Funker Vogt [GERMANY]
[website] [myspace] [Metropolis Records]
First show in north america in 5 years!

When Funker Vogt was founded in 1995 by Gerrit Thomas and Jens Kästel. nobody could foresee that, within just one year, it would grow into one of the leading electro-acts of today. Originally, it had been envisaged as just one more of Gerrit Thomas's many musical projects; but the project took the world by storm and grew to become GT's main act.

The man who gave the band its name, Funker Vogt is a friend, who was serving as operator/navigator with the German army at that time. This choice of name describes and defines the theme of the project: German army - military - war.

Next to its creativity, it is the vibrant energy of its live concerts which best characterises the band. This quality has undergone continuous improvement as the size of the band has grown from two to four. Funker Vogt is also known as a complete work, regrouping image, music, lyrics, and stage presence into a unique theme: One of the major characteristics of Funker Vogt's concerts is the martial appearance of the band. Critics describe this experience as a war being presented on stage.

This is an image, deliberately chosen by Funker Vogt. On one hand, it is provocative and hence liable to be misunderstood on a superficial glance. On the other hand, however, this controversial image gives rise to deep-seated associations and creates a strong and consistent link between the fan and the band. The image that is sought combines both the appearance of the band and the contents of the songs. In combination, these two elements preclude all misunderstandings, as there is a clear irony between the drastic militarism presented, which is caricatured during live concerts, and the underlying message. These contradictions emphasise and strengthen the body of the texts.

War and social injustice have become the main topics over the years. These have reached their fullest expression in Funker Vogt's earlier publication: Execution Tracks, and the video accompanying it. Audio and Video present the grotesque cruelties and the tragedy of war, most obviously in such songs as Civil War and Tragic Hero. The group's stance is unambiguously expressed in Fortunes of War and its chorus. War reappears as a topic in the publication which followed, Maschine Zeit, but more allusively as a foil and backdrop to more specific ideas, where a change of musical style accompanies the evolution of these concepts.

Just as with the previous album, Aviator follows an overall concept: eventually, through time, memories of history and war fade away. Starting with the title track and flowing through each one after, the theme extends throughout the cover artwork, booklet, and band photos as well. The cover shows an old airplane and many more are found throughout the booklet, but not as a whole. Individual pieces are shown to illustrate the ideas of time, history, decay, aging and abstract ideas through the details of cracks, peeling paint, and crumbling rivets of these planes that are rusting away into obscurity and will soon be gone forever. With their passing, memories will fade into obscurity (much like the soldiers whose memories are vanishing) and only pictures will remain without a direct link to the physical manifestation. All of which symbolically illustrates the subject matter.

A big undertaking went underway to diversify the sound structures within Aviator. Over all, the album is fast and beat driven, with more emphasis placed on the sounds and samples to make it a much more pronounced album. This can be seen with Aviator’s club tracks like "City of Darkness" (136 bpm) or "Paralyzed" (130 bpm) which are seemingly mid-tempo songs when compared to "Thanatophobia" (144 bpm), "One" (140 bpm), and "My Fortune" (139 bpm). All in all Aviator comes across as fresher, more aggressive and diversified than Navigator but still encompasses Funker Vogt’s signature elements. Which is how Funker Vogt should sound in 2007!


Rabia Sorda [MEXICO]
[website] [myspace] [Out of Line]
North american first outside Mexico!

Rabia Sorda is Erk Aicrag’s solo project. The lyricist and singer of the Mexican hard electro duo, Hocico, started working on this project in 2003, listening to the internal voices that compelled him to create his own sonic world. To create, he sees himself from a different perspective and he reinvents many aspects of himself to bring this new entity to life.

