In the January issue of my monthly column for Electronic Beats (not yet published, don’t blame me), I’ve predicted that 2012 will be dominated by RVNG Intl, but if Software continues in this manner, maybe I’m gonna have to correct myself in a few weeks. What I’ve heard so far from the forthcoming Megafortress release is among the most painstakingly beautiful I’ve come across in recent months, and Slava‘s footwork-induced house anthem “I’ve Got Feelings Too” (see below) is frickin’ excellent. But it’s “Evidence” by NYC via Venezuela musician Carlos Giffoni, otherwise known as the organizer of the preeminent No Fun Fest, that has just completely taken my breath away. Starting with a few simple piano chords and bare vocals, the track quickly develops into a massive acid techno slasher that would be an embellishment for any Berghain club night. Absolutely unexpected and outright terrific.

And yeah, you should really listen to Slava as well:

Both Carlos Giffoni’s Evidence EP and Slava’s Soft Control EP will be out February 7 via Software.

We’ve been loving the mildly off-kilter synth pop by San Francisco’s Amanda Harper aka Running In the Fog ever since we got lost in the foggy bliss of “Missed the Rain” last summer, yet somehow we totally missed out on Harper’s latest single “Know When to Run”, dropped sometime late last year through Bad Panda Records. Anyway, I’m glad we can make up for that now by debuting the brand new video for this truly awesome song, shot at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach by Zach Ehrlich of Sonny & the Sunsets. Harper explains: “As lovers of the ocean and specifically this SF break, we edited it together to make a dreamy homage to being wrapped up and carried away from everything, which is exactly what I try to make my music do.” If you need to get carried away from something or everything as well (and who doesn’t), then this has been made for you:

Running In the Fog – Know When to Run

Cleared is the duo of Chicago-based artists Steven Hess and Michael Vallera. After last year’s debut, originally put out by Digitalis Ltd., Chicago’s excellent Immune Recordings has just released the project’s second full-length Breaking Day. The album is a staggering blend of stone-cold drones and pitch-black noise elements that are piled up to form massive, breathtaking soundscapes, all tied together by ultra-precise, relentless drumming. This is all very unsettling yet strangely mesmerizing, like watching quickly rising flood waters, deadly yet sublime, and completely irresistible. A highly recommended record, listen to the mind-boggling title track below.

Order Breaking Day directly via the label or (recommended if you’re in Europe) via Boomkat now.

Cleared – Breaking Day

Hhappiness are a jolly good outfit hailing from Stockholm with a growing musical repertoire somewhere between straight lo-fi and somewhat more polished guitar glory, at times rather noisy but invariably playful and with that certain amount of pop appeal that is somewhere in the genes of every Swede, pardon my cheap stereotyping. Don’t ask me about that extra “H” – it’s not even googleable, the mighty search engine will correct it bluntly. To quote the label’s description: “Amongst the trails of their three years as a band they have (…) picked up an H along the way.”

Anyway, “Bananas” is the title track of the band’s first official release, a 7 inch that will be put out by French boutique imprint Almost Musique on February 14. Order the vinyl now over here and stream or download the songs until the release date right here.

All the way from Tbilisi, Georgia (this one, duh), producer Gacha is about to drop his initial release on Apollo Records, the recently revived subdivision of acclaimed London via Ghent, Belgium label R&S Records. The two tracks below, which will both be part of the EP, have been floating around through the interwebs for a couple of months now, a fact that doesn’t make them feel less fresh. There’s no definite release date yet, but the record will presumably be out sometime in March or April. Listen to the ambient-infused downbeat tune “Remember” and the more trippy, deliberately more post-dubstep track “Bowl” below.

Gacha – Remember

I recently stumbled across Tokyo-based producer Taka Noda aka Mystica Tribe, whose debut single “Meditation Stick”, released last fall via SD Records, was an excellent excursion into grooving dub. Noda recently put “Flowers” up on his Soundcloud, an intriguingly meandering, bright and shiny yet comfortably mysterious house jam, playful and rhythmically complex, a terrific work all along. We don’t have too much information on this one, but Mystica Tribe surely is an artist to keep an eye on.

London via Hiroshima’s Mariko Doi, better known as the bassist/vocalist of everyone’s favorite noise poppers Yuck, has got a new project named Parakeet, a two-piece together with James Llewellyn Thomas. Their first 7 inch will be released March 5, listen to the a-side below. And you thought Yuck were noisy and 90s-infused.

Parakeet – Tomorrow

After such a long time without new material, and after last year’s breathtaking collection of previous works, Lagan Qord, it’s amazing to see that Elijah Wood apparently has managed to finally record new songs for his Terrors project. At least two new tunes popped up on Soundcloud recently, and both stated “from forthcoming George Jones Sings the Great Songs of Leon Payne cassette”, an album that of course has been recorded before, but even after countless comparing listens, it’s kinda hard to speak of “Lifetime to Regret” as being a cover song of this one, though it technically is. Wood’s sparse, restrained instrumentation together with his mourning, insistent voice still are an almost unbearably devastating listen.

If the Soundcloud tagging is correct, George Jones Sings the Great Songs of Leon Payne will be released by Ehse Records.

Terrors – Lifetime to Regret

I guess you could say that we’re a bit late on this once for once (thanks to Stingby for leading us to them in the first place, however); but considering the fact that NY’s collaborative outfit In India and their LP <><><> has gotten so little attention even after a year since the free release at Klånge (curated by Joseph Beers from the band), is to me nothing but mysterious. In India experiments with quirky, psychedelic pop and (children’s) bedroom electronica, literally setting no limits to the exploration of their own sound universe. It can be curious, playful or noisy in the one end, however smooth and beautiful (like “Some Future Spring” below) on the other, which makes the impossibly pronounced name of the album an interesting, but weird hour of listening.

For the particularly interested, they also unveiled no more than 46 (!) unreleased tracks in two large, and again, free albums named you who cling to the rope of love and you with the golden complexion, so if you feel like there’s something missing, go ahead and dig yourself through this massive collection; highly recommended for treasure hunters like ourselves.

In India – Some Future Spring

In India – Basement Disco

Starting Monday, January 30, Berlin will host the thirteenth edition of Club Transmediale (CTM), the “Festival for Adventurous Music and Related Arts” that arguably is Germany’s most relevant event entirely focusing on music (it is paired with the Transmediale festival for media art). Until February 5 and across various venues, the festival will, under this year’s theme “Spectral”, “devote itself to a musical and medial review of historic aesthetic designs and all unfulfilled utopias and dystopias”, to quote the mission statement: “Ever since unspectacularly leaving the last millennium behind, the feeling has been creeping up on us that, in the face of the simultaneity of a permanent state of crisis and an exponentially expanding technological archive, our entire future now lies in the past. There is no renaissance on the horizon. Instead one has an overriding impression of staggering through or colliding with collective and private phantasmagoria.” Hardly surprising, then, to see artistic trends such as “drag, witch house, hypnagogic pop, hauntology, analog synthesizer music, neo-industrial, and drone music” being the main focus of the CTM 2012 program, thus indeed providing a very timely response to the recent backward-looking developments in underground music.

Below, we’ve done some cherry picking, for the complete program and schedule you should go here.

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