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

Tout irait bien(lyrics)

On aimerait une vie de loin
Un amour de vacances
Du jus d’orange sous le soleil de Provence
On aimerait l’odeur du sel au bord de l’Atlantique
Du temps à perdre en jeux aquatiques

On aimerait attendre, lentement,
On aimerait attendre le jour suivant
Et tout va bien
Dormir en milieu d’après-midi
On aimerait dormir le soir jusqu’à midi
On aimerait de l’huile d’olive et des tomates, un transat
Le temps de penser à demain
Le temps de penser
On aimerait voir la vie de loin

Il faudrait une maison avec du lierre 
Des terrasses et des vieilles pierres
Il faudrait un jardin et de l’alcool
Beaucoup d’alcool
On aimerait une vie au loin
Une vie, au moins
On aimerait un amour avec vue
Des millions au moins
Du homard au menu
On aimerait acheter un phare
On aimerait vivre loin
Des vacances d’été
On les vivrait bien

On aimerait une vie de loin
Vivre de rien 
On aimerait de l’amour, un amour de vacances
L’amour avec vue
On aimerait dormir
On aimerait attendre tous les jours
Attendre, et rien
On aimerait une grande maison
Et un grand jardin
Beaucoup d’alcool
Une vie au loin
On mènerait une vie au moins

On aimerait du temps à perdre
Le temps de penser à demain

Il nous faudrait des tomates
Des pâtes
De l’amour avec vue
Des millions, encore des millions
On aimerait être riche, si riche
On aimerait du homard chaque soir
On aimerait vivre l’été
Les vacances
On aimerait attendre, et rien
Tout irait bien

On aimerait une vie de loin
Un amour de vacances
Du jus d’orange sous le soleil de Provence
On aimerait l’odeur du sel au bord de l’Atlantique
On aimerait du temps à perdre
En jeux aquatiques
On aimerait une vie de loin
On la vivrait si bien

Hyper vite

Tout irait bien

VA. Tears for Fears 4.

B1. Extase Urbaine - Perfect Storm [Soil Records]

Чувствуешь? Do You Feel? [ Soil ]

THE SORROWS

CRYING SKIES - THE SORROWS

OR_75 ≫ "Maman Küsters - Traümen Androiden Von Elektrischen Schafen"
Distributed by Oráculo Records / Bordello A Parigi / Diana Charité
Find it at:
oraculorecords.bandcamp.com/
bordelloaparigi.com
redeyerecords.co.uk
juno.co.uk
deejay.de
decks.de
hhv.de
kernkrach.de
youngandcold.de
discopiu.com
pacifica beach USA
disko union japan
discos paradiso
lostracks
ultrasound
mecanica records
... and some others lovely vinyl stores

OR_75 ≫ "Maman Küsters - Traümen Androiden Von Elektrischen Schafen"

Objekt

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

Three months after Candid Shots, Candid Shots Rappel concludes Nice Guise’s first release featuring a collection of their ongoing activities. They pile studio sessions extracts, concert recordings and sonic residues into a chaotic mass without any hierarchy, akin to an aggregate in the orbit of the post-punk movement and remnants of the Dada avant-garde.

Rappel, the second part of Nice Guise Candid Shots compilation, guides us back into the white corridors of offices. The title “Rappel” which means ‘‘reminder’’ in French, refers to two distinct ideas: rappel as a corporate or administrative warning (overdue), and rappel as the audience calling the performers back at the end of their show (encore). These combination of meanings lie at the core of this project.

In ‘‘Bonus track’’, for instance, the commercial bonus formula is diverted to become the purpose of the track itself. In a meaningless hymn of anger, the words ‘‘bonus track’’ are shouted over an hardcore kick.

Closing the album, ‘‘Outstanding’’, leads us through a pessimistic and ironic punk aftermath, reminiscent of Beyoncé’s Great Resignation anthem ‘‘Break My Soul’’: Release your anger / Release your mind / Release your job / Release your stress. However, unlike Beyoncé’s motivational house hymn, this song narrates the less glamorous reality of the fired intern —an anti-hero who is never left with renewed hope and ambition, but only more frustration and rage by the prospect of having to work to survive.

‘‘Outstanding’’ is an alternative version of the opening track from the first Nice Guise’s compilation released on ESITU Records in October 2023, creating a loop of alienation from which the short text on the drilled artwork invites us to break free: There are 108 possible days / The inability of living them all overwhelms the individuals / The three attached photos attests to a single day at the office / We invite you to release the excess.

Release date: February 23rd, 2024.

Premiere: Nice Guise - Rocaille [ESITU Records]

999 KNIVES

Lower Synth Department - My Prey (rehearsal take)

The music of the band is deeply influenced by and related to the experimental electronic music of the late 1970s and early 1980s, that was made in Sheffield by bands like The Future/The Human League, Vice Versa, Cabaret Voltaire, or by the formerly in Preston based musician Colin Potter and a few American avant-garde artists, pioneering in electronic music, like John Bender, etc.. Although the band is very careful in creating a minimal electronics sound, obviously appearing vintage in itself, it is produced in a hybrid way, by using analogous procedures and modern techniques of production as well. So in the end Lower Synth Department is concerned with post-minimal electronics so to speak.
 
The name of the band is related to at least three different references, which intercommunicate and therefore depict the sound of the band: first to the cold aesthetics of modernist, especially brutalist architecture, which conveyed and expressed a very dehumanized attitude to life from the 1950s till the 1960s, that still affected even the 1980s. Second, technically speaking, to the low frequency oscillator, which creates a rhythmic pulse or sweep and is often used to modulate synthesizers, delay lines and other audio equipment in order to create effects used in the production of electronic music, while the final reference derives from the band's name abbreviation.

Lower Synth Department - My Prey (rehearsal take)

Lower Synth Department

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