Rumors and whispers of Kinetik 2012 are starting.  It sounds promising that one of the largest industrial/EBM/electro/noise music festivals in North America (held in Montreal, Canada) will be happening again for a 5th year, most likely in May the weekend of Canada’s Victoria Day holiday.  For the 2011 edition they moved the venue from Usine C to Metropolis (with one day at Club Soda).  The general consensus of attendees during the festival was that the move was a good one.  Kinetik Festival 2011 was a great time for us, Auxiliary Magazine had a vendor table, the bands playing put on impressive performances, and we loved the new venue.  Enjoy some photos from this year’s event and keep hopeful and your ears open that 2012 will be a go.

Montreal QC, May 19

photographs : C. Lang Photography

Iszoloscope

Iszoloscope

iVardensphere

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Montreal QC, May 19th to 23rd - The North American festival not to miss.  Auxiliary Magazine will be at Kinetik Festival again this year!  Kinetik is a five-day music festival for electro, industrial, EBM, and noise.  Performing this year…  Front 242, VNV Nation, Front Line Assembly, Suicide Commando, Covenant, mind.in.a.box, Funker Vogt, God Module, Die Krupps, Aesthetic Perfection, iVardensphere, and more!  We’ll have a vendor/promo table so stop by, say hello, pick up some gear, check out the magazine, and buy a print copy!

more info at www.festival-kinetik.net

Bill Leeb has been in the electronic music scene since 1985, when he started out with fellow Vancouver boys in Skinny Puppy. Following a need to find his own personal voice he set out on his own and produced music under the name Front Line Assembly, creating a massive body of music from 1987 to now. This eventually wasn’t enough to contain his creative juices and his musical catalog now also includes projects like Delerium, Noise Unit, Intermix, Equinox, and various FLA remix credits.

Front Line Assembly’s newest album, Improvised Electronic Device, came out on June 22. Leeb was kind enough to answer my questions and shed some light on some things I’ve always wondered.

interview by Aaron Andrews

How long did you work on your new album, IED?

This album took the longest out of any Front Line album ever. It almost took three years to make it. In the first year we took about six months writing a bunch of the songs then we decided we’d just walk away for a couple months. We’d never done that before, you know see if you still liked the record. Also all four members were inputting equally, where as before it was just me and Rhys or me and Chris. So it’s kind of a whole new way of doing it like a band almost, which was kind of interesting. In the end we got what we wanted to get. I think we’re all happy with the outcome.

Who else was involved in the making of this album?

Me, Chris Peterson, Jeremy Inkel, and Jared Slingerland. Since we’re on the subject, usually we use Greg Reely to mix the albums but this time we used Greg and Ken (Hiwatt) Marshall, who does all the Skinny Puppy stuff. So this is the first time we’ve used two engineers/mixers. We also have another guitarist on some of the tracks, Justin from a band called Three Inches of Blood. We also did a track with Al Jourgensen of Ministry. We really went around and used a whole bunch of people, I guess after making so many records it got to me. It’s fun to get other people involved and see where we can go with this kind of music. Just see if we can find new ways to turn stones over and stuff.

This album, IED, and the last one, Artificial Soldier, were made with more cast members than most of the previous FLA catalog. Was this intentional or did it just fill out that way?

Well, the thing is because we have a revolving door with Front Line, people sort of come and go, I never say never on anything. So on Artificial it was kind of Rhys had minimal participation on four tracks, he hasn’t toured with us in years and years. So these four guys I just mentioned we played over a hundred shows in a couple years and we formed a good unity. So when it came to working on our next album they wanted to be really involved. I found that the only complaint was there were too many people trying to steer the helm. With Rhys in the old days, and Jeremy and Jared are both 25, you know their pretty young, so it became a bit of a cluster… bomb. You know with everyone trying to get their ideas in.

But on this one there’s no Rhys at all and we’re just forging that idea from Artificial Soldier, it just made for a smoother transition and even though there was more input from everybody it still had more of a calming integral feel from everybody in the band.

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Ascii.Disko – Stay Gold Forever Gold

Deftones – Diamond Eyes

Edge of Dawn – Anything That Gets You Through The Night

Ellen Allien – Dust

Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma

LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening

Front Line Assembly – Improvised Electronic Device

The Lovecrave – Soul Saliva

Mothboy – Bunny

Nice Nice – Extra Wow

SE – L36

Shiv-r – Hold My Hand

The Sight Below – It Falls Apart

read the reviews in the June/July 2010 Issue