Lair of the Asp

Hmm, I guess it's high time I start supporting the local scene. I will definitely be attending this show... Sunday, January 11th, 2004! PharoahMoan Productions brings you an event a long time in the making! “Femina Fatalis” - A Celebration of Women... Featuring Live Performances by: The Siren Project Deviant Dark Orchid (as a special favour to PharoahMoan Productions) And a very special guest! DJ Lelly DJ Zoya (Radio 1190’s Remission) But that’s not all! We are also having a very rare, very special fashion show by one of the top boutiques in Denver! Lots of surprises, lots of enjoyment, and most of all, lots of female talent! Vital Info: “Femina Fatalis” Date: Sunday, January 11, 2004 Location: Bluebird Theatre 3317 E. Colfax in Denver, CO Ages: 18+ Tickets: $11 Tickets available at http://www.NIPP.com Sponsored By: Westword Newspaper (http://www.westword.com) and Radio 1190 Online Flyer: http://kheperi.com/pictures/flyers/femina_flyer.html

The official news is that the Tristraum remixes are back from the mastering studio and I've had a chance to listen to all of the mixes and I'm astounded at how well they all turned out and happy to be in such good company on the Shiver CD . I'm definitely excited to see the reaction to the CD.

While none of these Nine Inch Nails articles are new they are an interesting read especially the older ones where ol' Trent was very self depreciating. And for a much more recent article about Trent and the new album “bleedthrough”. "What will it sound like? Well, NIN drummer/multi-instrumentalist Jerome Dillon has said for the past few months that the album will sound something very melancholic and stripped-down. So it could mean that for those who owned the Internet-only release “Still” (which is also available in the deluxe edition of the “And All That Could Have Been” live album) were revealed to a preview of what NIN might sound like. “Still” as a record sounded very stripped-down, deconstructed, and acoustic-driven along with elements of melancholia." "The record explores loss and possible discovery of self," says Trent Reznor about the follow-up to 1999's The Fragile, "along with alternate layers of reality and perception set inside a

An interview with former Bauhaus and Love and Rockets bassist David J. can be found at darkculture.com . It's always good to remember where the whole goth thing comes from history wise and what a contribution art students have made to music in general and that a lot of their musical ideas encompass other artforms as well such as painting, poetry, and literature.

For some reason I've been listening again to Camauflage recently and thinking back on their music from the late '80's and how much a lot of the new futurepop bands sound like them and depeche mode for that matter. Here is a recent interview from Release Music Magazine : The rise, fall & rebirth of CAMOUFLAGE By: Mattias Huss The story of Camouflage is the perfect Hollywood rags to riches tale - it goes from nothing to top twenty hits and international fame in the blink of an eye. But like any success story, there is a price to be paid, a price so high that it nearly destroyed the band and gave the story a sad ending. Now hear the story, from the mouths of three wizened wonder boys. Once upon a time, in a small city called Bietigheim-Bissingen… A new beginning In the 2003 movie ”Verschwende deine Jugend”, we are transported back to Germany 1981, where the 19-year old bank trainee Harry makes a pilgrimage to the big city to watch DAF perform.

side-line.com is reporting that there is a new Nine Inch Nails album in the works. "Bleedthrough" is the title of the new NIN release to be released through Nothings Records. The news comes through Alternative Press who also informed that bleedthrough.net has already been registered to Nothing since May of this year. It's been four years now since "The Fragile" hit the shelves. Reznor has been supported by mix engineer Rich Costey and Rick Rubin while additional sound production was executed by Atticus Ross, Jerome Dillon and Leo Herrera who already worked on "The Fragile". Trent Reznor explained to Alternative Press that the record "explores loss and possible discovery of self, along with alternate layers of reality and perception set inside a nightmare you can't seem to wake up from; with lots of feedback." Several tracktitles have been revealed including the songs "The Line Begins To Blur," "Everyday Is Exactly

A new Funker Vogt interview can be found here . It also looks like they are close to being done with new remix album with remixes by such artists as Haujobb , Icon of Coil , and Unit 187 . I'm looking forward to it...

