Electronics For You From September 2016

Preoccupations is a Canadian post-punk band from Calgary, Alberta, formed in 2012 under the name Viet Cong. The band consists of Matt Flegel (vocals, bass), Scott Munro (guitar, synth), Daniel Christiansen (guitar) and Mike Wallace (drums). The group's musical style has been described as "labyrinthine post-punk".

Back in September, Night Verses issued a press release for the new album saying , "The new album will put an emphasis on a presenting a fuller, darker ambiance than our previous releases, with more effects, live electronics, experimentation and an overall massive sound" … and boy did they deliver. This was the first indications of the next steps for Night Verses. So with a band like Night Verses that has proven their talents between "Out of the Sky" and "Lift your Existence," you know that their creativity had no room for repetition or directional ambiguity…

Surviving a shaky decade that produced a couple decent albums and few identity crises, Korn bring it back to basics on their 12th full-length, The Serenity of Suffering. It's both a reminder that Korn are the masters of this particular universe and also fiercely dedicated to its fans. Inasmuch as the Korn faithful are capable of fuzzy feelings, Serenity delivers goose bumps for those who have stuck with the band since the '90s. Diehards will notice that Jonathan Davis and the gang have brought things back to the Issues/Untouchables era – especially on "Take Me" and "Everything Falls Apart" – when Korn perfected the combination of nu-metal brutality, desperate vulnerability, and spook show creepiness (in fact, the Issues doll – now wrapped in stitched-up skin with exposed ribs – makes a prominent appearance on Serenity's album art). Without pandering to career-peak nostalgia, Korn deftly execute all the hallmarks that have come to define their sound.

The Chicago Plan - The Chicago Plan (2016) {Clean Feed ‎CF396CD}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 298 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 131 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 47 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2016 Clean Feed ‎| CF396CD
Jazz / Contemporary Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Trombone / Saxophone

More than 10 years of partnership between American trombonist, composer Steve Swell and German tenor saxophonist, bass clarinetist and composer Gebhard Ullmann after their successful first collaboration, The Ullmann/Swell Quartet featuring bassist Hill Greene and drum legend Barry Altschul continues now with a new version of the quartet featuring renowned Chicagoans, Michael Zerang, drums, percussion and Fred Lonberg-Holm, cello. This ensemble is appropriately named The Chicago Plan. The plan of course is to integrate the leaders’ fresh written material to inspire and be in the service of groundbreaking areas of improvisation that include world rhythms, universal textures and other worldly sound experiences.

It’s very easy to come away from listening to a lot of technical metal feeling a little empty. Beneath the showmanship and undeniable talent, the genre is often guilty of failing to invoke any real feeling: when surgical precision takes centre stage a certain energy almost invariably paves the way. Animals as Leaders are no exceptions to this – where their 3 previous full-lengths have all in their own right been extremely impressive, stellar pieces of work, they are not without their shortcomings: a truly inventive and well-realised debut was somewhat clouded by muddy production and slightly blunted guitar tones, Weightless was at times cold, and is massively top-heavy in this reviewer’s opinion, and The Joy of Motion percussion was a little overpowered and detracted from a lot of the new-found warmth the tracks brought…

The constant and destructive waves of noise make this decisively a Merzbow record, but its cosmic mood and rhythms prove that Sun Ra lives in its DNA.