, say, for example, if I was to play with a punk band, most of their songs are quite dark and quite aggressive. They might have some ska songs as well. Now, I’m not so much into ska, but as long as the lyric and the melody and the general vibe of the band still retains that element, that personality, and doesn’t suddenly just become, “hey, really fun music”, I still feel I can invest in the project in general.

Karo: When I think about The Sisters’ guitar sound, it is often as much about space and absence as it is about riffs. There is a discipline in what you choose not to play. How do you decide what to leave out? Is that something you arrive at in rehearsal, or something you feel in the moment on stage?

Ben: It’s something that certainly had to be taught to me, because when I first came to the band when I was 25, I wanted to play all the time. I felt like every song was an opportunity for me to show everything. It was driven by a kind of fear of, “if I don’t show everything that I can do, people won’t think I’m very good!” So every song is a chance for me to go, “hey, look, I can do this, this and this,” regardless of whether or not the song’s mood and story needed it. So how that then developed over the years was, first of all, Andrew was very good at saying, “okay, look, I think you’ve got a lot of potential. You’re here. Let’s reduce what you’re doing. Let’s really think about these three notes that you’re going to play all the way through this song. You have to play them really well. You have to play them with the right kind of emotion and restraint. Sometimes you have to not play them and just stand there.” And he taught me a lot about that, and he got me to listen to a lot of Atlantic Records, Motown music that he loved when he was growing up and said: “listen to the restraint. Listen to how one instrument just does the same thing all the way through the song, because that’s its part in the machine of the song. Listen to the emotion behind this music because it’s been written and performed in a time of great oppression from the people who are creating it. Think about how that is being imbued into three or four notes.” It’s not just about, “hey, look at this cool thing I can do.” You’re telling a story of a time and a place and a climate. And so that meant that when I got to play riffs like, let’s say “Dominion”, just three, four, five notes throughout the song pretty much, I was able to think, “I’m not just playing three notes. I’m playing something that tells a very important story about the song.” But also, these three or four notes have found their way into the hearts of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people, and they mean something. I want to play them right. I want people to hear them and think, “oh my God, that takes me back to this. Or that reminds me of that person, or this song feels like me.” And that’s going to work if those notes are played in the right way and if those notes are played with the right kind of sound as well, the right effects, the right guitar, the right kind of velocity that you’re playing the notes. So it’s all really important. And it reminded me, particularly when it’s songs that people really care about, how important it is to have fidelity to what they’ve heard on the record that has been part of their life soundtrack.

Karo: Brutal Assault announced that The Sisters of Mercy pulled out of the 2026 edition because the band had moved up the recording schedule for a new album. That sentence landed like a small explosion in the fan community after so many years of speculation. What was it like watching that public reaction from inside the band?

Ben: That’s something I can’t really comment on, I’m afraid.

Karo: I understand. Then let me ask more generally about the group of newer songs. Many are credited to you, to Andrew Eldritch and to Dylan Smith, with some other credits as well. These songs have already lived on stage and inside the audience before any possible studio version. If material like that enters the recording process, does it arrive already shaped by the live experience?

Ben: I think what happens, generally speaking, with that process in any band is that the song gets written in a rehearsal room initially, and then sometimes you can record a demo of it just because you want a reference as a band to go, “okay, look, how does this go? Oh, look, we’ve done that, to decide how the parts work.” Sometimes songs can be written like that as recordings, people sending recordings back and forth: “I’ve come up with this. Okay, I’ll send it to your house and your computer, you can add something to it, I’ll send something back.” And that can be a process, that the song is written, or certainly some of the song is written. And then, yes, the live performances will shape the song. You’ll realise things that work and things that don’t work. It’s a bit like if you are performing a play and you start to realise which bits get a good laugh, which bits create a lot of tension, and you’re able to then amp those up or show restraint. “Oh, actually, that joke didn’t work very well. Or when we try and do this dramatic scene, it doesn’t land. It doesn’t feel right.” You can’t tell certain things until you actually do them live in front of an audience, both with music and with acting, performance. So, yes, the songs have certainly been shaped by the live performances and the things that we’ve naturally felt either as players or as performers – what does the audience vibe, what do they get from this – that have then shaped the progression of the song’s development.

Karo: Your name appears in the credits of several newer songs, so your role is not only interpretive. When you bring a riff, a structure or an idea to The Sisters, how much of it tends to survive the process? Does the song strip back, mutate, or become something you did not expect?

Ben: All of the above, really. Sometimes I’ll bring a fully fleshed-out song and one part of the main riff will then be changed and be made into the bassline or something, and the song will develop like that. Other times I’ve come with a fairly comprehensive map of the song and then vocals have been added to it, or riffs and ideas have been taken away or developed, often simplified when I’m working with the other guys in the band. And it’s finally found its final destination through that process. Or I’ve got a bit of a riff idea and then that gets built on by everybody else and myself. And then finally the original riff idea will have disappeared entirely. And it was only what came later that was inspired by the original riff that actually becomes the song.

Karo: You joined The Sisters when you were 25, so it is close to two decades of playing with them, which makes you one of the longest-serving members in the band’s history, apart from Andrew, of course. Beyond the mythology, Andrew Eldritch is a bandleader you have been making music with for a very long time. What have you learned from him about how to lead a band, hold a sound together, or simply make decisions inside a project this singular?

Ben: Yeah, definitely. I think the ethos that I’ve taken away with the songwriting is often when I’m writing for my own projects or other people’s projects that I’ve been asked to write for and I’m composing a guitar melody or a vocal melody, I’ll often think: “could this be simpler? Would this make the cut for a Sisters of Mercy song? Could it be simpler? Could it be more interesting?” It’s often about, you’ve got three notes, but instead of putting them in one place in the bar, you move them to an unexpected place in the bar. And those sort of techniques that hitherto I probably wouldn’t have considered. I’d just think, “hey, let’s do as much as possible. If it sounds cool, let’s just do it.” Rather than “actually, how could this be better by doing less and doing less in a more interesting and unique way? And how can we get more out of this piece of music, not by adding more notes, but by considering how we present those notes and when we present those notes?” That is definitely something that I got from working on The Sisters’ material.

Karo: To close our conversation, I wanted to bring it back to the upcoming tour. I will probably be seeing you in Wrocław on 22 October. What can fans expect from this tour, without revealing too much?

