Darkwave

3 posts

Diary of Dreams – A Listener’s Guide

The second consecutive Listener’s Guide to be about a band from Deutschland beginning with ‘D’, but that’s the point at which the similarities end.  The DAF listener’s guide was written as a somewhat delayed tribute to Gabi Delgado, who died on the eve of the initial COVID lockdown (thankfully not from said disease itself), only for my writing to get totally derailed as my creativity ground to a standstill along with the rest of the world.  I eventually completed it, but the significance of the timing was lost.

This guide, however, has been a long time coming.  It’s about a band who have featured frequently in my DJ sets and past playlists.  I wrote about them frequently back in my EOL-Audio days.  And yet I’ve found their works remain somewhat under-appreciated amongst many of those who’s tastes I otherwise share.  Too “goth” for the industrial kollectiv, too electronic for the goth-rock puritans.  Too dark in tone for the casual listener, but too song-oriented for experimental elitists.   

It’s time to tell you all what you’ve been missing out on.

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Apoptygma Berzerk – A Listener’s Guide

This guide comes after a lengthy break in my long-form writing.  In order to get back on track, I realised I had to cover a band where I could really spin a tale, both in terms of the band’s own history and how their music affected me. And when I think back to which band broke the Anglo-American dominated nature of my CD collection back in the late 1990s and dragged me willingly into the ‘scene’ that has dominated my life ever since,  Apoptygma Berzerk are the band most responsible. 

The name means little to many, indeed it means nothing at all in linguistic terms.  However, behind that incomprehensible name is a fascinating, diverse, sometimes frustrating project, one who’s never afraid to state its influences, but always willing to take them in a variety of directions.  It is a project of many facets, many influences and many motivations, and hence despite not having the largest backcatalogue of all the bands I’m planning to cover, it’s still my longest Listener’s Guide to date.

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Project Pitchfork – A Listeners Guide

My discovery of the whole goth/industrial/darkwave scene in the late 90s relied on a few clubs, some word of mouth and a still very patchy World Wide Web. One name that kept cropping up was Project Pitchfork, a band no-one could really describe in the few words, but the name itself intrigued me. Every successive track I heard piqued that curiosity further. I remained a fan even after they’d fallen out of favour with others. And their releases, the good and not-so-good, always got me thinking. In every possible sense, they’re the right candidate for my first ‘Listeners Guide’.

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