„Beta Frontiers is the soundtrack to a near-future physical video game where your shoes are hovercrafts and you actually make it to all the parties in one night. When you get there, everyone is like, “Hey Mike!!”, as beamy smiles melt into your now-hologrammed dancing body.” (Anamai, ambient folk artist, label mate)

Canadian artist Michael Butler makes 80s-like electronic pop under name of BETA FRONTIERS

So Cold

digital single on Buzz Records (Can)

Strange 80s style synth-pop, or a goth mix of Depeche Mode and New Order, or like the Hungarian synth-pop wonder, Új Látásmód Fúzió. Previous records were released by such little cult labels as Night-People, Dark Entries and Crash Symbols

Some Ember – s/t album on Dream Recordnings

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Boyracer and Wedding Present are written than their forebears. I don’t know, but it’s a good jangly noisy fuzzy indie pop song

Gold-Bears – „Dalliance” album on Slumberland Records (US)

 “Our knives are never dull / our moon is always full”

is the motto of the Swede minimal synth-pop singer/songwriter.

Molly Nilsson about Blue Dollar in Buenos Aires

from the EP „Sólo Paraíso”. It will be released in July by Dark Skies Association

OOIOO is a band of Yoshimi P-We (drummer of noise punk, chaos fun band UFO or Die, founding member of avant-garde noise rock Boredoms). It was allegedly founded as a fake band for a magazine photo shoot in 1995. The joke has turned special cosmic tribal music, now in Japanese gamelan style

„Gamel” LP, CD on Thrill Jockey

Lust For Youth started as the Swedish Hannes Norrvide’s cold wave synth-pop project.  It has became a trio. Their music is like the eraly Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, New Order or Desireless (do you remember Voyage, voyage?). This “record deals with the rootless, sometimes almost inhuman, nature of traveling and touring. Hotel rooms and strangers’ beds, drugs and clubs, and the impossibility of living a regular life.”

„International” LP, CD on Sacred Bones. 3rd track is a remix.

Minneapolis 1982. Information Society was founded in a college dorm room. During the years it became a musical collective and the part of the mainstream (with numerous top hits, for example). InSoc disbanded in 1997, but has reunited in 2006. Their first EP was released in 1983. Only 100 copies were printed. Reissue with an unreleased bonus track, which is their first recorded track ever.
New Wave Disco like Gary Numan or New Order.

Mannequin Records (Germany)

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Thou. Grunge based sludge from the mud of Louisana. This EP was recorded at same time than previous album Heathen. The 5th track „I hate myself, and I want to die” is a Nirvana cover.

Sacrifice EP on Robotic Empire (US)

Aussie New Wave Punk. A mix of Joy Division, Devo, Gary Newman spiced with a little Pet Shop Boys by Mikey Young’s umpteenth band Total Control. It has started as a synth-punk duo with the drummer of UV Race, but „bands with drum machines and three synths are just not as much fun to watch as bands with drummers and guitars. We realized it couldn’t be good live, so we tried to adapt the songs to work in a rock-and-roll band.”

„Typical System” album on Iron Lung Records (US) in June. Distros: La Vida Es Un Mus (UK), Inertia (AUS)

Other Mikey Young’s bands: Eddie Current Suppression Ring (garage rock), Ooga Boogas (new wave), Lace Curtain (electro disco)

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„I started in September 2009. I had been in London during the Summer, and I was so miserable about being back home. I was just sitting in my room and thinking that I needed a hobby for the long Estonian winter. So I made a track called Lovecool.” Estonian art historian and synth pop artist Maria Minerva has sketched a soulful self-portrait of her own inner ecosystem of loves and labors lost to her new album. She has cited Brian Eno, Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire as her influences.

