Modular techno obsessive and dark pop connoisseur: Julia Bondar’s fourth studio album Bonding sounds like nothing else you’ll hear this year.     

Julia Bondar is a Ukrainian born, Barcelona based electronic music artist, singer, and songwriter. Her journey as a musician started when she was making demos for Endorphin.es modular synthesizers to help her partner, Andreas Zhukovsky, to promote and develop freshly engineered modules for his Endorphine.es brand.  Bondar soon became a co-founder of the brand and moved the company from Kiev, to Barcelona, where her obsession with modular synthesis truly took root. 

Prior to Bonding, Bondar has released three albums, the latest of which was 2020’s Industrial Symphony LP which demonstrated her innate ability to extract orchestral sounds from synthetic equipment. A blend of techno rhythms and dark pop, it paid tribute to Bondar’s idea of a modern industrial symphony, employing the powerful and unique characteristics of analog machines while also being harmoniously linked to the pleasant, danceable, and hypnotic atmosphere of industrial rhythms: themes that are explored further on this new album. 

Across nine distinct and engrossing tracks on Bonding, Bondar blends and plays with genre, from industrial, techno, electro, avant-garde pop, dark wave and more. Danceable and melodic, often moody and sinister, sometimes euphorically melancholic, she puts a unique stamp on every track she produces, giving the album a traceable through-line despite its myriad and often disparate influences and tones.  

Album opener Ruby Red sets the tone in dynamic fashion: a pummelling techno thumper that gives way to two further full on industrial techno bangers in Pleasure & Pain and Flamboyant – visceral, no-holds-barred cuts that see Bondar fully cut lose with her driving, highly energetic modular programming.  

From there the album drifts into perhaps its most self-reflective moment, with the intro to La neige et ses messes noires. This arresting track was made as a love-letter to French electro in collaboration with Maman Küsters, a French duo formed by Gaël Loison and Cyril Pansal, with Pansal penning the lyrics to Bondar’s music and Loison producing. This love of dark French electro is further explored on Obey: a haunting, mid-tempo slice of crushing electronica that simply demands your attention. 

The title track offers a brief respite from the intensity of the previous tracks, offering a space to move your body in a tribal, hypnotic dance. Antisocial is about embrace your true self, explored by a broken beat pattern and sidewinding synth lines that ebbd and flows between crushed drums and ethereal pads, and the broken beat structure is continued on the closing track In Flame: a gorgeous, expansive redemption offering the listener space to reflect. 

An arresting, beguiling listen from start to finish, Bonding is a call for emotional transformation, with Bondar evoking different states and feelings: starting from superficial but reaching to the deepest corner of your mind. This album is designed as a conversation between Bondar and her audience through the music and track names, a call for reflection and conscious approach to listening.

PREMIERE : Julia Bondar feat. Maman Kusters - La Neige Et Ses Messes Noires

Inspired by Isaac Asimov's 'Foundation' and The Adverts 'Gary Gilmore's Eyes' (1977). 

I know the end is coming,
But hoping I'm not right.
The evidence is building,
The dying of the light.
History stops for no one.
Even kings of ten thousand suns.

Anything to stop me.
To say what's on my mind.
Nothing is permanent
If you read the signs.
History stops for no one.
Chaos, one millenium.

Hidden hands will help me
To keep things on the line.
It's a pleasant fantasy:
That things are by design.
History stops for no one.
What will fall and things to come.

Hari don't need his eyes to see:
Numbers don't lie - Other's won't believe.
Hari will sing a different song,
Secretly - to rebuild takes so long. 
Eyes receive the message now,
All predicted, and he will tell you how.

Looking through Hari Seldon's Eyes

Hari Seldon's Eyes

Чувствуешь? Do You Feel? [ Soil ]

PARADOX SEQUENZ (Berlin) 

Paradox Sequenz is a project by Sebastian W. Inspired by the sound of the early eighties and nineties, he sets socio-critical texts to music consistent minimalwave.

Get  the track here: 
https://miseriarecords.bandcamp.com/track/a2-paradox-sequenz-come-and-see

Paradox Sequenz - Come And See

Smart Cities

Secret - Remix

from the album Mellow Scenes
-
Over some hurdles you stumble, others you jump over. Either way, you leave them behind at some point.

Over there

ARBOU-The Trip [DARK NATURE CONCEPT]

And yes, it’s been exactly 3 months since I started learning music production. And this is my 3rd song. I’m still in the learning phase, so I’m at the very beginning of the road. There’s still so much to learn. I don’t have a good computer or top-tier music equipment. I’m even using the trial version of FL Studio. I upload these songs so I can understand what I’m doing right and wrong thanks to you, and improve myself through that. That’s why even a single piece of feedback you give will help me a lot in many ways. Your support and help are very important to me on this journey. Thank you.

Lotus (Sped Up)

In the final moments before dawn, the city holds its breath.
Layers of synths, deep reverbs, and a rising crescendo compress your thoughts into a single, clear projection.

A zoom into the future.

SIGHTLINE

Lower Synth Department - My Prey (rehearsal take)

ambivalent indiewave projections of an optimistic nihilist | inspired by New Wave, 80s, Coldwave, Darkwave, Postpunk and slightly misanthropic thoughts...
no label, no rules, just music, pure as it comes 
// Michael [K] Smith

Over there

A TRANSITION