We Have a Technical

We have a Pick Five episode of the podacst for you folks this week, as we're trekking twenty years back to look at some representative records from 2004, spinning out of a conversation about that era on our recent [:SITD:] commentary. Also some talk about the New Beat Blind test and the Purple City fest in Edmonton.

Fifteen years on from its release, we're looking back at Rot , the high watermark for Germany's [:SITD:], on this month's commentary podcast. It's a record which stood out at the time in terms of structure and sound design compared to a relatively creatively inert club industrial scene, and we're getting into the minutiae of why that is. 

The odd pairing of Gitane Demone and Mark Ickx for the Demonix project, as well as some of David Thrussell's earliest dark ambient experimentation as Black Lung make up the body of this classically formatted, accidentally 1994-focused two albums episode of We Have A Technical. We're also discussing Spencer Sunshine's delivery of receipts concerning Boyd Rice's participation in neo-nazism. 

Despite our post-fest blues and exhaustion, we're back to bring you a plus-sized version of the podcast breaking down each and every act we caught this past weekend at Verboden Festival here in our own Vancouver backyard. Relive the memories if you were on the trip with us, and flag a couple of live acts to keep an eye out for if you weren't. 

In this week's episode of We Have A Technical, we're jumping off from a discussion Bruce had last week with our friends at Cemetery Confessions in order to examine the idea of the goth-industrial club format. A marriage of necessity? One which yielded productive hybridization? Is it of use or salience today? Was it ever? We're touching upon all of this, as well as the death of legendary engineer S...

Classic two albums format of the podcast for you this week folks, with a pair of fairly obscure records from a couple of decades back under the microscope. First up, the fanatic devotion to and imitation of Front 242 shown by Mastertune on their second LP prompts some discussion of the je ne sais quois possessed by the Belgian masters which makes that sort of homage so rare and awkward. Next, the...

A 2001 record which was rather out of step with industrial club styles of the time, Stromkern's Armageddon proved to cast a long thematic shadow as well as stand the test of time musically. We're discussing Ned Kirby's electro-acoustic arrangements, the eerie political polyvalence of its addressing of fanaticism, and how the album left a mark on the midwest industrial scene in this month's Patreon...

It's a Pick Five formatted episode this week, and we're each trying to find tunes which summarize or represent the larger catalogs and aesthetics of the artists involved; a surprisingly difficult task as we found it.

At long last, we're proud to present the 500th episode of We Have A Technical. We're joined by Joakim Montelius and Eskil Simonsson of the legendary Covenant to discuss the entire history and discography of the innovative electronic project. From industrial to techno to EBM and from teenage friendships to major label deals to fractures within the band, Joakim and Eskil spent nearly three hours wit...

As we often like to do when a new album by a landmark legacy band is released, we're setting this week's podcast aside for the discussion of Rampen - APM: Alien Pop Music , the brand new LP by industrial royalty Einstürzende Neubauten. We're making some attempts to situate the record in relation to the rest of the latter-era Neubauten catalog, but also spinning off into discussion of Blixa Bargeld...

The thorny issues of social media and general online presentation and how they shape our understanding of artists is the subject of this week's podcasts. From gaining additional context about a record to seeing other sides of artists to the perils of parasocial delusion, we're talking about the ins and outs of what we do and don't see of artists online. All that, plus discussion of the allegations...

Some numeric jiggery-pokery? From us? To do with the chronology of We Have A Technical? Never. On this episode we're looking at records from Black Tape For A Blue Girl and Black Strobe, plus running down news related to Nitzer Ebb, and the Cold Waves ans Terminus festivals.

We have a special two-part version of We Have A Commentary for you this week, as we're tackling both discs of the Mick Mercer-curated Gothic Rock compilation, a companion record to Mercer's book of the same name. In the first instalment, we're discussing some absolutely foundational tracks by the likes of Bauhaus, X-Mal Deutschland, Virgin Prunes, and plenty of others, noting both the variety of s...

We ain't getting any younger, and neither are the formative records which turned us into the sort of sick bastards who'd end up running a website for a dozen years and a podcast for nearly 500 episodes dealing with industrial music. To wit, on the occasion of Trent Reznor and so many other people's comments on the thirtieth anniversary of  The Downward Spiral , we're dusting off our scratched CDs,...

What on earth might records by Hocico and Gloria Mundi have in common with one another? In and of themselves, perhaps not much, but given that Hocico's debut demonstrates how early the band's decidedly harsher take on European dark electro was formed, and how a case can be made for Gloria Mundi being the first goth band, both fall well within the boundaries of We Have A Technical. In addition to t...

It's a Pick Five episode this week, as a slightly irreverent one, as we're talking about stupid songs we actually quite like. From brodustrial to novelty tracks to questionable lyrical choices, this one was a lot of fun to record. We're also talking about the announcement of Front 242's final shows. 

Teased off and on for several years, it's our commentary podcast on a singular record in both of the Senior Staff's understandings of electronics, hip-hop, and industrial: Pop Will Eat Itself's 1989 sophomore LP, This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This! . Chock a block with samples, yobbish irreverance and pop culture bricolage, it's a riotous trip through a long-gone day-glo era of nucl...

Hot on the heels of their new album Pendulum and some touring for it, Twin Tribes join us on this week's episode. Luis and Joel offer their thoughts on the band's cross-generational appeal, getting the balance of synths right, and Latino representation.

On this week's podcast we're using the occasion of Meat Beat Manifesto and Merzbow's new collaborative record as an opportunity to talk about each project as well as that new record. Both Jack Dangers and Masami Akita's respective paths and discographies have brought them into proximity with industrial music, but both have

This week's two albums-formatted episode of the podcast takes up Psyche's 2001 return to dark dancefloors with the futurepop-flavoured The Hiding Place and Skeletal Family's stone classic 1985 statement of how tightly dialed in but also expressive and creative early goth could be, Futile Combat . We're also talking about upcoming shows from Lords Of Acid and Images In Vogue.

Cosmic, stygian, abyssal, impassive, call dark ambient what you will, just don't call it late for dinner. On this week's episode we're discussing how this unique and often deliberately occluded genre emerged out of industrial and has taken on a life of its own. 

Coming hot on the heels of the dissolution of Throbbing Gristle, Chris & Cosey's debut LP Heartbeat doesn't just function as a bridge between their work as experimental enfants terrible and the dreamier, trance-like synthesis their work as a duo would explore, but also between major eras in experimental music. In this month's commentary podcast we're examining how the record links the origins of i...

We're looking back at specific live performances which left an impression on us in this episode of the podcast. Whether it's the humanization of icons, extremities of sound or circumstance, or performances which changed the way we think about a particular style or music in general, it's a very rhapsodic (but hopefully not too nostalgic) Pick Five episode this week. We're also talking a bit about t...

One goth rock record and one EBM record: not sure there's a more down the pipe format for an episode of We Have A Technical than that! Sunshine Blind's debut and Spark!'s most recent LP prompt discussion of production, vocal range, and all of the usual hair splitting Bruce and Alex are wont to get into.