Back catalogue: Coldwave/Synth

Review: Ever-changing Slovenian collective Laibach seems to have mellowed with age, with the band's inherent desire to court controversy (see their 2015 performances in North Korea for a relatively recently example) currently curtailed. Love Is Still Alive, which marks their first new music since the release of last year's well-received album Wir Sind das Volk, is actually an "extension" of the music they wrote to soundtrack the 2019 film 'Iron Sky -The Coming Race'. It is, they say, a "trip through space music genres of recent decades" (albeit with bonus nods to country, pop and so on) that loosely tells the story of a spaceship full of post-apocalyptic survivors making their way across the solar system. It's a lot of fun, all told, with the band expertly showcasing the breadth of their musical knowledge as well as skip-fulls of imagination.

Review: If you still haven't clocked on to Liars, they're a bunch of seriously hip dudes form Brooklyn who've been making music since the turn of the century. Having always stuck close to London's now-mythical Mute imprint, 2014 has been a busy year for them, one which has seen them release their sixth album for the label, the aptly named Mess. If that wasn't enough, this latest EP is a rip-roaring remix affair of the LP's "Pro Anti Anti" track, which sees both a varied and truly talented bunch of artists having a go and re-jigging their noisy strand of art-rock into unrecognisable shapes and forms. The original itself is a cross between The Strokes on a serious dose of downers and Cabaret Voltaire's chest-bursting power electronics, and while Daniel Miller's remix doesn't steer too far away form the original, Factory Floor come up with a jittering, broken techno version. Truss adds in a much-needed helping of bleeps and cavernous kick drums on top of the original's wailing vocals, while Nest Of Teens stand out thanks to a marvellous reinterpretation of Liars' bassline. Beauts, the lot of 'em.

Review: If it's been a while since Adult's last album, there's a very good explanation. Back in 2014, they successfully applied for an arts grant to turn their studio into a kind of drop-in centre for some of their musical heroes. Since then, a vast roll-call of electronic music talents old and new have spent three weeks living, collaborating and recording with Adult in Detroit. The results are showcased on Detroit House Guests. Combining their usual EBM, industrial, electro and experimental influences with those of their selected guests - Nitzer Ebb's Douglas J. McCarthy, noted experimentalist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe and Swans man Michael Gira included - it's an album that feels like a wholehearted celebration of the power of artistic collaboration.

Review: Richard H Kirk was rightly praised for 2020's Shadow of Fear, his first album since turning Cabaret Voltaire into a solo project back in 2014, and his recently follow-up EP, Shadow of Funk. Both distilled the essence of the Cabs' club-friendly industrial funk sound, re-formatting it for the 21st century. Dekadrone, though, is a different proposition altogether. Focused not on clubs but on immersive home listening, the four-phase, single track set removes Kirk's clanking, often paranoid beats in favour of dystopian aural textures (think dark, droning tones, abstract electronics, apocalyptic ambience and dirt-encrusted samples). Those who prefer the Cabs' more experimental, ambient-leaning works will love it.

Review: Former Throbbing Gristle mainstay Chris Carter has more than enough projects to keep him busy, which may go some way to explain why it took him the best part of eight years to record CCCL, his first solo album for almost two decades. Created using home-made electronic instruments, hacked effects units and "retro circuit modification", the album's 25 tracks were apparently inspired by a mixture of the Radiophonic Workshop's legendary 1960s electronic experiments and Carter's desire to utilize the kind of "nursery rhyme" melodies found in traditional English music. It's a curious combination, but one that guarantees a near perfect balance between far-sighted electronic experimentation and cheery tunefulness.

Review: When it appeared in stores in the summer of 2020, Erasure's latest album, The Neon, was praised for the quality of its analogue-heavy synth sounds, which recalled the time Vince Clarke spent as part of Depeche Mode at the turn of the '80s. Those throbbing, retro-futurist synth sounds - driving arpeggio style basslines, undulating melodies and spacey chords - are naturally at the heart of The Neon Remixed, a fresh set of largely dancefloor-focused interpretations. Highlights are plentiful and include - but are no way limited to -Octa Octa's sublime take on 'Secrets', a throbbing nu-Italo rework of 'Hey Now' by Hifi Sean, Kim-Ann Foxman's superb analogue house-meets-new wave revision of 'Secrets' and the pitch-black sleaziness that is Armageddon Turk's extended mix of 'Diamond Lies'.

Review: In 2015, long-serving Slovenian experimentalists Laibach became the first Western band to perform in North Korea, including a number of songs from "The Sound of Music" - a favourite in the DPRK since the 1960s - alongside their own material. Three years on, and with the assistance of Silence's Boris Benko and vocalist Marina Martensson, they've finally delivered their interpretation of the musical film's familiar soundtrack. Swaying between rock balladry, experimental synth-pop, darker tones and industrial style fuzziness, the band's covers are both revolutionary and revelatory, as staples such as "The Lonely Goatherd", "My Favorite Things" and "Do-Re-Mi" are given radical makeovers. As they did at the concert that inspired the set, they also give their interpretation of some traditional North Korean folk songs.