Ben: Well, I guess what I can say is that where we left off on the last tour might be a good barometer or a good directional point to say “it will probably have some of these elements.” Where we were when we finished the last tour, we had a pretty fair split of recorded works and unrecorded works in the set list. Things would come and go, so other new songs would come in, other older songs would come in, and there would be some fluctuation there. The show itself, I think, is very visually unique in terms of the way that light and shapes and stage set are used. I think we have developed a really powerful frontline of the band. I think Kai has brought so much to the band that when we last played in certain places in Europe, Kai wouldn’t have been there. So that’s something that some audiences wouldn’t have witnessed before. Kai’s brought something very special, particularly vocally, to the band that was different from what we were doing before. And so for people witnessing the band for the first time since perhaps 2022, there will be key differences. And I think one of those key differences is what Kai brings to the table. It’s a different vibe, it’s a different feel, it highlights a different part of Sisters history than other iterations of the band have highlighted. I’m not saying any particular iteration of the band is better or worse than any other. It’s just I think people who come to this band have some kind of connection and history with it, and they bring that history with them or that connection that they’ve personally made to the band, and then they present that on stage as part of their performance. That’s certainly what I did when I first came to the band. For some reason, I decided it was more of a metal band than it really was, “Vision Thing” being my main album that I’d known as a kid, and therefore I thought, “oh, this must be really heavy guitars all the time.” Not recognising that for many of the fans, the more important part of The Sisters sound was something that was colder and had more restraint and was more spacious and more cinematic, and it took a while to find that nice balance. So, yeah, I think members and players for The Sisters can sometimes bring what they liked as fans or as followers of the band to the band. Even if they weren’t particularly fans of the band before they came to it, everyone pretty much knew something about the band before they came to it, so they bring that something with them. And I think Kai brings a very special something that maybe previous iterations haven’t brought.

Karo: Apart from The Sisters of Mercy, will the time before the tour be preparation for you, or will you be doing some other shows with other bands and focusing on your own project?

Ben: So in July, I’ve got some festival shows with Ricky Warwick again. There’s the Wacken Festival, which is going to be cool. There’s Firevolt Festival in the UK and a few others. And then I’m going to be working on the Diamond Black album. We are in the mixing stage now, so that’s where we’re at. And just trying to get a sound that everybody feels represents what is important to them individually, I think, and as a band. And yeah, that’s kind of the focus for the next part of the year before September.

Karo: Thank you very much, Ben. That was a lovely chat. I really appreciate your time.

Ben: You’re very welcome. And I think your questions were extremely well thought-out and researched. It was a really fun interview for me to do because you’d put the time in and you clearly are passionate about the things we were talking about. So thank you very much.

About Ben Christo

Ben Christo, born Benjamin David Christodoulou on 22 March 1980 in Bristol, England, is a guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and session musician. He began playing as a child and first drew national attention with the punk-metal band AKO, which he co-founded in 1998 and which released the album “Find Yourself” in 2001 before splitting after a 2005 show at South By South West.

In 2006 Ben Christo joined The Sisters of Mercy as lead guitarist and backing vocalist, having been approached by the band in December 2005. He has toured worldwide with the group and co-written newer songs with Andrew Eldritch and guitarist Dylan Smith, several of which were premiered across the 2019-2020 and 2022 tours. Ben Christo is now one of the band’s longest-serving members alongside Eldritch.

Alongside The Sisters, Christo founded the melodic rock band Night By Night in 2008, releasing the album “NxN” in 2014, and established the dark rock band Diamond Black in 2016, whose debut single appeared in 2017. Diamond Black now works as a three-piece with Christo on lead vocals. As a writer and session player Ben Christo has contributed to Lord of the Lost’s number-two German chart album “Judas” (2021), PIG’s “Risen” (2018), records by Esprit D’Air, and Ricky Warwick’s 2025 album “Blood Ties”; he joined Warwick’s touring band in 2022.

In March 2026 The Sisters of Mercy withdrew from that year’s Brutal Assault festival, moving up the recording schedule for a new studio album. In this interview Ben Christo confirms that a new Diamond Black album, written entirely in sobriety, is in the mixing stage, with festival dates alongside Ricky Warwick set for July and a Sisters of Mercy tour that reaches Wrocław on 22 October.

Bunadox, the Seattle dark synth project led by sound designer and multi-instrumentalist Hans Twite, released the single “The Prism” on June 25, 2026. The Bunadox “The Prism” single is the project’s first new music since its 2023 debut, issued as a digital release through Bandcamp.

The track sets Twite’s synth lead against a baritone guitar and live drums from Will Andrews, with a syncopated rhythm under vocals that begin close and restrained before opening into a higher, controlled line. Bunadox draws on post-punk, dark wave and industrial, and the single is presented in a Dolby Atmos mix.

Bunadox ‘The Prism’: what the single is about

Twite centres the song on the competing self-images a person carries and the pull of who they think they should be. “There are many versions of ourselves, all living inside of us. […] A vision can be a force that drives us forward, but the light that pushes us, is also bent in our will. The choice of what we see, and who we listen to, is ours alone,” he said.

He describes that pull as a trap he has learned to question. “I’ve realized many times that idea can be a trap, and that there are more possibilities for yourself if you open up your mind and unravel your idea of how things should be,” Twite said.

A reintroduction after ‘Fell Into Night’

“The Prism” follows the debut single “Fell Into Night”, released on October 20, 2023. Twite has said the new track opens a series of releases and future multimedia performances built around improvisation, with local musicians, engineers and producers brought in to shape each piece.

About Bunadox

Bunadox is a dark synth project based in Seattle, United States, led by Hans Twite, a sound designer and multi-instrumentalist. Twite played in the experimental groups The Ether Room and Jungle Maps before building a career in audio design for games, film, science channels and NPR production. He works through collaboration, starting from unusual timbres and inviting other players, engineers and producers to follow their instincts.

The project debuted with the single “Fell Into Night” on October 20, 2023. Twite wrote and produced the track and handled synths, guitars, bass and vocals, with Will Andrews co-producing and playing drums. After that release, Bunadox stepped back before returning with “The Prism” on June 25, 2026, again featuring Andrews on drums and presented in a Dolby Atmos mix. Twite has positioned the single as the start of a new run of recordings and improvisation-based live work.

Electronic Corporation and heimelektronik, two German electro and EBM projects, have released a four-track 12-inch EP on Mannequin Records. The split vinyl gathers recordings made under both names at the turn of the 2000s. These tracks were previously sold only inside a limited edition, and this is the first time they are offered on their own.

The release pairs both projects across two sides. The A-side holds the Electronic Corporation tracks “Illuminate” and “We Got Velocity”, first issued in 2000 and 2001. The B-side collects “My Darkest Sounds” and “Nothing But My Beat” from heimelektronik’s “Electronic Lifeforms” EP, first issued in 2002. The four tracks mix electro and EBM.

The record is a 12-inch vinyl in a standard 12-inch disco jacket. The four songs were previously available only inside a limited edition, and the remaining copies are now sold separately for the first time. Mannequin Records issues the 12-inch EP through its Bandcamp store.

How the EP connects to the “Electronic Corporation 1998-2006” compilation

The EP follows a related Mannequin Records vinyl issued on May 9, 2026, “Electronic Corporation 1998-2006“. That ten-track compilation gathers recordings by heimelektronik and MAS 2008, compiled and remastered by Rude 66 from the original sources, with each copy pressed in a different colour blend. The four songs on the new 12-inch sit alongside that compilation as part of the same reissue.

Mannequin Records was founded in Rome in 2008 by Alessandro Adriani and Carlo Cassaro, and is now based in Berlin. The label reissues post-punk, cold wave and industrial recordings from the late 1970s and 1980s, and also releases contemporary electronic work. Its earlier archival electro releases on Side-Line include Voltage Control period 1990-1992 compiled on vinyl and Leroy Se Meurt releases ‘Voué à rouiller’: New electro album on Mannequin Records.

About Electronic Corporation and heimelektronik

heimelektronik, also written H.E.I.M. Elektronik, is an electronic music project from Dortmund, Germany. It was founded in 1996 by Holger Erlenwein and Ive Müller. The pair split in 1999, and Müller has continued under the name as a soloist. MAS 2008 is a separate project by Ive Müller with René Kirchner. Both mix stripped-down electro, minimal electronics and machine-driven body music.

Mannequin Records describes Müller’s roots in the East German underground, where he worked as a teenage mobile DJ before turning to electro and EBM at the turn of the 2000s.

Electronic Corporation is the name Mannequin Records uses for these turn-of-the-2000s recordings by heimelektronik and MAS 2008. heimelektronik’s “Electronic Lifeforms” EP supplied the new release’s B-side. The reissue began with the “Electronic Corporation 1998-2006” compilation on May 9, 2026, and continues with the this heimelektronik collaboration 12-inch EP on June 20, 2026, which returns four further tracks from the era to circulation.

Martyrmachine are an EBM and electro-industrial duo from Łódź, Poland, whose new album “Efficiency Justifies Everything” arrived on 26 June 2026. The nine-track record pairs Jakub M. Kasiński’s electronics and vocals with Szymon Adamiak’s live drums, and turns capitalist discipline, technological alienation and post-industrial Łódź into rhythm. The project grew out of Kasiński’s earlier solo work as Martyr, started in 2018, was renamed Martyrmachine in December 2022, and gained its second member when Adamiak joined in June 2023.

In this interview for Side-Line Magazine, Martyrmachine speak with us about the album’s title and themes, the shift from Martyr to Martyrmachine, what live drums change in a programmed sound, their use of Polish and English lyrics, the Łódź poetry behind several tracks, their reinterpretation of Sodom’s “Nuclear Winter”, and why they treat a concert as physical confrontation rather than a clean playback.

Martyrmachine interview

Karo: “Efficiency Justifies Everything” sounds like a title that could belong equally to a corporate manual, a political slogan, or a dystopian commandment. Where did this phrase come from, and what does it say about the world you wanted to confront on this Martyrmachine album?

Jakub: The title is basically the sum of all the options you mentioned. For many people, its negative tone probably passes them by completely, and they see it as something entirely normal: efficiency above everything. Mainstream media and society in general are primarily interested in economic growth and climbing higher in global rankings, rather than the human-capital cost that all of this entails.

That is largely what the album is about, although it is not a coherent, linear story. It is more a cross-section of phenomena appearing within galloping capitalism from the end of the nineteenth century up to today.

Szymon: You have put together three possible interpretations of our title quite well. In my view, however, it refers most strongly to the “dystopian commandment”. Of course, most of the work on the album rested on Jakub’s shoulders, but I think its final shape was influenced not only by his internal struggles, but also by direct experience of the system we currently live in, as well as our travels in Poland and abroad. I fully agree with Jakub, and if I were to add something from myself, it would be the permanent feeling of the pressure of success propaganda mixed with collective brainwashing in the context of a collapsing, post-industrial city.

Karo: The press description presents this Martyrmachine album as a manifesto against a world ruled by efficiency, control, and technological alienation. How personal is this critique for you? Is it mostly directed at society and systems, or also at the way individuals internalize these demands and begin to discipline themselves?

Jakub: I do not think it is possible to criticise the system without also touching on the question of the individual people who create that system and function within quiet consent. I address this especially in my own lyrics. In some tracks, we used poems written over the past century that deal with similar subjects. My own texts speak precisely about individuals functioning in the realities of the modern world, whether they live passively inside it or try to influence it somehow.

Szymon: For me, this strike against the system has quite a personal meaning. As a person who has been unwillingly pushed into the gears of the capitalist machine, unfortunately from the lower social layers, working on this album was something like a cold shower after a long, exhausting journey. Even though I am able to move within today’s socio-economic reality, it was a kind of salvation for me. I will not go into the subject of victims internalising the violence inflicted on them, but I can say that such references can also be found in our music.

Karo: Martyrmachine began as Jakub’s solo project Martyr in 2018 and later changed shape, name, and sound. Looking back at “CONCRETE” and “Fabryka Żalu”, what did those earlier releases teach you about the language of the project, and what did you know had to change before “Efficiency Justifies Everything”?

Jakub: The most important change was definitely recording live drums, which already happened during the digital release of the “Fabryka Żalu” EP. In that case, however, it was only a refreshed version of an old track that had already existed and been released earlier. With “Efficiency Justifies Everything”, it was different. Here, the tracks were created and shaped alongside the drums, which certainly influenced their final form and made the whole thing sound more coherent. My recording and mixing skills also improved, which made it possible to express the whole concept more effectively through sound.

Szymon: I do not feel competent to answer this question, so I will leave the stage to Jakub.

Karo: The name change from Martyr to Martyrmachine feels important. It suggests not only transformation, but also a collision between suffering, mechanism, sacrifice, and industrial force. What did the new name allow you to express that the original name could not fully contain?

Jakub: In fact, these two entities should be separated with a very thick line. One ended when the other began. They differ from each other drastically in form and content, to such an extent that I think I will stop mentioning “Martyr” at all as the beginning of Martyrmachine: two separate projects, close only in name. These are my very current thoughts, though, so anything may still happen. The whole transformation is actually a reflection of my own internal maturation, from very personal and emotional dark electro to socially engaged industrial music.

Szymon: As above.

Karo: Szymon joined Martyrmachine in 2023, bringing live drums into a form of music often associated with programming, machines, and strict electronic structures. How did this change the physicality of Martyrmachine? Did it make the music more human, more violent, more unpredictable, or perhaps more machine-like in a different way?

Jakub: I think that, in general, human and machine complement each other perfectly. In fact, one cannot exist without the other. Every machine has to be programmed; for now, nothing can come into being without the human factor. Live drums certainly make it possible to balance more effectively between the rawness of electronics and evenly arranged samples, and the humanism and margin of error that add authenticity to the sound, especially during concerts.

