EP Review: FRTG13 – Supersymmetrie (2021)

Here’s a thing. Another great recommendation from Fabrizio Lusso’s excellent White Light // White Heat website. Another great name-your-price digital download on Bandcamp. Dark industrial synthpop crossing over seamlessly with more orthodox forms of post-punk. Coming to you by way of Hanover, Germany. With a nod and a definite debt to compatriots Kraftwerk. Five tracks, the best of which are the title track, ‘Supersymmetrie’, and the more than vaguely familiar ‘Computer Welt’. 

Grab a copy from the link below, and if you like this, why not go back further and pick up a copy of last year’s Corona Sessions, which is also name-your-price.

Introducing ... Heaven and Earth Association

Aside from a Bandcamp page, which suggests Heaven and Earth Association is a two-piece from Portland, Oregon, and a Facebook page that does little more than confirm as much, the vast expanse of the internet offers me nothing in my quest for more information about this rather beguiling musical project.

It probably doesn’t help that Heaven and Earth Association is one of the least google-able band names ever, more so if your goal is to sift the wheat from the chaff as quickly as possible. It might not even be a two-piece. It might be a solo project with an occasional helper. Or a side-project connected to another band - who can really say?

What I can say is the album released by the project in December 2019, the curiously titled 4849:1, was one of my most played lockdown musical excursions. Picked up after a tip from Fabrizio Lusso via his ever reliable WhiteLight//WhiteHeat website.

As with a lot of stuff on that site, 4849:1 is a retro-styled journey into the netherworlds of post-punk, synthpop, and coldwave, and very much to my own personal taste. 4849:1 consists of eight tracks, some of which appear to have been recorded as long ago as 2017, with the highlights being the intoxicating opener ‘Repeating Pattern’ (how is that not a sleeper indie hit?), ‘Run! Don’t Walk’, and an excellent OMD cover, ‘Almost’. The bonus being that it’s a name-your-price download. Grab one.

Discovering ... Féroces

I really know very little about French band Féroces, and I realise I’m probably a bit late arriving at the party, but I’m totally loving the band’s mid-2019 EP, Paul, right now. At home. In “lockdown”, feeling dark and a little disconnected from the world we used to know.

If Paul seems like an odd title for an EP, being a singular name without much context for any blind newbie, then it’s worth noting that four of the band’s five earlier releases on the Bandcamp platform (dating back to 2016) are all similarly titled … see Juliette, Donna, Victor, and Josephine.

I’ve yet to check out any of those older releases but if the dramatic dark angsty pop music I’ve found on Paul is any sort of reliable guide, it won’t be too long before I revisit that online goldmine to excavate further hidden gems from the band’s archives.

I was first introduced to Féroces through Fabrizio Lusso’s wonderful White Light//White Heat website (here) when a terrific cover of Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’ featured on one of Lusso’s very informative weekly digest posts.

That Féroces version of ‘Wicked Game’ - and admittedly, I’m a big fan of Isaak’s original as a starting point - went on to become one of my most thrashed tunes through the final few months of 2019. It features on Paul, but what was more surprising when I started digging deeper after downloading the EP, was just how good the rest of the material was. Including a very decent cover of My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Sometimes’.

All of the “vocal”/narrative is in French, a language I have absolutely no comprehension of beyond a few swear words, but that hardly matters … it’s seductive and sexy and every bit the earworm to accompany this intoxicating music.

You can pick up a copy of Paul and/or have a listen to the rest of the band’s work here.

And here’s ‘Wicked Game’: