Being a part of a successful rock band isn’t always easy. For Marianne, lead-singer of the French Electro-Punk sensation Shane Cough, it meant being trapped in a routine of performing the same songs and vocal style in the same musical context over and over again. So she quit the job in 2006 to lock herself up in the intimacy of her own studio in Paris. After four years of freeing her voice, programming some unique sounds and beats, and writing a bunch of her own songs, Marianne is back under the moniker of Clytem Scanning. And she’s more creative and addictive than ever.
I had the chance to talk with Marianne about leaving a well-established rock-band, developing her own, unique approach to music, and keeping her alter ego Miss Lois Iron in check.

Read the in-depth interview with the French Electro-Rock chanteuse over at audiovoltaics.cc ...

Dimitar Dodovski is quite a new name to the international netaudio scene. I became aware of him when he released his "Internal Affairs EP" on aeronautique last year. Unfortunately, the Berlin based Techno & Ambient label decided to take down all its past releases from its website, and Dimitar's debut doesn't even seems to be available on Archive.org anymore. This is sad, as it would deserve some more attention.

But there are good news for friends and fans, as the excellent and well-established Tropic Netlabel released Dodovski's second EP some days ago, and the Macedonia based musician proves to have evolved immensely since his 2009 mini-album. There's no doubt "Fiction Makes Sense" is one of the most ambitious releases the team around Daniel Tischer has given life to so far. Leaving behind traditional recipes and formulas of conventional dance music, Dimitar Dodovski melts a bunch of different musical influences including Dub, Electro-Funk, Electronica, Glitch, Techno, and IDM into one interesting and richly coloured sonic universe of his own.

The opener "Nitetime" acts like a summary of what to expect from the following four tracks: Extremely complex and sophisticated rhythmic structures form a dense foundation to wafting thick soundscapes, interweaving themselves to a rarely seen sonic completeness. But Dimitar Dodovski even gets a lot more experimental with "If We're Apart", a track which blends Arabic chants, loops and harmonies into a casual frame of deep Dub chords. Another highlight of "Fiction Makes Sense" is the wavy "Larva, Larvae (false)", showcasing the artist's very original "art of stumbling" with its bumpy beats and warm, lush pads, that wash through your speakers like electronic flotsam.

Dodovski created an extremely fine piece of musical architecture, in which you'll find new aspects each time you put it on. A truly original work.

Dimitar Dodovski - Fiction makes Sense | Dimitar Dodovski on MySpace

 

NOECHO Records is a London based netlabel, which was established in 2008. Since then the British sonic farm has been releasing a couple of the most interesting productions in the field of experimental Electronica and Ambient music around. Their latest one is by the Factory Kids, a singer-songwriter duo from Glasgow.

Christina Marie and Tim Chaplin put out their initial releases via compilations and blogs, before the self-titled debut album was released through Powertool Records in 2009. They've been pretty productive since then, as 2010 saw not less than three more releases by the Kids, including one remix album of their own material. The title of that album describes the style of the duo best: "Beautiful Distortion". The Scottish musicians might be essentially rooted in the singer-songwriter tradition and even claim The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and the "cheesy music of the 80s" as their source of inspiration, but they do their best not to polish their material and rather prefer to put it out in its roughest condition available. If you're searching for an accessible starting point for the exploration of the Factory Kids' art, you should watch the video for their debut single "She Said" from 2009 on YouTube, before you're ready to keep your ears busy with the more experimental side of the two unusual musicians.

Talking of experimentalism, their latest five track EP "Get Gone" moves Christina and Tim even further into new directions of what you might call pure Post-Ambient and Post-Electronica.The rhythmic fundament, the vocals and even implied melodies hide behind a raw shell of muted effect algorithms and dark atmospheres. The best example for this kind of industrial, distant and rustling sound aesthetics is the title track itself, which leaves it to its listener to link up the scattered musical fragments. "Nothing is Reality" brings us a bit closer to the previous work of the Factory Kids, with its monotonic beats and ethereal vocals of Christina, before "Tale of Never" unexpectedly manages to soothe the now roughened ears and soul with an Ambient-ish warming, crinkly melody and production.

If you're up to look behind the unpolished charm of a rough diamond to feed your brain (and in a strange and stealthy way your heart also), give the Kids a try. They already stole my heart, and somehow I still don't have any clue how that might have happened.

Factory Kids - Get Gone EP | Factory Kids on MySpace

Dominik Paß knows electronic music. He grew up with the emerging scene of the German media capital of Cologne in the early 90s and sporadically publishes both electronic music and phonetic poetry under his real name and various pseudonyms such as Liquid Diffusion, Sapere Aude!, and Serve & Destroy. But he does not only produce music, he also studies the theories behind it and shares his insights in his written publications: on abstract electronic music, on phonetic poetry, and on Break- and Speedcore in his doctoral dissertation.

One of his (way too) rare vital signs in the netaudio scene is the not less than brilliant "Transcendere LP" from 2006, which has been released on the excellent German netlabel Dreiton.net. Although Paß explores known territories like Ambient, Minimal Dub, and Dub Techno with it, he finds uncharted spaces in these genres, opens doors for further investigations and thus paves the ground for thinking artists. It's striking that Paß moves between these different approaches to electronic music, dense rustling soundscapes, lugging beat constructions, and minimalistic harmonies with the most impressive ease, without ever losing the focus on the overall coherent sound of the whole album. And while his debut is a didactic play of precise composition techniques, detailed sounddesign, and the integration of all of these aspects into one harmonic picture, it never bothers its listener with a sterile, an all too systematic or even indoctrinating style, but stays soothing and emotionally stimulating at the same time.

Dominik Paß' "Transcendere LP" sums up the essence of electronic music in its purest form: it perfectly reflects the digital environment of its listener's actualities of life while eluding itself from any secularistic methods of comprehension - and therefore lends itself to the "staging of counter-worlds", as Dreiton itself puts it so very tellingly.

Dominik Paß - Transcendere LP | Dominik Paß' biography on Dreiton.net