Szymon: I will not replace the machine, but I am forced to cooperate with it. That margin of error is exciting on stage, but also technically demanding. The machine does not slow down, it does not wait. In short, it does not forgive. Is it not far more interesting to watch such a struggle on stage than to allow a drum machine to do its job without any unnecessary fuss?

Karo: You describe the Martyrmachine sound as balancing aggression and melancholy, mechanical rhythm and emotional weight. How do you keep that balance from becoming either too polished or too chaotic? Is there a point in the studio where you know a track has found the right amount of dirt, discipline, and feeling?

Jakub: Here, everything mostly comes out in the wash, as the saying goes. The balance finds its own place during the process. If the demo version really leans too far in one direction, then usually it is no longer considered as a candidate for Martyrmachine and ends up as one of many unfinished projects on my hard drive. Occasionally I may even finish such a project, but it still remains in the “for the drawer” category, at least for now.

Szymon: In this area, Jakub makes the decisions, so I give him the whole floor.

Karo: The album includes Polish titles such as “Przy Pracy”, “Styczeń”, “Redukcja” and “Na Barykady!”, alongside English-language titles like “Modern Man / Modern Times” and “Techniques Of Propaganda”. How do you decide which language belongs to a song? Does Polish give you a different emotional or political charge than English?

Jakub: Three of the four Polish-language tracks were created as part of a special repertoire for a concert in the “Zawieje” series, organised by Łukasz Pawlak, our publisher. Because of the location and circumstances, we could not play our usual concert then, so we prepared a special set consisting mostly of completely new tracks. For the lyrical layer, we used texts from an anthology of poetry about Łódź titled “Kwiaty Łódzkie”, which is where the Polish language came from. As a curiosity, I can add that this was our only, and probably last, performance using a guitar.

Szymon: For me, it is a healthy linguistic balance. As a patriot, I would like to express myself mainly in my native language, but of course English can reach the vast majority of listeners.

Karo: The first Martyrmachine single pairs “Reform Yourself” with a reinterpretation of Sodom’s “Nuclear Winter”. Covering a thrash metal classic within an EBM/electro-industrial context is an interesting gesture. What drew you to that song, and how did you approach translating its energy into the Martyrmachine language without simply imitating the original?

Jakub: “Nuclear Winter” is a great song, and the opening riff is simply iconic. One day it was stuck in my head so persistently that I had to play it on something, and because my guitar was broken, I played it on a keyboard. In my teenage years, I was very deeply into thrash and related things, and out of those biggest legendary bands, Sodom was my favourite. In a way, I am still connected to that environment, because in another band I am a member of, we play thrash.

Privately, as I get older, I am more drawn to new-wave black metal, but I gladly return to things from years ago with a large dose of nostalgia. When I sat down to work on the cover, I knew I would definitely have to slow it down a little. 194 bpm is simply too much for our style; it would have become very unclear and the whole thing would have lost its point of impact. I also cut out the middle section of the original to keep the dynamics and leave only the meat. In my opinion, the balance between the metal roots and the electronic interpretation came out exactly right.

Szymon: The decision was made individually by Jakub. I am not a huge fan of thrash metal, but I have a lot of trust in our vocalist when it comes to choosing songs to cover.

Karo: I saw Martyrmachine live at Wrocław Industrial Festival 2024, and what struck me immediately was how physical Martyrmachine felt on stage. The live percussion and self constructed iron instrumentation did not function as decoration, but as part of the body of the performance. How important is this visual and physical dimension for you? Do you see a Martyrmachine concert as a presentation of songs, or rather as a ritual of pressure, noise, movement, and confrontation?

Jakub: I would lean rather toward the second option. I really like creating an elevated and slightly theatrical atmosphere during concerts. The whole thing can even be treated a bit like a performance, although more improvised than directed. We have a skeleton in the form of the setlist, but everything else can differ greatly between two consecutive shows. Physicality and authenticity live are at the core of what we do. After all, it is electronic BODY music, so something very bodily and tangible. When you come to a concert, you want to feel emotions, almost touch them. That is exactly the kind of experience we want to give the audience, and fortunately it comes to us very naturally.

Szymon: I fully agree with Jakub. For me, a concert should be something more than a played sequence of sounds. I also like acting a bit and I feel good with it. I have the impression that the audience usually buys into it, and because of that it allows for a higher level of immersion.

Karo: “Efficiency Justifies Everything” is described as a new chapter and a clear step forward. Once this album is out in the world, where do you imagine Martyrmachine going next? Do you feel drawn toward making the sound harsher, more melodic, more theatrical, more industrial, or is the future of the project something you prefer to discover through friction rather than planning?

Jakub: For me, everything is born more from impulses than from a strictly arranged plan, or even intentions and visions. Future releases will certainly overlap to a large extent with the previous ones, but I am not yet able to say how they will differ. If someone is very curious about new material, we invite them to the concerts. That is where new creations can be heard first.

Szymon: Difficult question. I have no idea what the future will bring. We are certainly managing to make efficient use of various opportunities; who knows how they will shape us?

About Martyrmachine

Martyrmachine are an EBM and electro-industrial duo based in Łódź, Poland. The project began as Martyr, the solo work of Jakub M. Kasiński, started in 2018, and released early material including “CONCRETE” and the “Fabryka Żalu” EP. In December 2022 Kasiński renamed the project Martyrmachine, marking a turn from personal dark electro toward socially engaged industrial music. In June 2023 drummer Szymon Adamiak joined, adding live percussion to a sound built on electronics, samples and self-constructed iron instrumentation.

The duo mix programmed EBM and electro-industrial structures with live drums, Polish and English lyrics, and themes of capitalist discipline, labour and post-industrial Łódź. They performed at Wrocław Industrial Festival in 2024. On 23 January 2026 they issued the single “Reform Yourself”, paired with a cover of Sodom’s “Nuclear Winter”, as a 7″ through Requiem Records. Several Polish-language songs grew out of a set prepared for the “Zawieje” concert series run by their publisher Łukasz Pawlak, using poems from the Łódź anthology “Kwiaty Łódzkie”.

“Efficiency Justifies Everything”, released digitally on 26 June 2026, runs nine tracks: “Przy Pracy”, “Reform Yourself”, “Styczeń”, “Threads”, “Modern Man/Modern Times”, “Redukcja”, “Na Barykady!”, “The Other Cheek” and “Techniques Of Propaganda”. In this interview, Kasiński and Adamiak from Martyrmachine place the album in that timeline, describing it as a record where live drums and programmed structures meet under pressure rather than resolve into comfort.

