A video I found a while back of Porn.Darsteller & La Seduction Des Innocents (aka Le Syndicat Electronique) live in Bordeau, France, recorded in 2004. Two of my favorite electronic musicians — I would kill to see a show like this live.

These guys were very influential in introducing the ‘minimal wave’ sound into the electro scene, and for me personally it was thanks to Invasion Planéte that I discovered artists like In Aeternam Vale, Echo West and Bakterielle Infektion, which opened up the doors to this whole new (to me) genre.

Porn.Darsteller and La Seduction Des Innocents Live set tracklisting:

Porn.Darsteller:
L’Ingénue
Holocaust
Wedding Day

La Seduction Des Innocents:
Le Menteur Étendu
Strawberry Flower

Two of my favorite writers on some hardcore street level bombing shit with a soundtrack from one of my favorite electro musicians. Best thing I have seen on Youtube in a long long while!

Le Syndicat Electronique – The Men Who Killed The Beat

Horfe & Tomek getting teenage kicks

Les Invalides – Au Revoir

A couple of weeks back my homeboy Alex Nôrinh sent me some tracks from a new 12″ he had picked up, C’est Passé by Les Invalides. It was released earlier in the year on obscure Polish/German label Automatik-Datamatik as a super limited single sided 12″ of only 77 copies (including 22 extra special white vinyl editions, one of which I am dying to get hold of!)

C’est Passé instantly caught my ear — three electro-wave tracks with an unmistakeably warm analogue sound, minimal but well-written step sequenced bass and drum machine rhythms with some possibly hand-played synthesizer parts layered on top. I was already enjoying the first two songs but the third, Au Revoir really grabbed me. A bare CR78 drum pattern backing a slow, romantic and melancholic synthesizer track. Beautiful.

Once we got over talking about how great the tracks were, Alex and my discussion instantly turned to who these ‘Les Invalides’ could be! Our first guess was that it must have something to do with Invasion Planéte. It fit the bill perfectly — minimal analogue electro/wave tracks, pressed on a limited 12″ with little to no information existing on the artist. The Invasion Planéte music and newer releases on Musamore and Zusammen are always shrouded in as much mystery as possible, but of course a little hunting around the net couldn’t confirm this either way.

I got in touch with Interfunk, who runs the Automatik-Datamatik label — but typically, predictably, as it was always going to be, he wasn’t able to tell me much more:
“Les Invalides are a forgotten Parisian synthesizer group started in the early 80s. They sent me these tracks from a recently discovered tape which had never seen the light before. It’s also a mystery for me…. I don’t know if there is more stuff still existing. I was told that a vocal version of Diable Danse has been recorded back in the old days, but I have never heard it… they tell me a lot of tapes with the old recordings are lost, so can’t say if there will be discovered one day to release another 12″…”

Sooo, the mystery remains unsolved for now. In fact the most I can tell you about this record is the impressive list of vintage analogue gear that was used in producing the tracks, boasting:
Roland: CR-78, Jupiter 4, Juno 60
Promars: System 100M, System 100 (Model 101 & 104)
Moog: Minimoog, Prodigy, Satellite
Arp: Sequencer, Odyssey, Axxe

You can buy the 12″ (a few copies left on black vinyl) directly from Automatik Datamatik. They are a completely independent and not-for-profit label working without a distributor, so show some support for great underground music and pick up a copy.

Oh yeah, if anybody can shed some light on Les Invalides or has some music for me to listen to, hit me up!

Les Invalides – Au Revoir

Jackie Ransom – Final Exposure

Miami might be best known for cocaine, vice, Miami Bass and sunshine, but what you might NOT be aware of is that there is some seriously dark and experimental wave music coming out of Miami. Probably the best known, is Staccato Du Mal — he had several tracks on each of the Wierd LPs, as well as a handful of great independently released 7″s and CDRs under various aliases and collaborations (including a beautiful 7″ with vocals by Liz Wendelbo of Xeno & Oaklander) on his own label SDM.

Another member of this lesser known Miami underground is Miss Jackie Ransom. Like Staccato Du Mal, Jackie shares a certain punk aesthetic to her music — using exclusively analogue instruments, including cheap synthesizers, lofi drummachines and guitar, all played live: one-take recordings of every track, often improvising with vocals and synth riffs as the track is coming along, making for a raw and unique sound.

Final Exposure is from Jackie’s upcoming album Cell Death. Featuring 8* (the vocalist from Flesh Græy Display) credited for vocals, guitar and mistake — yes you read that correctly. A duet of haunting vocals between Jackie and 8*, with dark and poetic lyrics with maybe just a slight nod to Joy Division.

The video clip was also made by Ms. Ransom herself, a disturbing collage of old archive video footage of hypnotism, psychology and sight, edited into a horrifying film noir nightmare. Once again that punk DIY aesthetic and imagination shines through, saying fuck to the million dollar video clips we are assaulted with any time we switch on a TV.