Well, this is good news to me. side-line.com is reporting on both a new box set of b-sides and rarities and a new CD from the Cure due out in Summer 2004. The Cure are to release a 4-disc rarities boxset, entitled "Join the Dots: B-Sides and Rarities, 1979-2001 (The Fiction Years)" on January 27th. Holding 71 tracks the box expands on previous collections such as "Standing on the Beach - The Singles" by compiling all of the band's B-sides as well as rare and soundtrack material. The B-sides have always had a special meaning for the band who wanted them to be true tracks that deserved to be released and not just fillers. According to the band, frontman Robert Smith searched through more than 4,000 tapes to put the collection together. Remastered at London's Abbey Road studios, disc 1 features mostly B-sides of singles from the band's albums released from 1978 through 1987, while disc 2 mixes covers, B-sides and promo songs from 1987 through 199

Who would have thunk it. An article on grammy.com on goth music. It makes me wonder how the hell Evanescence got hooked into the whole goth tag in the first place and some of the other bands as well, Good Charlotte? Sam Rosenthal of Projekt Records usually has something good to say, but I realize he's hoping to capitalize on any publicity, and who can blame him really? But, I'd tend to agree that it'd be better off with the "scene" staying underground as who needs every 16 year old with black hair dye and a guitar filling the airwaves with goth-lite as they call it in the article. Oh well, time will tell...

I'm pleased to announce that it has been made official that a remix that I did for a Tristraum song called "Shiver" will be included on their upcoming MCD with me listed as an established remixer with the likes of Assemblage 23 and Echo Image . I've definitely enjoyed working with Tristraum and enjoyed remixing their song, so it should be exciting to hear all of the other remixes, I've heard some, but not all of them, and it should be stellar.

Here's Wetwire's interview with Hate Dept. . Their song Release It was one of my favorite songs from the last couple of years. And I especially like his answer to this question: What do you think of the current synthpop craze? Hate Dept.: Hmm. What Synthpop craze? To me, a craze is when a movement gets marketed to mainstream consumers who then accept it and embrace it. The Faint and Ladytron seem to be at the top of the heap. However the tops of the heap are miles behind Interpol and even further behind White Stripes, who can't touch Incubus that only sell a fraction of what Eminem can do. As for the music that gets classified as 'Sythpop', I like some of it. I've always liked dance music that is song based, so the better the song, the more I like it. I still play my Tears For Fears and early Duran Duran records.

I've been checking out a NYC-based and self proclaimed Gothtonic duo called Neikka RPM , I guess mainly to see if I want to take the time to do a remix of one of their new songs. Lo and behold the 1 minute samples they have of some of their older songs are quite impressive.

Zoya , a DJ at KVCU Radio AM 1190 , hosts a Gothic/Industrial/Dark Music show called "Remission" on Friday evenings 11:00 PM-1:00 AM, it is definitely worth checking out.

Wrapped in Wire industrial/goth ezine, it has tons of CD reviews and some interesting news items, it looks like it's updated about once a month, only slightly more than I write in my blog these days, but worth a look none the less.

A Sisters of Mercy tablature site , now that's a novel concept, it's kind of interesting to see how others would play these songs on the guitar, for example I play Lucretia my Reflection with the the first 8 notes of the bass/guitar riff on the open A string rather than the 5th fret of the E string, same note, but my way rings better and I'm pretty confident that I'm playing it the way that it is recorded. Anyway, fun stuff...

I got my new CD of Critical Mass 4 from Metropolis Records , an Industrial Electro compilation CD, in the mail today. I'm listening to it loudly on headphones, it sort of restores my faith that there is new music coming out that is worth listening to out there still. Mostly really strong songs, my main issue with a couple of the songs is the singing, it's way too fey sounding for my tastes, not that everything needs to sound like cookie monster death metal vocals, but some manliness is a good thing, but hey you can't please everyone with everything. Overall the CD gets harder as it progresses which is a nice thing, sort of easing you into the scene of sonic assault.

Wired has an interesting article about how the laptop has changed the way music is recorded and how it is effecting recording studios. Most of this seems pretty obvious to me, but it is increadible to see what you can do with portable computer that only 10 years ago would have cost 100,000s of dollars to achieve.

An interesting commentary on the state of goth music from the editor of Dark Culture Magazine . I've heard similar things said about industrial music as well, is it sentimentality that we think that there's nothing as good we had in our youth in music these days. I agree completely that very little music is quality out there these days and the quality stuff is not original.