BlazerJacket, the Ukrainian cyberpunk and industrial project of Denis Cherryman and Hybri.Mod, released the single “Cyberpunk” on June 19, 2026. The BlazerJacket “Cyberpunk” single is a digital release, available on Bandcamp and streaming platforms, and arrives with an official AMV. Denis Cherryman and Hybri.Mod composed and mixed the track, Hybri.Mod mastered it, and Cherryman created the cover artwork.

The track pairs heavy guitars with dark electronic pressure and glitch textures, continuing the heavier direction the project has pushed through its recent releases. Its subject is the gap between the cyberpunk future once imagined in fiction and the connected, algorithm-driven present.

BlazerJacket describe the song as a reflection on that shift rather than a warning. “This song was born from a reflection on how the cyberpunk future we dreamed about has quietly become reality. AI, algorithms, endless connectivity, and digital lives are now part of everyday life, yet many people still search for meaning and purpose,” the project stated.

BlazerJacket ‘Cyberpunk’ AMV: an AI dystopia on screen

The single’s official video, credited as BlazerJacket – Cyberpunk (feat. Anna Turing), sets the track to an animated dystopia of unstable neural links, surveillance drones and corrupted signals. The band describe it as a music video “from a broken future where the neural link is unstable, the simulation is active, and the system is already falling apart.”

“Cyberpunk” follows the 2025 single “Overcharged” and continues a run of releases that has moved the project from synth-driven cyberpunk toward a guitar-heavy, industrial register.

About BlazerJacket

BlazerJacket is a project created in Ukraine by Denis Cherryman, also of Dirty Bird 13 and The Cherry Men, with Hybri.Mod. The project draws on cyberpunk, retrowave, sci-fi and the cult action films of the 1980s and 1990s, building conceptual releases around a near-future world. It debuted with the EP “The First” in 2020 and issued a series of singles before the EPs “The Second” and “Terrorstate” in 2023.

The duo have said the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 marked their sound, turning sirens, blackouts and wartime reality into darker, sharper material. BlazerJacket have shared stages with Dance with the Dead, Magic Sword, Jeremiah Kane, Cygnosic and SynthAttack, and hold a residency on the Comic Con Ukraine music stage. After the 2026 rework “Myelin Void (Rebuilt)”, “Cyberpunk” extends the project’s turn toward heavier guitars while keeping its cyberpunk concept at the centre.

Bleu Reine’s “Cavalier Seul” is the newest single from the Paris dream pop project of singer and producer Léa Lotz, released on June 30, 2026 through Géographie. It is her first release for the French independent label and the first track from a second album set for January 2027.

Léa Lotz mixes shoegaze, dream pop and dark folk, layering hazy synths under a clear vocal line. She wrote “Cavalier Seul” after returning from a European tour. Géographie describes the track as “an ambiguous fantasy of freedom and loneliness in the form of a dreampop/shoegaze ballad bathed in hazy synths.” The single is available to stream and on Bandcamp through the label.

Bleu Reine ‘Cavalier Seul’ single and second album

The Bleu Reine “Cavalier Seul” single opens a new chapter after her 2023 debut and the move to Géographie. It is the first track drawn from her second album, which the label has dated to January 2027. The video for “Cavalier Seul” was released through the Géographie channel on the same day as the single.

About Bleu Reine

Bleu Reine is the solo project of Léa Lotz, a singer and producer based in Paris, France. She has been active in the DIY alternative scene since 2019, mixing nostalgic dream rock and layered synth pop. As a solo live performer she has supported US Girls, They Are Gutting a Body of Water, Cinder Well and Jozef van Wissem.

Her debut album “La Saison fantôme” appeared on December 1, 2023 through Sanit Mils Records, followed by a tour across Europe. She then signed to Géographie, the French independent label whose roster includes Marble Arch, Dog Park, Good Morning TV, SCHØØL and Bad Pelicans. The Bleu Reine “Cavalier Seul” single, out June 30, 2026, is her first for the label and the first track from her second album, due in January 2027.

Urban Spree was the right place for this night. Not just because it is a good venue for dark electronic music, although it obviously is, but because the whole area already feels half-staged before anything starts. RAW-Gelände has its own atmosphere: brick walls, graffiti, dust, metal, warm concrete, people moving between bars and club doors as if the evening has already begun before you have even gone inside.

For the Berlin release celebration of Front 242’s “Black Out”, with AD:keY playing live and Machineries Of Joy involved, the venue did not feel like a neutral location. It felt like it belonged to the event.

There was a small but lovely touch at the entrance. Early guests were given the new Alfa Matrix sampler, a 19-track compilation with Alien Vampires, Krystal System, Lovelorn Dolls, Digital Factor, Elektrostaub, First Aid 4 Souls and others. A CD at the door might sound like a minor detail, but in a scene like this it matters. It is physical. A little stubborn, even. It says: take this home, keep it somewhere, remember that music is not only a link, a playlist, or something that disappears from your feed tomorrow.

AD:keY live

When AD:keY came on, the room did not need a long introduction. Their language is direct by design: disciplined sequences, commands, economy, repetition sharpened until it becomes physical rather than merely mechanical. But what makes AD:keY work so well is that they do not treat EBM as a museum object or a costume kept safely behind glass. They know the tradition, but they play it with circulation, appetite and present-tense force.

The set had all the necessary strictness: the pulse, the forward push, the clipped energy, the body logic of classic EBM. Yet it never felt like imitation. There were no frozen poses, no dead reenactment of an older scene, no attempt to prove authenticity by simply sounding harder than everyone else. AD:keY understand that EBM is not only a sound vocabulary. It is also timing, attitude, sweat, discipline and the ability to make a simple command feel alive again.

That distinction matters. The best EBM does not become powerful because it is complicated. It becomes powerful because it knows exactly what to remove, what to repeat, where to strike and how to make the audience answer with the body before the mind has time to negotiate.

René gives the songs their structure. He holds the voltage together, keeps the grid tight, keeps the machinery moving. Andrea does something different. Calling her simply “the singer” feels inadequate, because live she is doing much more than delivering vocals. She works with the beat physically. She pushes into it, pulls away from it, smiles at it, challenges the audience with it. At times it felt like she was asking the room: are you actually here, or are you only watching?

That was one of the reasons the set worked so well. It had life in it. Not just volume, not just force, but life. Nothing felt preserved or over-rehearsed into stiffness. AD:keY played hard, but there was humour in it too, and warmth. Those are easy qualities to underestimate in this kind of music, but without them EBM can quickly become parody. Here, the songs hit because they are built to hit, but also because the two people on stage seemed genuinely present inside them.

When Andrea jumped into the crowd, it did not feel like a planned “frontwoman moment”. It felt like the obvious next move. The gap between stage and floor had already been getting smaller throughout the set. By that point, the room had almost pulled her in. That is what I keep enjoying about AD:keY live. They put the body back into electronic body music, but they also put some heart into it. I have seen them a few times now, and the impression has been consistent: they want to be in the room with people, not above them. The sound is muscular, the delivery is direct, the beats do their job, but the warmth is not decorative. It is part of the energy.

