I figured I would come out of my self-imposed blog exile with the sad news that Dannie Flescher, one of the co-founders of the influential Wax Trax! Records has recently passed away from complications and illness related to AIDS. Concidentally, or perhaps not, Jim Nash also passed away in 1995, sometime after Wax Trax! filed for bankruptcy and was bought out by TVT. I discovered Wax Trax! myself sometime before that, I believe, after the release of the boxed set in 1994. Prior to that, I only knew of Ministry and Nine Inch Nails, but it was also a high school friend who turned me on to KMFDM and Front 242. After this, I found the boxed set in a local record store and my life was pretty much changed from then on. I tried to buy everything I could get my hands on, minus the vinyl, of course, since I never owned a record player. The Wax Trax! Black Box was also instrumental in introducing me to more experimental music beyond electronic dance to bands like COIL and Controlled Bleeding. It would be quite simple to say that, for me, without Wax Trax!, this blog would have never existed in the first place. Though the label has been long gone, still 20 years past its heyday, the music that was released then still stands up as some of the finest electronic dance / industrial ever, and will never be forgotten. So many classic acts had their record sleeves graced by the iconic power-lines logo. RIP Dannie and Jim.

A Decade Dreaming is the newest release from Toronto-based ambient duo, dreamSTATE, and also the first since 2005’s Passage. dreamSTATE has made this available as a free-download in honor of the 10th Anniversary of The Ambient Ping, a long-running fixture in the Toronto ambient scene and features a selection of dreamSTATE performances from over the years. Starting with the most recent track “Premonition”, recorded on August 18, 2009, A Decade Dreaming spans 12 tracks back to at least 2001. While I do not have any information on the final 3 tracks of the album, they did put together a “liner notes” page that is updated on a regular basis with track information as well as exclusive pictures. Recommended for all fans of ambient music, this release presents a wonderful historical record and would come highly recommended even if it wasn’t free.

Tracklisting:
1 Premonition (5:10)
2 Soundscape For Richard Wright (4:47)
3 Jharna Revealed (4:12)
4 Laika’s Last Orbit (5:08)
5 Nocturnal Passage (4:28)
6 Elinvar (7:30)
7 Sandstone (5:11)
8 Universe City Line (5:23)
9 Processional (4:35)
10 The Storm Within (4:55)
11 Premillennial Landscape #1 (4:10)
12 Premillennial Landscape #2 (5:02)

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T.H.D. (Total Harmonic Distortion) started life in the early 1990s as a duo between Shawn Rudiman and Ed Vargos. They released their debut album, Mechanical Advantage, in 1993 on Denmark’s Hard Records. Avowed jokingly as a “Front Line Assembly-ripoff”, the album allowed T.H.D. to be signed domestically to Cleopatra Records, then on to Pendragon Records in 1997 and 1998. Rudiman moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and became active in the city’s techno scene as a producer and sought-after live musician, playing in various spots in the U.S. and overseas. In 2009, 10 years after the release of the last T.H.D. album, Rudiman has resurrected the T.H.D. name for two digital releases on Tom Shear’s (Assemblage 23) label 23 db. As the 90s T.H.D. releases moved farther away from their EBM / industrial beginnings, so does the new T.H.D. expand upon the material that came 10 years ago. While The Evolution of Our Decay is available as a paid-download, Subconscious Drip is being offered for free and is a good way to sample T.H.D. material for those who have never heard it before. Considering that the original CDs from back in the day are most likely out-of-print, this would be the best place to start.

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Aircrash Bureau were F. Schmidt (electronics), Stephan Klaus Kessler (voice & programming) & Michael Will (electronics & drums), a short-lived German trio active in 1989. This group should not be confused with a more recent Aircrash Bureau from Sweden, which is a progressive trance/house project. After the release of this lone 12″, two songs, “120 BPM” and “Time to Die”, made it onto the Zoth Ommog compilation Body Raptures. Stephan Kessler had one other techno / industrial release in 1990, under the artist name Art Academy, but then later became involved in the acid / jungle scene in the 1990s and since then has also released hard house and trance material under a variety of psuedonyms. The embedded audio are from the actual 12″ release, while the download contains the tracks from Body Raptures, an A.B. remix of “Exhibition” (from the first Technopolis compilation), and a rare Razormaid remix of “Exhibition”. All are in 192 kbps.

Tracklisting:

1 Machine
2 Exhibition
3 Exhibition (Remixed by A.B.)
4 Time To Die
5 120 BPM
6 Exhibition (Razormaid mix)

Aircrash Bureau – Machine

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Aircrash Bureau – Exhibition

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Die Krupps is a long-running German band that released their first material in 1981 and whose sound has changed drastically over the years. Starting out as a kind of noisy synth-pop (comparisons could be made to fellow Germans Einsturzende Neubauten and KMFDM), Die Krupps would move through EBM / industrial territory, before settling in on a strong electronic / metal crossover in the 1990s. The mini-album Entering the Arena, from 1985, is the band’s only release for a 7 year span from 1982 – 1989. Entering the Arena may be some of the band’s most accessible material; a mixture of mid-80s synth-pop and EBM. It is also one of the few albums that has been un-re-released in the band’s recent period of activity, which includes re-issues of much older material. Die Krupps, of course, was much maligned in the 1990s with their metal period (their line-up included one-time Heathen and current Exodus guitarist Lee Altus). Particular scorn was heaped upon A Tribute to Metallica, which saw the band included in a similar style of heavy electronic metal with the likes of Ministry and KMFDM. Die Krupps went on hiatus in 1997 after the release of Paradise Now and resurfaced 10 years later with new live activity and an anthology entitled Too Much History. This anthology is not simply a reissue of old material but fresh re-recordings of songs from the past, including a new song. To date, the most recent Die Krupps release is Volle Kraft Null Acht, issued in March 2009. This CD contains remixes of older material by artists such as KMFDM, Leather Strip, Funker Vogt, Thomas Heckmann and more. There has been no information about the possibility of new material being released, nor has there been a mention of a possible re-release of Entering the Arena, as the previous two editions from 1993 remain out-of-print.

Tracklisting:
1 Risk (3:52)
2 The Rise & Fall (5:30)
3 Communication Breakdown (3:00)
4 Risky Soul Version (6:32)
5 Gladiators (5:24)
6 Your Voice (5:35)
7 Communication Breakdown (Don’t Speak Mix) (3:09)
8 This Day Is Not The Last (3:53)
9 Risk (Operatic Intro) (3:50)
10 Risk (Metallic Outro) (3:17)

Die Krupps – Risk

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Die Krupps – Gladiators

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