Welcome to the Future: 010: Music news round-up 01-September 2017

A new month, and I resume my now regular weekly roundup of musical items of interest. As is now usual, this will include the new releases this week, other announcements, upcoming events, and other items that are worth hearing about, as well as an update on what has been new on amodelofcontrol.com this week. There hasn’t been as much as I’d have liked in the latter camp this week, as life has got in the way, but there are a number of new posts coming your way this next week.

Welcome to the Future: 010
Music news round-up 01-September 2017

Also in this series

Welcome to the Future: 009
Welcome to the Future: 008
Welcome to the Future: 007
Welcome to the Future: 006

The autumn is looking really busy, too, and amodelofcontrol.com will be at Whitby next month (although unlikely to be writing about bands – it’s a holiday for the site! – I’ll be playing for Real Gothic FC as usual, though) and then also BIMFest 2017 in December – never mind all the gigs that are fast popping up.

If you want to submit anything to be included here? E-mail me (You know what to do with that to make it work, right?), comment/message on Facebook at the amodelofcontrol.com page, and over on Twitter (@amodelofcontrol).

New Releases this week

Firstly a couple of releases I’d missed off recently. The ever-intriguing Android Lust has returned with Berlin – Crater v2, which I’ll be talking about more soon on here.

Then there are the long-awaited Curve re-issues, remastered and massively expanded (including, from what I can tell, the other EPs of the period, remixes and other odds and ends), to mark the 25th anniversary of Doppelgänger, and Cuckoo accompanies it. Both can be obtained (on CD, or on vinyl without the bonus tracks) here. I’m currently working on an interview with Dean Garcia to talk more about them – and the exceptional new SPC-ECO album Calm that was released last week.

Otherwise, this is a week of big releases. Post-rock titans Mogwai return with Every Country’s Sun, James Murphy’s LCD Soundsystem return with (the really, really great) American Dream, and Paradise Lost continue their return to their gothic metal roots with Medusa. Then there is also Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark‘s quite great, modern synthpop album The Punishment of Luxury.

Other releases coming soon

Godspeed have revealed Undoing a Luciferian Towers, the first track from their forthcoming album Luciferian Towers. This far into their career, this is Godspeed doing what they do best – more next week.

Much more unexpected news, to me, anyway, is the return of the post-hardcore band Quicksand, who have a new album out this year, over two decades since the last. I can only hope that there might be UK shows as a result.

Effectively, industrial music as we know it – and the term “industrial” in this sense – began forty years ago this November, with the release of Throbbing Gristle’s Second Annual Report. Mute are marking this with lavish vinyl re-issues of their back catalogue. amodelofcontrol.com, incidentally, will also be marking this important anniversary, details to follow…

As we long suspected (and noted by I Die: You Die some months back when they covered the recent “best-of”), :wumpscut: is finally ending, some might say a few years too late. This is the first “official” confirmation thereof, aside from the message in the packaging of the best-of.

Upcoming gigs and clubs

I’ll be adding in Whitby events and November gigs/clubs next week.

01-Sep – Occulture at The Albany W1
02-Sep – Chron Gen, 1919 + Mr Strange – Re-arranged gig at Electrowerkz, N1
06-Sep – Terminal Gods album launch show at Shacklewell Arms, E8
08-Sep – Retribution Alice with FEN at The Lounge, N19
09-Sep – KMFDM at O2 Academy Islington, N1
16-Sep – The Crüxshadows at Electrowerkz, N1
16-Sep – Clan of Xymox and Decoded Feedback at O2 Academy Islington, N1
22-Sep – Dead & Buried at Club Kolis, N19
23-Sep – Exit the Grey presents: Ash Code, Monica Jeffries & Llumen at Electrowerkz, N1
23-Sep – Utterly Wrecked! The Gothic Boat Party and Thames Cruise at Tower Pier, EC3
23-Sep – Resurrected Returns at The George, Leeds
30-Sep – Nightmare at Ye Olde Salutation Inn, Nottingham
30-Sep – Bunker 13 at Eiger Studios, Leeds
03-Oct – EMA at Oslo, E8
05-Oct – Ben Frost at Electric Brixton, SW9
06-Oct – Exit The Grey IV at The Star of Kings, London N1
14-Oct – Slimelight Turns 30 at Electrowerkz, N1
19-Oct – Desperate Journalist and Fightmilk at The Dome, NW5
20-Oct – Pinkshinyultrablast at Oslo, E8
21-Oct – Sentinel v3.0 at Zombie Shack, Manchester
02-Dec – Manuskript, The Memepunks and Foxcunt at The Islington, N1

Other things

Likely worth hearing tonight: Henry Rollins is standing in for Iggy Pop on 6Music at 1900 tonight.

A particularly unpleasant development this week was the Taylor Swift/Ticketmaster tie-up for her forthcoming tour, which is effectively “pay to queue”. In more detail, it is “buy more stuff, get a better chance of being in the queue for tickets” – including, apparently, a counter that encourages you to buy up to five copies of the album. I mean, I’ve got multiple copies of some albums, but those were bought over many years (and in different versions). This is astonishingly cynical, but I have a nasty feeling this won’t be the last time we see this.

That said, as my friend Paddy in JLA noted yesterday, our scene can be no better – VIP tickets to industrial shows in particular being something I don’t understand either. That said, bands have to make some money from somewhere, and if VIP tickets and no-end of special editions and re-issues are the way, what can we do?

amodelofcontrol.com content in the past week

Memory of a Festival: 028: Infest 2017
I run through my thoughts on the nineteenth Infest, an emotional and intriguing weekend.
Photos: Infest 2017: People
Photos: Infest 2017: Bands

Next week will see both Tuesday Ten: 307: Tracks of the Month (August 1997) – held over from last week – and Tuesday Ten: 308: Tracks of the Month (August 2017) posted, as well as Talk Show Host: 036 (with Bill Leeb of Front Line Assembly) and Into the Pit: 198, providing corresponding coverage of the FLA London show.

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