And it was fun. Not “fun” as a lazy word in a review, but actually fun. Sweaty, direct, unpretentious fun. People moved because the music made standing still seem slightly ridiculous. You could see recognition passing through the crowd, not only recognition of songs, but of old habits and reflexes, the kind stored somewhere in the body before the brain has time to explain them.

Front 242’s ‘Black Out’ on the floor

After the live set, the night moved further into the Machineries Of Joy and the link with Front 242’s “Black Out” became clearer. Tracks from the release came into the room during the afterparty: “W.Y.H.I.W.Y.G.”, “Quite Unusual”, “MasterHit”, “Welcome to Paradise”. In the wrong setting, those tracks could easily become heritage objects, brought out for polite appreciation. Here they were not treated like relics. They were used. That makes a difference.

“Black Out”, released by Alfa Matrix on 19 June 2026, documents Front 242’s final live chapter, recorded at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels during the farewell shows in January 2025. It is impossible to write that sentence without feeling some weight behind it. Front 242 are not just a name to drop in EBM. They helped define the grammar: sequenced force, voice as command, abrasion with groove, discipline that somehow still creates release.

But the album does not feel like something sealed and finished. It still has too much physical charge. The songs still work as machinery, not as archive material. “W.Y.H.I.W.Y.G.” does not need an introduction. “Quite Unusual” does not need explaining. “Welcome to Paradise” still has that strange poisoned theatricality, somewhere between warning, seduction and control mechanism.

Hearing those tracks at Urban Spree gave the night another layer, but not a sentimental one. Front 242’s live history may have closed, but the language they helped create is clearly still moving. It moves through labels like Alfa Matrix, through DJs who know the difference between history and decoration, through younger dancers discovering that pressure for the first time, and through older dancers whose bodies react before they have time to think about it.

What made the evening work was that it did not overstate itself. The sampler at the door, AD:keY’s generous and physical performance, the later Machineries Of Joy mood, the Front 242 tracks cutting through the floor after midnight – it all connected without anyone needing to explain it too much. That was the strength of the night. It allowed EBM to be what it is when it is at its best: intelligent but not cold, historical but still alive, severe but not joyless, physical without being stupid. This music does not belong under glass. It belongs in rooms where people answer it. By the time the Front 242 tracks hit the floor, nobody needed a lecture on why they mattered. The room already knew.

About Front 242 ‘Black Out’ and AD:keY

Front 242 are the Belgian group, formed in 1981, who helped define electronic body music with releases such as “Geography”, “Official Version”, “Front by Front” and “Tyranny (For You)”. “Black Out” is their final live album, recorded at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels during their January 2025 farewell shows and issued by Alfa Matrix on 19 June 2026 across multiple formats.

AD:keY are the EBM duo of René and Andrea, also on Alfa Matrix, whose recent releases include the single “Der Böse Gott”. Their live set anchored this Berlin release celebration, held at Urban Spree with DJ support around the Machineries Of Joy nights, and tied the evening to the catalogue Front 242 helped make possible.

Words and photos by Karo Kratochwil.

Belgian dark electro project Mildreda, the work of Jan Dewulf, release the single “Virtual Goddess” on July 1, 2026 via Dependent. Written and produced by Dewulf, the Mildreda “Virtual Goddess” single features guest vocals by Johan Van Roy of Suicide Commando, and is the second preview of Mildreda’s double album “Realities”, set for August 28, 2026.

The track pairs Dewulf’s hard electronics with Van Roy’s vocals, and arrives during Suicide Commando’s 40th anniversary year. Van Roy founded Suicide Commando in 1986, and the project remains one of the defining names in electro-industrial and EBM four decades on.

Mildreda and Suicide Commando on ‘Virtual Goddess’

“Virtual Goddess” is track 16 on “Realities”, an 18-track double album issued by Dependent on CD and in digital form. The record follows the 2026 single “End of the Line” and also carries a guest turn from Constantin “Breñal” Warter of Calva Y Nada on “Rückwärts”. Dewulf, who holds a degree in philosophy, centres the album on the question of reality: where the 2023 album “Blue-Devilled” drew on Jean-Paul Sartre, “Realities” turns to Albert Camus.

Van Roy and Dewulf are long-standing names in Belgian dark electronics, and “Virtual Goddess” places the two side by side for the first time on a Mildreda release. The single is available digitally; the parent album can be ordered through Dependent and Bandcamp.

About Mildreda

Mildreda is the dark electro project of Belgian musician Jan Dewulf, who also records as Diskonnekted. Dewulf started the project in the 1990s as an early outlet for hard, melodic electronics before setting it aside, then revived the name in the 2010s through German label Dependent. The project pairs cold, club-oriented EBM rhythms with melody and atmosphere.

Recent releases include the 2023 album “Blue-Devilled”, issued with the video “Devil’s Gaze”. The double album “Realities” continues that run and brings in guest vocalists from across the scene, among them Suicide Commando’s Johan Van Roy.

Suicide Commando, the long-running project of Johan Van Roy, marks 40 years in 2026; Side-Line recently covered the anniversary collection “Collective Suicide”. “Virtual Goddess” connects the two Belgian acts on the road to the August album.

Meanwhile, it has been nearly forty years since Philipp Münch founded The Rorschach Garden. More than thirty albums later, and with the assistance of Barbara Teichner, this German project hardly needs any introduction. Yet, it continues to surprise listeners with new and intriguing work.

With “Trust The Process”, Münch attempts to build a bridge between nostalgic sounds reminiscent of the 1980s and more contemporary, forward-looking sonic landscapes. The Rorschach Garden has always embraced a progressive spirit and a distinctive sense of artistic freedom. Situated somewhere between Electro-Wave and Minimal-Pop, this new album is awash with delightful vintage synthesizer textures. Subtle, crystalline sounds have been carefully woven into the arrangements, while deep bass lines add an extra layer of nostalgia. At times, the music even brings to mind the spirit of Fad Gadget. Dark and mysterious, yet also astral and dreamlike, “Trust The Process” once again succeeds in delivering unexpected twists and captivating atmospheres. Philipp Münch’s characteristic vocals further enhance the songs, lending them an accessible Pop sensibility without diminishing their experimental edge.

The Rorschach Garden remains a cornerstone of the broad landscape of idiosyncratic, minimalist Electro-Pop. (Rating:8).

Listen to “Don’t Hold Back”:

https://ant-zen.bandcamp.com/track/dont-hold-back

j:dead, the UK industrial and gothic-rock project of Jay Taylor, releases the single “Draws My Blood” on July 3, 2026 through Infacted Recordings. The j:dead “Draws My Blood” single is the eighth release in a monthly single campaign that Taylor launched in December 2025.

