EOL-Audio Review Archive – W
This is Part ‘W’ of an archive of CD and digital download reviews from EOL-Audio (1998-2007) and the early versions of Terminates Here (2008-2011).
Please note that this writing is varied in quality and is not intended to be representative of the new content I’m creating for this site. It has simply been uploaded in order to preserve the many hours of work devoted to previous websites.
EOL-Audio Review Archive – S
This is Part ‘S’ of an archive of CD and digital download reviews from EOL-Audio (1998-2007) and the early versions of Terminates Here (2008-2011).
Please note that this writing is varied in quality and is not intended to be representative of the new content I’m creating for this site. It has simply been uploaded in order to preserve the many hours of work devoted to previous websites.
EOL-Audio Review Archive – D
This is Part D’ of an archive of CD and digital download reviews from EOL-Audio (1998-2007) and the early versions of Terminates Here (2008-2011).
Please note that this writing is varied in quality and is not intended to be representative of the new content I’m creating for this site. It has simply been uploaded in order to preserve the many hours of work devoted to previous websites.
EOL-Audio Review Archive – C
This is Part ‘C’ of an archive of CD and digital download reviews from EOL-Audio (1998-2007) and the early versions of Terminates Here (2008-2011).
Please note that this writing is varied in quality and is not intended to be representative of the new content I’m creating for this site. It has simply been uploaded in order to preserve the many hours of work devoted to previous websites.
EOL-Audio Review Archive – B
This is Part ‘B’ an archive of CD and digital download reviews from EOL-Audio (1998-2007) and the early versions of Terminates Here (2008-2011).
Please note that this writing is varied in quality and is not intended to be representative of the new content I’m creating for this site. It has simply been uploaded in order to preserve the many hours of work devoted to previous websites.
Diary Of Dreams
Diary Of Dreams was formed by former Garden Of Delight bassist Adrian Hates, who also happened to be a classically trained pianist and guitarist. It was one of Adrian’s classical guitar compositions that gave this project it’s name, releasing it’s first album ‘Cholymelan’ on Dion Fortune in 1994. Adrian would then form his own label ‘Accession’, on which every subsequent release by this band has appeared.
This band have traditionally been associated with the German gothic and darkwave genres. They are usually seen as a predominantly electronic band, though in recent years they have utilised increasing proportions of live guitar and drumming, and indeed are generally seen as being way too ‘goth’ for the bleepyheads to show the remotest interest. Yet goth purists will baulk at the quantity of throbbing electronics that underpin their songs. And any band that straddles the genres like that is a natural favourite of mine. But their backcatalogue is sizeable and the Pound Sterling isn’t recovering much against the Euro. Let’s find you a starting place (it’s called ‘One Of 18 Angels’, BTW!). Read The Rest… »
Project Pitchfork
There’s a very good reason why I regard Project Pitchfork as one of the greatest scene bands ever, and why so many people don’t get what all the fuss is about. The goths notice the drum loops kicking and the synths pulsing at an intensity level sufficient to class them as industrial. The industrial collective spot the socially-aware lyrics and elaborate synth lines and dismiss them as some old goth band (it’s called ‘darkwave‘, my friends). Back in their heyday, lots of people actually liked both styles of music and the Pitchies (as I’ll call them from time to time) bridged that gap very nicely.
When futurepop and then aggrotech and TBM took over the industrial side of the scene around the turn of the millennium, the very-old-goths responded by exhuming and reanimating the undead corpse of deathrock. We’ll discover exactly what happened at Pitchfork central later on in this article. Anyway, the whole saga began in 1989, when Peter Spilles and Dirk Scheuber met at a Girls Under Glass concert – a fitting place given that GUG actually laid some of foundation stones for the reunification of goth and industrial music. A seven track demo was recorded (which is one of the few recordings by this band I’ve yet to hear), which led to the first album, Dhyani. Read The Rest… »
Darkwave
This is one of those really inexact genre definitions that sums up a vast quantity of music, not all of it sounding similar, but all of it capable of getting a slot on stage at Wave-Gotik Treffen (hint: it’s big in Germany). It’s a style that’s derived from the original sounds of gothic rock, post-punk and the darker synthpop bands – various continental styles from the early 80s also proved to be influential (the Neue Deutsche Welle, French Coldwave, probably some others). The development of darkwave in the 1980s thus saw a combinations of synth-heavy gothic rock acts (Clan Of Xymox, Girls Under Glass), deep-and-meaningful electronic projects (Attrition, Die Form) and synthpop refugees (Psyche, Pink Industry) form the basis of the style.
However, darkwave really took off in Germany in the early 1990s. The long-running projects Deine Lakaien (quirky electronic, classical motifs, portentous vocals), Diary Of Dreams (epic synth-goth), Project Pitchfork (electro-industrial laden with social awareness) and Wolfsheim (goth-friendly synthpop). A sub-movement saw a collective from of artier bands with a theatrical aesthetic and ‘poetic’ lyrics – a movement known as Neue Deutsche Todeskunst, which encompasses much of the work of Das Ich, Goethes Erben, Relatives Menschsein and the early recordings of Lacrimosa. There were plenty of other practitioners – and not only German ones. It seemed as if any dark synthpop or gothic-rock-band-with-synths that came out of the European mainland could end up being tagged with the term. Read The Rest… »
Ethereal
This subgenre originated from the hazy ‘dream pop’ style practised by the likes of Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil, plus a number of other bands that were signed to the 4AD label, especially the Australian project Dead Can Dance. A predominantly American branch of the darkwave scene thus emerged that specialised in atmospheric textures and subtle melodies, typically fronted female vocalist who adopted a tone that could equally be described as incoherent or otherworldly. If she appeared wearing a long, floaty dress that made her look like a hot Wiccan priestess, so much the better. Read The Rest… »