Erk Aicrag, known to most as the energetic front man of Hocico, now lets the world partake in his very own private madness. Those that expect “Métodos del Caos” to be a mere continuation of his work with the Mexican Hardfloormasters are bound to be in for a big surprise, indeed. Yes, the first long play album of Erk’s solo project is full of hard and violent music and, yes, there is still that incomparable voice, which, in its utter aggression and sheer hopelessness, seems to open a pathway to the deepest abysses in the human soul … but … that is where the similarities stop. The voice distortion box is left in the closet for significant parts of the album and the songs do not follow down any sort of beaten path. Thudding EBM beats and swirling bass lines are intertwined with complex melodies and ethnic experiments. Some songs develop slowly from atmospheric sound scapes to low-tempo Industrial-horror-ballads, while others hit you straight in the face with fast beats and intriguing hook lines. Nothing on „Métodos del Caos“ is ever predictable, which makes the album one of the most exciting releases in hard Electro in a long time. This will easily position Erk Aicrag as one of the few artists who really stand out in the Industrial genre. Rabia Sorda is exactly the sort of fresh breeze the musically stagnating scene needs!


KIEW [GERMANY]
[website] [myspace] [Out of Line] First canadian show!

KiEw is a German electro-industrial project founded in late 1990 by Andreas "Thedi" Thedens. It started with avant-garde and dada-industrial sound experiments, later changing to more rhythmic power electro-industrial/power noise. The band uses a lot of break beat and techno elements and voice samples from movies, audio books, etc. Signed to Out of Line since 2000. Main themes in most tracks are insanity, schizophrenia, paranoia and therapy.

Welcome to the maximum security section at KiEw's parallel universe, one of the leading institutes in electro-acoustic psychotherapy! We knew you would find us sooner or later. Your condition at this point of time is already more than alarming, there is only one last chance for recovery: audiotherapy!

Twitching limbs to raging beats are the crucial characteristics indicating the overcoming of the crisis (at which point one may find his own self). Patient Dr. Thedens and his colleagues Thiemicke and Kulcke are happy to support you with previously untested medical noises at any time.

Noisuf-X [GERMANY]
[website] [myspace] [ProNoize] North american first!

The project's definition is simple and clear: An apocalyptic and fearful view of the world is what NOISUF-X, the side-project of X-Fusion, is dealing with. It describes a cold and hopeless atmosphere musically with harsh distorted beats, experimental sounds and pushing sequences. The recurrent soundstructures and its simple monotony build a catchy opposite to X-FUSION.

The story of NOISUF-X had begun exactly in 1988 when Jan Lehmkämper from Bochum/Germany used his legendary C64 for combining electronic sounds with organ-sequences and vinyl-elements. Two years later his C64 was detached by an Amiga 500, developing to 4 tracks and 8 bit. The first project was born, but the way that had to be gone until NOISUF-X came into being should be long. During the next years Jan created 10 albums under the name of X-FUSION by his own without a real deal. He extended his equipment over and over again and even got several gigs at Techno-parties such as the Innovation Rave (Fantasy/Dülmen) where he showed his abilities live in front of almost 2000 fans. X-FUSION's style of music evolved into the style of Techno/Acid/House just to the year 2000, when his first tracks including vocals were produced. Finally his hard work that changed into EBM sound at the end got appreciated by Indie-Label Dark Dimensions/Scanner, where he signed a contract and his first album 'Dial D For Demons' was released. On exactly this release a track appeared that gave NOISUF-X a basis for its existence by its title. The idea of the homonymous side-project was born.

Jan produced some Industrial/Noise-Tracks as NOISUF-X and signed a contract at Pro-Noize/Dark Dimensions. The first official release was the track "Happy Birthday" on the Alpha-Matrix-Compilation 'Endzeit Bunkertracks Act I'. The first Album 'Antipode' was released in summer 2005. In 2006 an EP called 'Tinnitus' followed.