The track leans further into gothic and industrial rock, built on heavy guitars, dark atmospheres and introspective lyrics about the cost of letting other people take pieces of who you are.

j:dead’s 2026 single series and ‘Draws My Blood’

Taylor opened the year-long run in December 2025 with “Pressure”, the first of twelve planned monthly singles. The campaign continued through 2026 with releases including “Who Knows” and “Feeling Alone”. “Keep Walking” followed in June 2026 as the seventh single, and “Draws My Blood” arrives on July 3, 2026 as the eighth. Each single has been issued through Infacted Recordings.

About j:dead

j:dead is the solo project of UK musician Jay Taylor, launched in late 2019 with the single “Haunt”. Taylor signed to the German label Infacted Recordings soon after and has remained with it since. Alongside j:dead, he has worked as a live drummer for scene acts including Tactical Sekt and Tyske Ludder, and his live band has featured Matt Dunne on guitar, Hilger Tintel on bass and Andreas Schmitz on drums.

The project mixes industrial, gothic, electronic and modern-metal elements. After the 2022 EP “Vision of Time”, Taylor began a year-long monthly single campaign in December 2025 with “Pressure”, releasing a new track each month through 2026. “Draws My Blood”, out July 3, 2026, is the eighth single in that series.

The Wolfgang Press, the London post-punk group, will release their new album “Asylum Variations” on September 25, 2026 through Downwards Records, on vinyl, CD and digital. The Wolfgang Press “Asylum Variations” set is led by the single “Speakers Don’t Speak”, issued with an official video, and follows the 2024 reunion album “A 2nd Shape”.

Recorded at Metway Studio in Brighton, the album reunites Michael Allen on vocals and bass, Andrew Gray on guitar and Stephen Gray on synthesisers and electronics. The band tracked the songs directly to ADAT before reworking them in the studio.

The opening track “Speakers Don’t Speak” moves on a propulsive, repetitive beat, processed guitars and analogue synths.

‘Asylum Variations’: tracklist and recording

The album collects nine tracks: “Speakers Don’t Speak”, “Blood On The Leaves”, “Lizard”, “Sail By”, “Bind Us”, “He Who Makes Rivers”, “The Art Of Writing”, “Embrace The Light” and “Man Made Heaven”. On the closing “Man Made Heaven”, Allen is joined by his daughters for a repeated coda. Chris Bigg created the album artwork. Pre-orders are open through Boomkat.

Allen traces the album’s title to Edward Elgar’s “Enigma Variations” and to a thread he heard running through the songs: “The title is taken directly from Elgar’s Enigma Variations, where each piece is a portrait of a friend, family member and or acquaintance and supposedly has a hidden melody. With our album I felt that lyrically there was a thread that ran through the whole piece. The world has become increasingly unstable, both locally and globally, and each track is a visceral response to how I and others have been impacted by this change and how we are navigating through it.”

The Wolfgang Press tour dates

The band confirmed three live shows around the release, with the London date billed as a Real Sounds event:

• 10 October 2026 – Brighton, UK – Green Door Store
• 24 October 2026 – Łódź, Poland – Soundedit Festival
• 30 January 2027 – London, UK – 100 Club

About The Wolfgang Press

The Wolfgang Press formed in London in 1983, around Michael Allen, Mark Cox and Andrew Gray. The members came out of the post-punk groups Rema-Rema and Mass; Rema-Rema’s 1980 EP “Wheel In The Roses” was among the first records to carry the 4AD logo. Signed to 4AD, the band released “The Burden Of Mules” in 1983, “Standing Up Straight” in 1986, “Bird Wood Cage” in 1988, “Queer” in 1991 and “Funky Little Demons” in 1995.

The 1992 US single “A Girl Like You”, from “Queer”, reached number two on the US Billboard Modern Rock chart and was later recorded by Tom Jones. After “Funky Little Demons”, the band stopped releasing new music for nearly three decades. Michael Allen and Andrew Gray reconvened for “A 2nd Shape”, issued by Downwards Records on September 27, 2024, with Andrew’s brother Stephen Gray replacing Cox. “Asylum Variations”, due September 25, 2026, is their second album since reforming.

Xenturion Prime, the Swedish-Norwegian powersynth trio, released the digital single “Halcyon” on June 27, 2026 through Progress Productions. The one-track single arrives as the band works toward its fifth studio album, following the 2025 single “Leviathan Alpha” and the February 2026 single “The Hidden Path”.

The trio build their sound, which they call powersynth, from electronic industrial, EBM and synthpop, layered with cinematic orchestral textures and club-oriented electronics. Bjørn Marius Borg, Hans-Olof Mattsson and Erlend Eilertsen pair machine rhythms and synth melodies with lead vocals.

Xenturion Prime ‘Halcyon’: a single ahead of the fifth album

“Halcyon” is a digital single, available on Bandcamp through Progress Productions, the label Xenturion Prime have released through since their 2013 debut EP “Rise”. The single’s accompanying note describes “Halcyon” as “an epic new track” and calls the group “one of the strongest and best acts within the electronic/epic synth genre”.

The track continues a run of singles that began with “Leviathan Alpha”, released in February 2025 as the first single from the upcoming album, and “The Hidden Path”, released on February 6, 2026. The forthcoming record will be the band’s fifth studio album, after “Mecha Rising” (2014), “Humanity Plus” (2017), “Signals From The Abyss” (2021) and “Prisma” (2022).

About Xenturion Prime

Xenturion Prime formed in 2013, when Bjørn Marius Borg and Hans-Olof Mattsson continued together after the Swedish electropop act Code 64. The project, based in Vestfold, Norway, debuted at the ElektroStat festival in Oslo in October 2013 and issued its first EP, “Rise”, on December 20, 2013 through Progress Productions. The debut album “Mecha Rising” followed in 2014.

Cathrine Räisänen Andersen joined in 2017, expanding the duo to a trio for the second album “Humanity Plus”, released that year on Progress Productions. The band issued “Signals From The Abyss” on April 30, 2021, then “Prisma” on June 10, 2022, followed by the remix album “Prisma Refracted” in 2024, with reworkings by Valhall, Lights A.M. and Vanguard. Erlend Eilertsen, of Essence Of Mind, joined in 2024, and the current lineup is Borg, Mattsson and Eilertsen.

The band described its approach to genre in a 2018 Side-Line interview, stating they are “more interested in evolving as a band than to stay ‘pure'”. “Halcyon”, released on June 27, 2026, is the latest single from Xenturion Prime as the trio works toward its fifth studio album.