There's a new trailer up for "The Matrix Revolutions. " And there is a .mp3 clip of the new score by Don Davis of orchestral music with dark sounding chiors for Revolutions recently posted as well. Sadly, going to the main Matrix page and looking at the trailers reminded me of how much I hate quicktime video and installing it, they wanted me to once again upgrade to the newest version, but everytime that I've done this in the past it's hijacked my computer and every type of media file imaginable says that it wants to be viewed/listened to using quicktime with that new version and it takes me a while to get everything back to normal. So my small protest is just to deal without quicktime 6.0, I'm sure the media will be saturated with hype for the movie regardless and I will see way too much about the movie before I even see the movie...

KMFDM has a new CD being released on Sept. 23rd called WWW III . As always it will be interesting to see what one of the long time bands from the industrial genre have put out. Usually I'm underwhelmed with new stuff from long time acts, but I never stop hoping that this time it will be different and great, and I will be stunned and amazed at how good it is. We'll see soon enough...

I've been getting into, or really I guess I should say back into, Gary Numan . I've been listening to his album Hybrid and absolutely loving it. Yes this is reinterpretation and industrialization of songs spanning his whole career, the production is amazing and was done by Flood of NIN, dM, and U2 fame, and Alan Moulder from what I can tell. The interview section of his site is especially good, it's a good overview of the way things work in the music business in regards to charts and how he's gone from rags to riches to rags to possibly riches again...

I'm hard at work on this new remix of a Tristraum song called "Shiver". I've already got a very different from the original mix going and I'm excited to see how it all turns out.

I happened across Immortal Continuum Radio , the music is great and they stream at 160 kb/s, which makes listening that much better. Lots of unsigned as well as major names in the business. Great stuff, I haven't heard a bad song yet...

Well, this is good news and the music looks to be incredible, I thought the trailer of Underworld seemed pretty good also for looking like basically The Matrix with Vampires and Werewolves... By Todd Martens LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Former Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland will resurface on the soundtrack to Sony's upcoming vampire flick "Underworld." Borland appears in a supergroup dubbed the Damning Well, which also features A Perfect Circle's Josh Freese, Filter's Richard Patrick and Nine Inch Nails contributor Danny "Renhold" Lohner. The foursome has one cut on the album, due Sept. 19 from Lakeshore Records. The Damning Well's "Awakening," which opens the soundtrack, is Borland's first major project since leaving Limp Bizkit. His own group, Eat The Day, has yet been unable to get off the ground. Borland also helped out on a remix of A Perfect Circle's "Weak and Powerless," which he worke

The Morbid Fact Du Jour has some, well, morbid stories updated daily. If you're curious it's worth a look and maybe even a sly smile.

Zeromancer is a band that I kept running into as being heralded the great new white hope for Industrial music and finally decided to track down some of their music and check it out. They've got a great version of "Send Me an Angel" and I would say that more than half of their stuff is amazing, which is saying something for a band these days, I'm so jaded about music as well, so it really is saying something.

Lycia a band out of Arizona that I caught a couple years ago at the Projektfest in Chicago. Dark, windswept, and stark songs.

A short list of other Denver and Colorado-based acts that I like: Project 12:01 Pure Drama Boom Chr Paige The Siren Project Solitary Sinners

I've been checking out the the NYC-based band Android Lust . A female fronted industrial band, different and well put together. Also, here's an interview with Android Lust . And finally an article written by Sam Rosenthal, the head of Projekt Records and driving force behind the band Black Tape for a Blue Girl .

Last night was the premiere meeting of the Red Carpet Lodge, the local chapter of the ultra secretive Immersion Composition Society. The lodge is part of a larger network of speed composition groups -- all referred to as "Lodges" of some sort -- across the nation. The original lodge started this whole speed-composition idea because they were noticing that they were spending an inordinate amount of time waiting for inspiration to write music, instead of actually writing the music. So they decided to invent an event where the object was to force yourself to write, whether you liked it or not! The lodge rules are as follows: You are granted 24 contiguous hours to conceive, perform, record, and mix a minimum of 6 songs -- maximum of 20. As you can imagine, that's a lot to do in 24 hours. Once the clock starts, there is no stopping it. This results in tremendous, glorious, time pressure. The forces that seem to make all of this work include: - Competitive

This is my try at blogging, my trials and tribulations with the listening, analyzing, and creating of dark music. I can be found on the web at the following sites and have music posted at them: Invisible Asps at SoundClick.com Invisible Asps at IUMA Invisible Asps at garageband.com