I have a split 7″ on the way with Miss Ransom, featuring her track Killer Inside (which will also appear on Cell Death and the upcoming Doom & Glamour album on Zerohour) and my track Eternal, with vocals from Beta Evers. Two great songs if I may say so myself, and it also features some beautiful artwork by the ever-amazing Caitlin Shearer. It will be released shortly on Zerohour so stay tuned baby!

Ms. Ransom also plays in electronic improv rock project Mascara Scare with 8* and Jackie Soir — check them out.

Jackie Ransom – Final Exposure

Xeno & Oaklander – Blue Flower (Live at Wierd)

Minimal wave, or minimal synth music has been around since the late 70s and early 80s, but until finding a revival over the last few years was a very obscure and underground genre. While there were some LP releases at the time, it was more common for minimal wave artists to go the punk/DIY ethic – self-pressed and distributed 7″s and especially releases on cassette tape, meaning that as you can imagine digging up these old treasures can be next to impossible now over 30 years later, and it’s safe to say that there is probably a whole wealth of music out there that might never see the light of day again.

Thanks to labels like New York based Minimal Wave, run by Veronica Vasicka who is dedicated to digging up these old treasures and remastering and re-releasing them on vinyl and as digital downloads (with artists permission of course) the minimal sound has been really making waves — pun possibly intended — in the underground electronic scene and it’s not hard to see why. With it’s punk ethic, lo-fi drummachine rhythms, romantic analogue synthesizer melodies – often played as live instruments instead of being sequenced (midi is a rarity, and even shunned by many as being too rigid), deep lyrics and passionate but often cold and distant vocals, it makes for beautiful listening though being in Sydney I don’t have the pleasure to see this stuff being played live or played at clubs.

The minimal wave sound has also had a huge influence on the electro scene over the past few years, you only need to listen to songs like Novamen – Lies, or check out record labels like Le Syndicat Electronique’s new label Musamore, or German Das Drehmoment.

My own introduction to minimal synth was through French electro label Invasion Planéte. The Invasion Planéte sound was very electro for the first few releases but quickly started becoming more and more sparse and minimal. I’ve always been a huge fan of Beta Evers, who’s sound is heavily inspired by vintage German New Wave and EBM, as well as old 80s industrial like early Ministry and listening to Front 242, Nitzer Ebb etc so I guess I had already been warmed up to the sound, but by about halfway through it’s lifetime, Invasion Planéte was concentrating almost exclusively on minimal wave music, and as i’d been following closely the Invasion Planéte releases it first really caught my attention, hearing artists like Silent Signals (aka Echo West) and Bakterielle Infektion from Germany, and of course Le Syndicat Electronique’s own music along with fellow label mate Porn.Darsteller.
It was electro, but not like i’d ever heard it before…apart from the prominence of vocals, something about it was raw and different, and I had to hear more. Before long, I found labels like Enfant Terrible from Holland and Wierd from New York and from there things spiralled out as I discovered there was a whole scene to this minimal wave music, with artists both now and ranging back right to the 1970s.

Xeno & Oaklander are from Brooklyn, and just released their masterpiece first full length album Sentinelle on Wierd Records. Members Sean McBride; well known for his solo project Martial Canterel and visual artist/filmmaker/fashion photographer Liz Wendelbo, who has also collaborated with Miami based Staccato Du Mal and New York trio Three To Forgotten (Xeno & Oaklander with Epee Du Bois) have a strict set of rules for their music — exclusively analogue synthesizers (no soft-synths, no midi and no digital, a bold move in this day and age of click and drag producers and DJs that have never touched a turntable in their lives), and one take recordings played as live as possible.

Sentinelle is a deep and richly layered album, with lyrics from both Liz and Sean, paranoia and disaffection, tales of underwater cities, the industrial revolution and a world of shadow combined and seamlessly changing from English to French, sometimes in the same song. The music itself ranges from slow synth pop style tracks to tense high-BPM synth-punk and from deep and romantic to at times aggressive.

This song, Blue Flower is from Xeno & Oaklander’s first EP Vigils — a self released CDr on Martial Canterel’s label Xanten, and also appeared on the second Wierd Compilation from Wierd Records, though both versions are different from each other, and different again to this version, which was played and recorded live at a Wierd party in New York in 2008.

I really love the original version from Vigils and for me it’s hard to beat. Tender synth melodies and haunting vocals from Liz Wendelbo, from the first time I heard it I found it amazing. But this live version is beautiful. The long and atmospheric intro and added depth of Martial Canterel’s vocals add a whole new layer of tension which I find just incredible.

Xeno & Oaklander – Blue Flower (Live at Wierd)