Meeting somewhere between post-punk and techno, electronic body music (EBM) emerged in early 1980s Europe as a darker, sweatier alternative to the more melodic synth music of the time. Made up of militant chants and muscular rhythms perforated with ominous clangs, the genre mostly thrived in goth bars and clubs, except for the odd chart entry from key players such as Front 242. Even 40 years on, EBM still lurks on the fringes of dance music.
Irish producer Autumns is one name championing the industrial club sound through his stormy yet pumping hardware tracks and raucous live sets, which are all flailing limbs and swishing hair behind a tangle of wires. Since starting the project in 2013, he has put out a formidable 88 releases, including 13 albums; Basic Face is his latest.
The bulk of the record follows the classic EBM formula: chugging loops strewn with sinister vocals and metallic sounds; in fact, White Walls sounds like an instrumental hit by scene legends Nitzer Ebb. The rhythms are beefy and catchy, elevated further by surprising elements such as the mutant-disco-style cowbells and angular post-punk riffs in A Grand Time to Witness Culture, or the sirens in Your Favourite Cowboy. Repetitive rather than progressive, the tracks are seemingly made for DJs and live sets, rather than home listening, which is strange given the cassette release. But this doesn’t feel like a fault of Autumns: they are intense and unrelenting, as any good EBM track should be.
Only twice do we hear something less functional, and these moments work as good scene-setters, though not stand-alone tracks. On the intro No Gimmicks No Gigs, a disjointed vocal sample is interspersed with thrashes and fizzes that sound straight out of a forge. Your Tattoo is Shite, placed about halfway through the album, is a blistering, glitching whir of feedback – a disorienting experience, but one that only amplifies the punchy material around it.
Also out this month
Newport-based multi-instrumentalist and producer Memotone has built a reputation among DIY circles for his quietly cinematic electro-acoustic compositions. His latest album Smallest Things (released on World of Echo) is another lovely, evocative listen, full of sparse arrangements that are sometimes soaring, sometimes jittery.
On Sound Bath (Dark Entries), Coatshek presents a dreamy, dimly lit collection of tracks inspired by an imaginary queer bath house. Expect ambient techno pitched low and slow – specifically at 107bpm, which the San Francisco producer deems the “optimal speed for sauna sex”. With every warm pad or deep, reverb-cloaked whisper, the record slowly builds tension, climaxing in the blissed-out 10-minute closer Eternal Lovers.
Gush (Nettwerk), the latest record from Los Angles-based composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, is similarly intimate: an exploration of those warm, heady feelings that come with incipient romance, when, in her words, “the senses melt together”. Channelled through hushed vocals and bubbling electronica, it is suitably woozy: sensual and sometimes ecstatic.