„Histrionic” album on Not Not Fun

Fire Records is a British independent record label. In his roster: Blank Realm, Guided By Voices, Half Japanese, Las Kellies, Mission of Burma, Pere Ubu, Bardo Pond, Jad Fair. And some name from the past: Pulp, Chuck Prophet, Television Personalities, Lemonheads, Spaceman 3, Gun Club, Urge Overkill, Neutral Milk Hotel, Teenage Fanclub, Adverts. Fire throws a birthday party with his best new artists this evening. It will be streamed live. The gig starts at 8pm GMT (UK), 9pm CEST (Europe), 4am JST (Japan), 5am AEST (Australia), 3pm EDT (US East Coast), 12 noon PDT (US West Coast). Timing in GMT:

8:10PM – SCRAPS (AUS) > Weird minimal synth pop under influence of style of the 80s.
8:50PM – FAWN SPOTS (UK) > Punk rock trio. Devotees of early Joy Divison/Warsaw, Hüsker Dü and Rites of Spring. Razor edged, lightning fast short blasts of hyperactive noise with bittersweet melodies.
9:30PM – KEEL HER (UK) > High standard lo-fi experimental bedroom pop.
10:10PM – SCOTT & CHARLENE’S WEDDING (AUS) > “I’m a fucking furniture removalist from Adelaide. I write down-and-out pop songs. I write songs about every job that I do.”

STREAM HERE

Ian Hicks and Patricia Hall were brought together through
a common love of 1970s and 80s synthesizer music.
Inspiration came to them by way of experimental electronic sounds,
film soundtracks, early industrial music, minimal synth, house,
techno, synth pop, krautrock, psychedelic rock and shoegaze.

May 6 > SOFT METALS (US)> Budapest, Toldi

Start:10 pm     Ticket:1000     Facebook     Küss Mich + Holalo Party

APRIL 19 >  cold wave at Küss Mich Ex-Yu Party

POPSIMONOVA (technoid female decadance, Zagreb)
KONVOJ BONTON BAJKERA (riot grrrl of synth-punk, Beograd)
I/II (hymnic minimalism, Zagreb)
YUS YUS (over-excited erotic cold wave, Subotica)
ÚJ LÁTÁSMÓD FÚZIÓ (melancholic smoky coffee-bar pop,  Baranya)

or hardcore/rap

BOBAFETT   AMD   LEUKÉMIA APOKALYPSIS and more at Dürer Kert

APRIL 22 > glam/garage/hard rock

GLITTER WIZARD (USA)  GUSTAVE TIGER and HEADBENGS at Trafik Klub

or noise at Havizaj Party

CRUOR INCENDIA (USA)  DROGDED  ParaNoiZ vs dzsémszGOND

Three to get ready, Now go, cat go

TRANSFORMER RECORD STORE MATINEE
with international independent labels 

Totally Wired + Baba Vanga + HappyHappyNoiseNoise + RNR666 + Farbwechsel & co. + Last Foundation + 8ounce + Dzsukhell + Go Away + Itai Itai + The Dole Shirt + Freakyhouse + Legenda Records

& performers

21h GRAN live (AT, Totally Wired)
22h Küss Mich feat. Mike, Sirius & Darktunes, Dee Rüsche, Splatter & Gördön

APRIL 12  16:00  BUDAPEST  BEAT ON THE BRAT      facebook

„We play fast, noisy music. Call it whatever you want. The component parts include: primitive 1970s punk, 1980s hardcore, skronky post-punk records of the danceable and non-danceable varieties, 1960s garage music, traditional American music, science fiction, literary satire, scatology, unapologetic theft, bald-faced lying, and the design aesthetic of school notebook covers and public toilets. Listen and figure it out for yourself. The songs are short. It won’t take long. Break up eventually.” Started as a Joke, as a cover band by three middle aged guy who has learnt all of the 1978 debut album of Belgian punk rock band The Kids. They’re the Advlts

7″ by Southpaw Records

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OTO. Kraut influenced French electro punk or Neue Französische Welle from the 80s. Exact. Cool. Perfect. Evergrey. „Anyway” repress 12″EP.

It was recorded in 1984. + Repress LP from 86 by Desire & Mitzvah Records. Listen to their unpublished materials! Amazing lo-fi sound!

„the group of us there were listening to the Iron Curtain reissues, and we were kinda obsessed with the Christian Death Theatre of Pain album. I’m a bit older than Tom, so I was showing him Coil and Throbbing Gristle as well.”

„we know that’s the main aim of the sound: to get a sound that makes you feel sick in the stomach, because it sounds so good.” Dark, 70-80s horror film influenced cold wave synth punk from Australia by NUN. Debut album on Aarght (Aus) & Avant! Records (Italy)

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Hard rock but otherwise than Saxon. Post punk but harder than Gang of Four. The Protomartyr from Detroit

„Under Color of Official Right” album on Hardly Art