Forestalled by a nice single release including some remixes of "The Devil's Hand", the homonymous long-awaited album by this versatile and kaleidoscopic Leipzig-based (that's maybe the reason why there's some gothic nuances in their sound...too near to Treffen's radiations!) band began to sprout on the occasion of a sort of mystical experience its members had while surrounded by the desolate nature of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern County, a place they arguably elected as ideal for their sonic explorations, where they made up their mind in a sort of chilly trance by playing clarinet and moving over the surface of a frosted lake! "The Devil's Hand" comes from a sort of thorough musical revision of that experience, a sonic scanning resulting in a kind of electronic pop, which is not easy to classify for its quick stylistical mutations, an intricate web of sonorities onto which the talented singer Franziska Grohmann aka Delhia de France moves with the agility of a spider. Her voice adapt to all the sonic backdrops built by the intriguing melodic moods crated by Albrecht Ziepert, by Hannes Waldschutz's terse basslines and by Le Schnigg's crossbreed of analog and electronic beats and samples. Her meaningful onomatopoeic spokenword in I.A.M. (the second part of their previously released Fasermarker) - a nice track whose style let imagine a sort of revision of the so-called nu soul by Zero 7 made by Funkstorung - could be immediately linked to Ursula Rucker's art, her voice rapidly changes from a virginal falsetto to more seducing tunes, so that it parallels musical changes from a sort of childplay to a bittersweet dance song in "Out Of The Woods", it evokes a dynamic motionless in some catching electro-pop tunes such as the title-track, "Supervisor" or "On Our Own", it regain some semblance of a chanteuse in the noir-tinged electronic fox-trot track "Determiner" (stylistically close to some stuff by Matthew Herbert and Parov Stelar) and manages to highlight the emotionally tragic sense of suspense and the lovely crescendo of the final track "This Is An Ocean". Even if maybe they don't add nothing new to the scene, their overwhelming peformative passion and the feedbacks from those who took part to their live performace, during which they mix and process sounds in real time aroused my curiosity to see them performing on some stage.

If you dwell upon some details of debut release by German guitarist Stefan Streck, also known as Dj Sterngucker, the nice moniker he used for his appearances in German dnb scene, such as the way he titled tracks taken from freshwater inhabitants (daces, rudds, carps, tenches, gudgeons, minnows, crucians, barbels and so on), you could assume Micronaut's creator is a fanatic for aquariums or recreational fishing, but other marks, including that gudgeon (or at least it seems a gudgeon...) while swallows some unidentified fish on the cover artwork, might shake such an assumption, which could appear belittling or close to a reductive shot cut if you begin to discerning a metaphorical language, based on the "big fish eating little fish" vision of such a broken social scene, where economical impasse as well as some political decisions which are hitting welfare policies and competitional mechanism, basis of Capitalism, look like awakening primordial atavistic predatory instincts fostering a battle arena-like vision of society more than a cooperative one. If you try to solve such a dilemma by an auricular analysis of musical clues, ambiguity could remain (and be even increased if you try to find an association between tinches and Bulgarian folk choirs, suggested in the lovely entrancing track "Schleie"!): whereas there are tracks which evoke wondering in deep contemplation of river's or just pound's life through sonic splashes, spurting, darts, soft xylophone's trills, clappy rhythmical stepping and sweetly effected guitar arpeggios (I particularly enjoyed "Grundling", "Hasel" - featuring very nice vocal games - and "Karpfen") there's that feeling of dramatic urgency and underskin tension, that kind of electric defibrillation close to the one applied by Apparat to his songs, amalgamating such a bucolic musical poem with more pensive weighs in mind. Every track has been carefully assembled and performed anyway and the release includes two appetizers for clubbers and djs as well, two dubby/electropop remixes by Ronny Mollenhauer aka Mollono.Bass (I liked more the one of "Barbe" than the treatment he reserved to "Schleie", maybe cause original version of the track was good enough).

One of the latest new signings of Denver's Vendetta Music label, whose musically formula can be reduced on the simple 'S.A.M. meets [In]Toxin' comment. Static Sky operates in the wide and often copied field of TBM and I tend to say, that this project deals with a higher Techno-/Trance-influence than it can draw nearer relations to anything what has my understanding of EBM or Industrial Dance music. This stuff features pure Adrenalin-driven Techno mass-production music and it unfortunately misses anything what can be compared to terms like innovation or authenticity. Of course it works excellent to warm the leg muscles of the crowds on the dancefloors. But that's it: no stuff at all to consume at your home entertainment, it rather more starts to bore after the second spinning. The tracks are missing musically depth and are following a foreseeable pattern arrangement without variations. This stuff is repetitive and exchangeable, for instance with stuff of the above comparable projects, who have been proved before to be more inspiring than Static Sky. Good reactions of the club audience and DJ's worldwide are only one side of the medal, maybe the better and financially wiser one, but finally this isn't that stuff for people searching for the more and better content behind.

After releasing a year ago an album with Driver & Driver, Patric Catani is back with his own name project (this time turned into Party Catani) with an album released by Cock Rock Disco titled LOWFISTICATION. His new album contains twelve episodes of party extravaganza where weird bleeping synth noises are mixed with hard beats, movie samples, techno alienated intuitions and various no sense craziness. At a first listening tracks like "Boss", "Nasty Girl" or the obsessive "Fat Gal" seem to be recorded during a Love Parade where something went wrong with the drugs. The synths sound like broken toys and the syncopated rhythms make them sound like broken records. Hard techno, acid or 8 bit sounds (like the ones on "Unchain My Tips") are the core of the album, which seems a work of a Mad Hatter playing techno music at his tea party. Personally I find this one too extreme to be enjoyed and you have to love party music lot to appreciate fully its crazy side.

Out on Acker Records at the end of January 2012, FRIEDFISCH is the first album for The Micronaut. Actually I don't know who's behind this moniker but the thirteen tracks of the album shows a different way to approaching electronic sounds as he, supposing that there's only one person behind these sounds, uses samples and synth sounds to create a moving/emotional music background that then it's enriched by acoustic sounds. Take, for example, "Karausche": it has a sort of dubstep midtempo rhythm core with acoustic guitar parts, piano inserts and synth samples. Everything is mixed to for a gentle atmosphere where the use of melody is well balanced. "Schleie", instead, mix ambient recordings with samples taken from the Misteres Des Voix Bulgares records, electro beats and acoustic guitar arpeggios. All the tracks tend to mix different elements that go from strings to concrete noises (like on "Asche") passing from deep synth bass sounds or glitches (like on "Mairenke"). The link between all the tracks is the overall atmospheres which is gentle and soft but including also upbeat rhythms.