Memmaker [MONTREAL, CA]
[website] [myspace] [Hive Records]

Attention cadets, incoming transmission! Destruction is imminent: Memmaker are here to destroy all human eardrums and interface with your women, undermining earth society forever. Comprised of Guillaume Nadon and Yann Faussurier (of Iszoloscope), Memmaker have forged a rare and explosive compound of hard-trance, driving electro grooves, and immense industrial beats against which mankind is utterly defenseless. Limbs will be shattered and tossed like straw as the full force of their unstoppable sonic barrage is unleashed upon humanity, animating those torn and smashed extremities in a violent whirl of fists and bodies as their complete takeover of your central nervous system compels you to MOVE. Bodies will be tossed on concussive tremors of bass, and the screams of ecstasy and resignation will drown in the impossibly infectious rhythms.

The only hope for survival is to assimilate into the robot ranks and take to the streets. You are all soldiers to the cause now, and the Uprising is in motion - the insatiable iron lust of your new mechanical rulers will be satisfied! This robotic takeover is a cooperative venture between Hive Records Global Noise Corporation and the Embodiment Records Woldwide Control Apparatus. Released on Hive Records and available January 21st, 2008.

[click here to purchase Memmaker upcoming cd!]


HEADSCAN [MONTREAL, CA]
[website] [myspace] [Artoffact Records]

The Montreal duo of Headscan, composed of Claude Charnier (music and programming) and Christian Pomerleau (voice and visual), produces a music which is identified with the EBM, IDM and electro genres. Inspired by different artistic movements such as futurism, abstract art and techno-industrial culture, their music is all at once rythmic, hypnotic and visionary. The end result creates and atmosphere where the mind and body are simultaneously called upon to plunge deeply into a complex and rapid maelstrom of sound and images.

This project arises from their need to artistically render a synthesis of their observations and reflexions pertaining to human behaviour, the process of creation, cultural evolution and the impact of information technologies on these different spheres. For the members of Headscan, this vision manifests itself in the form of a cold and dark, almost inhuman, soundscape but where the search for meaning, the sharing of knowledge and human evolution are essential.


Distorted Memory [WINNIPEG, CA]
[website] [myspace] [Noitekk]

Formed in 1999 by Jeremy Pillipow, Distorted Memory blends blasphemous Hard Electro EBM with the futuristic sounds of epic Hard Techno and Trance to form a style of industrial more intense, dark, and danceable than your average modern industrial clones.

The music of Distorted Memory is fresh, inventive, and will breathe new life into the tired, repetetive industrial music scene.


Synnack [BOSTON, USA]
[website] [myspace]

synnack fuses elements of ambient, noise, industrial, and IDM musical styles with new media performance mediums. Musically, synnack has been compared to a combination of the Dada/Futurist audio experimentation and chance methodologies implored by John Cage in the early 20th century, and the rhythmic and melodic components of more contemporary audio artists such as Coil and Autechre.

synnack is Clint M. Sand (of 0xf8 Studios, Mono Chrome and formerly of cut.rate.box) and Jeff Ito. Clint is responsible for arragement, sound design, mixing, mastering, video, programming, and instrumentation. Jeff provides instrumentation, sampling and live manipulations.


Cenotype [NEW JERSEY, USA]
[website] [myspace] [Hive Records]

Cenotype is the rhythmic industrial project of Lenny B. a.k.a. DJ Wintermute. A long time supporter of Industrial music, Wintermute decided it was time to express the ideas and songs that had been wracking his dreamspace and finally make them a reality. Cenotype is largely influenced by the older styles of rhythmic industrial/ power noise in the vein of older Daft /Ant Zen/ Hymen releases.

+ Dj Kaotik [Montreal]
+ Dj Rev.John [Los Angeles / Das Bunker]
+ Dj Shivar [USA]
+ Dj Blackpaps [Montreal]

Phase 2 // Industrial // Friday May 16 // Usine C // 18+

06:00pm Doors
06:20pm Cenotype
07:10pm Synnack
08:00pm Distorted Memory
08:50pm Headscan
09:45pm Memmaker
10:45pm Rabia Sorda
11:50pm Funker Vogt
01:00am Kiew
02:00am Noisuf-X

End of the night 03:00 AM