MUSIC

The 4th full-length studio album by Robert Alfons aka TR/ST (fka Trust), 'Performance', sinks even further into the nasty synth-pop psychodrama that the project has pioneered and, finally, perfected across over a decade of evolution. Recorded in Los Angeles, the songs seethe with dread, lust, reckoning, and abandon, backlit by the light pollution of a thousand dead end city streets. Alfons co-produced the collection with versatile composer and producer Nightfeelings, achieving a thick, smoky balance of eerie synths, fog machine low end, and bruised, crooning voice. The title alludes to a friend’s offhand remark about Alfons' intrinsically performative nature. The opener, "Soon," swells to life with hymnal electronics before kicking through the dance floor with a huge new wave hook, spiked with caustic kiss-off lyrics ("Asleep I still say it aloud / Scared stiff it’s all around / We never did call it off, now our organs dried / Scared stiff to stone, you liar"). The music moves between beauty and bitterness, anthem and anguish, the sound of melancholia gone massive. On track after track, Alfons wields pop dynamics and brooding production wizardry like a weapon, spiraling through a roll call of singles – "All At Once," "The Shore," "Dark Day," "Boys of LA." Throughout, there’s a sense of emotional turmoil elevated to strange heights, stained by guilt and ghosts and the memory of those wronged and those still unforgiven. As a world unto itself, Performance is persuasive, immersive, and intoxicating, at the threshold of stirring and disturbing. Alfons’ voice is the anchor in the storm, singing a collage of impressions and confessions with a smeared, stream of consciousness logic. He’s both observer and instigator, performer and playwright, liberated by the stage and the night: "Now we see the rotten mind / It’s eye to eye and mysteries/ Sail your boat for shore / I sit by the window waiting for it."

Nico's second solo album, 1968's The Marble Index, & third solo album, 1970's Desertshore, have long been out of print. These reissues include audio mastered from the original tapes and previously unreleased photos of Nico by Guy Webster.

Nico's haunting vocals predicted the Gothic movement and co-producer and Velvet Undeground's band mate John Cale's startingly modern classical production ensured The Marble Index's timeless appeal. The iconic music journalist Lester Bangs wrote, “The Marble Index is the greatest piece of 'avant-garde classical', 'serious' music of the last half of the 20th century so far,” and the New Yorker recently hailed both records as “austere miracles of will and invention.”

Nico's second solo album, 1968's The Marble Index, & third solo album, 1970's Desertshore, have long been out of print. These reissues include audio mastered from the original tapes and previously unreleased photos of Nico by Guy Webster.

Nico's haunting vocals predicted the Gothic movement and co-producer and Velvet Undeground's band mate John Cale's startingly modern classical production ensured The Marble Index's timeless appeal. The iconic music journalist Lester Bangs wrote, “The Marble Index is the greatest piece of 'avant-garde classical', 'serious' music of the last half of the 20th century so far,” and the New Yorker recently hailed both records as “austere miracles of will and invention.”

Spectre is the third album by the late West Coast composer, healer, and medium Pauline Anna Strom. First released in 1984, the album finds Strom exploring the darker corridors of human mythology under the influence of vampiric lore, evoking a hushed gothic solitude and showcasing her breathtaking dexterity of sound design. Despite its shadowy hues, Spectre offers generous glimpses of a vivid light that could only have come from a heart wide open to the cosmos. Restored and mixed from the original reels by Marta Salogni, and newly remastered, this is the album’s first ever official reissue, and the definitive edition of a visionary statement.

Ghastly and hallucinatory – Last Liasse is a sign of the times, alternative pop record by Helen Island. Within this debut album, the artist captures the saccharine gaze of digital escapism through characteristic filtered high notes, cut-up genres, and processed vocals. Providing a comprehensive overview of Helen Island’s self-distributed initiatives, with the ethos of the Parisian Simple Music Experience collective, the twelve tracks set a solid musical score that resonates with the age to come.

Provocative post-punk from Israel's undercover goth prince. Megira's lone album with the Modern Dance Club showcased a grimier, more driving vision of his brand of trashy no wave. Spread across 31 tracks and two LPs, Love Police schizophrenically mixes industrial soundscapes, surf ditties, hardcore, swamp pop, bubble grunge, screaming, ecstasy, and enough fuzz to warrant a needle check.

The bastard love child of Elvis and Lux Interior, Israeli guitarist Charlie Megira brewed a heady amalgam of ’50s trash rock, surf-y tremolo, and reverb-drenched goth during his all-too-brief 44 trips around the sun. He recorded seven albums worth of material in 15 years, primarily issued on CD-R, most of which is now unreadable or in a landfill. Armed with only an Eko guitar, a black tuxedo, and his signature wrap-around shades, Charlie Megira was a mold-breaking artist who disintegrated while we were all staring at our phones. In 2006, Israeli garage-nik Charlie Megira took a sonic turn while partnered with Israeli multi-instrumentalist Michal Kahan. The duo wasted no time forging a new path, swapping Megira’s trademark reverb for echo, and guitar-noir for new wave. Their third album together, Charlie Megira And the Hefker Girl is an unabashed continuation of gothy ’80s archetypes employed by Joy Division, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and The Cure. With little impedance, the album fits into Megira’s ageless world of cross-pollinated genres and styles.