Italian singer-songwriter Gipsy Fiorucci released the video for “Dea Madre Terra (Alkemic Mantra)” on June 29, 2026, premiering it on her YouTube channel. The track first appeared as a digital single on June 24, 2026. Gipsy Fiorucci calls her style “Pop Alkemico”, and “Dea Madre Terra” is built around mantra-style vocals and a tuned monochord rather than conventional song structure.

Gipsy Fiorucci’s ‘Dea Madre Terra’ video and single

The artist composed the track under her birth name, Marta Fiorucci, and produced it with Renato Droghetti, who recorded, mixed and mastered the single at SanLucaSound in Bologna. Its central instrument is what Fiorucci calls the “Alkam”, a 36-string Ark-type harmonic monochord tuned to 110 Hz, which she also uses in concerts and in individual and group sound sessions. By the artist’s choice, the single is available on Bandcamp only.

The video for “Dea Madre Terra” was directed by filmmaker and cinematographer Riccardo Sarti and shot at two locations in northern Italy: the Pietra di Bismantova rock formation in the province of Reggio Emilia and the Bosco Sacro di Novi in the province of Modena. Fiorucci designed the costumes.

Fiorucci presents the single as part of a wider project built on what she describes as the therapeutic use of sound and vibration. “In a society increasingly prone to violence, aggression, and everything that keeps people in a state of fear, stress, and daily worries, it is crucial to spread the evolutionary, spiritual, and therapeutic power of sound and vibrations […]”, she stated. “Dea Madre Terra (Alkemic Mantra)” precedes a new album scheduled for autumn 2026.

About Gipsy Fiorucci

Gipsy Fiorucci, born Marta Fiorucci, is a singer-songwriter from Città di Castello, in the province of Perugia, Italy. She studied singing privately from a young age and, from 2001 to 2006, attended the Accademia Atelièr Della Voce in Florence, focusing on diction, phonetics and vocal timbre.

She describes herself as an evolutionary singer-songwriter and sound therapist, and is the creator of the self-defined “Pop Alkemico” genre and a method she calls Melumalkemica. Her work centers on the “Alkam”, a 36-string Ark-type harmonic monochord tuned to 110 Hz, which she plays in concerts and in individual and group sound sessions. Through the project “Fiamma Dell’Unicità”, she has presented this work in schools, theatres and cultural centres.

Fiorucci released the album “Protagonista Del Finale” in 2019 and has issued a series of singles and video clips since. Recent appearances include a first-place award at the Corti da Mare International Short Film Festival and a guest slot at “Voci d’Europa – Art against Bullying” in Rome, held at Spazio Europa. “Dea Madre Terra (Alkemic Mantra)” precedes her new album, scheduled for autumn 2026.

Prometheus Flame, the Greek dark electro act, released their second album “Children Of A Lesser God” on May 29, 2026 through Digital World Audio (DWA). The Prometheus Flame “Children Of A Lesser God” album follows the 2019 debut “Karma Reloaded” and arrives on digital and a limited CD edition.

The duo mix dark electro, electropop and futurepop, setting gothic-tinged vocals against synth leads and club rhythms. George Sofianos writes and sings, while Nick Von Karma handles programming and keyboards.

Inside Prometheus Flame’s ‘Children Of A Lesser God’

The album runs eleven tracks: “Prelude”, “Prometheus Flame”, “Angels Dance”, “Faded Dreams”, “March On Blaze”, “Restless Days”, “Elisei”, “Pandora Was Born”, “Red Horizons”, “This Is Our Time” and “The Prepared Land”. George Sofianos wrote and composed the songs, Dimitris Douvras mixed and mastered the record, and Vlad McNeally of Kallisti:Design designed the artwork.

The lead single “March On Blaze” appeared on November 14, 2025, ahead of the album. DWA issued “Children Of A Lesser God” on digital and on a limited first CD pressing of 200 copies, a gatefold digipak with an eight-page lyric booklet.

The band describes its writing as a search for meaning rather than entertainment, stating: “Sometimes music is the best means to express a deeper reality inside us and make a contemplation about the real nature of the world we are living.”

About Prometheus Flame

Prometheus Flame formed in Athens, Greece, in 2017, built around George Sofianos on vocals and songwriting and Nick Von Karma on programming and keyboards. The act signed to the Japan-based label Digital World Audio and released its debut album “Karma Reloaded” in 2019, issued on digital and a limited CD digipak.

A run of singles followed, including “Magic Spell(s)” in 2020. The band returned with “March On Blaze” on November 14, 2025, the first track from the new record. “Children Of A Lesser God”, released on May 29, 2026, is the group’s second album for Digital World Audio.

Dream in castles, an electronic project, self-released the single “synesthesia” on June 27, 2026. The Dream in castles “synesthesia” single runs three minutes and mixes dark electronic and dark techno with a nocturnal, cinematic night-drive feel.

Dream in castles’ ‘synesthesia’ single

Dream in castles build the track around machine rhythms and synth textures; the release visual describes it as a “Dark Techno Night Drive”. The single runs three minutes and is streaming on Spotify and on YouTube.

About Dream in castles

Dream in castles is an electronic project that mixes dark electronic, dark techno and synthwave-adjacent styles. The project self-releases its music, with “synesthesia” issued on June 27, 2026 as a single on Spotify and YouTube. Wider biographical detail on the project is not publicly documented. “synesthesia”, a three-minute track with a cinematic night-drive theme, is the project’s latest release.

Själens Dialektik, the Stockholm post-punk, coldwave and electro project, released the double single “Money and the Power / Sex Machines” through Autodisk Records on June 29, 2026. The Själens Dialektik “Money and the Power” release pairs two tracks and features Bakterien, Two Times and Mélia Meijer.

Själens Dialektik mix machine-driven rhythms, dub-wired bass and coldwave synths with spoken and sung vocals. “Money and the Power” runs 4:03 and “Sex Machines” 4:31. Both tracks are streaming on Spotify.

Själens Dialektik’s ‘Money and the Power / Sex Machines’ single

The two-track single comes out on Autodisk Records, the label connected to the project. It pairs “Money and the Power” with “Sex Machines” and brings in three guests: Bakterien, Two Times and Mélia Meijer. The companion track “Sex Machines” is also on Spotify.

About Själens Dialektik

Själens Dialektik is a Stockholm-based project whose name translates from Swedish as “the dialectic of the soul”. The project mixes post-punk, coldwave and electro with dub-influenced rhythms and works with a rotating set of collaborators. Its Spotify catalogue includes the tracks “Ketwang Money” and “The Moments Are Lost…Jimmie”, alongside a remix of “(Get a) Move On”. “Money and the Power / Sex Machines”, released on June 29, 2026 through Autodisk Records with Bakterien, Two Times and Mélia Meijer, is the project’s latest single.