With the end of 2011 ever so close it is time to reveal Auxiliary Magazine’s Top 20 Albums of 2011. This list isn’t ranked because it is a group of favorites from all our contributors. Please check out all the albums (minus Displacer and IAMX for now) in one convenient spot, our Spotify Top 20 Albums Playlist.

Apparat Devil’s Walk
Emotionally rich, intimate, and personal, this quiet journey reflects its Berlin and Mexican settings making the bleak sound sunny. Minimal instrumentation from a variety of instruments ground the quiet and engaging words.

Covenant Modern Ruin
Covenant returned with a new member and a killer single, “Lightbringer”, to lead off a powerful album. Finding new depth to their musical style they have a new and improved level of sound that should sustain them through another decade.

Crystal Stilts In Love with Oblivion
Dark neo-psychedelic music that sounds like Joy Division in an argument with Phil Spector.

Displacer Night Gallery
The enjoyment of this album is its ability to entrance the listener and let their imagination go wild.

Ghost & Writer Shipwrecks
Each song here is a well told story captivating the listener every time, plus the music is top notch synthpop.

God Module Séance
A perfect blend of creepy electro-industrial and pop elements, these songs get stuck in your head for days.

Haujobb New World March
With the end of the world coming in 2012, we’ll be playing this album as it all goes down.

IAMX Volitile Times
This album was like a fine wine, the longer it sat around our music players the better it got. Who knows a few more years and this could be the album of the decade.

John Maus We Just Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves
Sounds like a long-lost cassette recording of an obscure, extremely lo-fi synthpop band from 1983.

Krystal System Nuclear
This heavy electro industrial album coming from the French underground emits enough powerful energy to fuel millions of people.

M83 Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
Exploring both sides of M83 with its mixture of dreamy ambient songs and powerful dream pop, the epic double album is appropriately an exploration of dreams in both their essence and emotion.

Necro Facility Wintermute
Industrial with a dose of pop worked wonders on this album. Necro Facility went from a follower to a leader with this album.

Nicolas Jarr Space is Only Noise
Experimental electronic that defies categories, each song creating its own strange living space.

ohGr unDeveloped
Nivek Ogre and Mark Walk made a highly addictive album, arguably some of the best music either have been associated with.

Selebrities Delusions
A perfect example of how to pull influences from 70s postpunk, 80s synthpop, and new wave yet still sound current and fresh.

Skinny Puppy hanDover
Listen deep and this album comes to life. The originality and attention to details makes this puppy amazing!

Slug Guts Howlin Gang
Angst-ridden, old school, badass goth/postpunk with basement vocals a la The Birthday Party.

SONOIO Red
No stranger to the music world, Alessandro Cortini’s solo project SONOIO’s latest album, Red, is an excellent modern alternative rock/electronic-industrial album.

Sons & Daughters Mirror Mirror
What if The White Stripes and The Kills had been more influenced by The Cure and Gang of 4?

Tim Hecker Ravedeath 1972 Hypnotic ambient electronic that weaves noise and beauty into one seamless whole.

* listed in alphabetical order

Listen to these albums on Spotify :
www.open.spotify.com/user/mikekieffer/playlist/6oXS4QFjEqcHxF72qDR4hXMUSIC

Influencing a generation of musicians and artists, a founding member and mastermind behind Skinny Puppy, Ogre gets behind our lens and talks about the newly released ohGr album unDeveloped on Metropolis Records, his role in the cult classic Repo! The Genetic Opera, the upcoming long awaited Skinny Puppy album, and more.

interview by Aaron Andrews

Since 1982 Ogre (aka Kevin Ogilvie) has been bending our minds and breaking new musical ground. First as a founding member and the vocalist for the hugely influential and infamous Skinny Puppy and later in the starring role of the self-named duo ohGr, Ogre’s one-of-a-kind vocal style combined with his visually engaging and in-your-face stage persona have been widely copied and his contributions can also be heard with bands such as Ministry, Pigface, and KMFDM, in addition to being a cast member of newly minted cult film classic, Repo! The Genetic Opera. OhGr’s fourth and latest musical effort unDeveloped builds on this strong legacy and reputation.

Ogre was nice enough to talk with us and discuss the premise and sound of the new material, aging, costuming, death, the creative culture of Skinny Puppy and ohGr, and last but not least, even Michael Jackson.

I heard great things about the Auxiliary Magazine shoot of you for this feature.
Ogre : It was fun, she’s a great photographer.

I’m glad to hear you enjoyed the session.
O : Well, it’s always a bit daunting at this point in life. I call it the Dorian Gray effect. So it’s always a bit daunting. When you work with nice people who understand all the subtleties and sensitivities that go along with watching yourself decay on film over a lifetime, it isn’t so bad.

Tell us a little about the new album. What have you been exploring and thinking about with unDeveloped?
O : unDeveloped is kind of a beginning point and also closure for me. It’s something that began with Devils In My Details, so it’s a continuation of the concept of Devils In My Details but closure to the content; in that I think the last four years of my life I’ve had a number of revelations and experiences that have been very profound to me. I tried to correlate that in a much more journalistic way in Devils In My Details in the moment and unDeveloped is a different look at the same situation through a much clearer resolution lens. Almost akin to looking at something through a childhood microscope and then taking it into a lab and looking at in under an electron microscope and re-examining the same information. So unDeveloped really came out of that, it was the continuation of a really great project with Mark that we have a lot of fun with and we’re really actively involved in fomenting and creating an immersive experience and taking that one step further. Obviously this time period is rife for tons of information both confusing, I’m sure terrifying to most people; but to me, somebody who’s had their head up the ass of all this spectacular and covert and, um, left over right, right over left, even when they’re all the same. I’ve had my head seasoned to this for so long that there’s just so much interesting stuff to write about in the fashion that I do that it’s a bit poetic. I think with unDeveloped too is I’m getting closer and closer to the process of my own writing. I’m not trying to say to sound bigger than life, I say that with a great deal of humility in the sense that my writing has lead me to where I am now and on the route has had things that were almost prophetic and very mysterious to me.

read the full interview in the June/July 2011 Issue

The June/July 2011 issue is the sixteenth issue of Auxiliary, a magazine dedicated to alternative fashion, music, and lifestyle.  This issue features an interview with and exclusive photos of Ogre of Skinny Puppy and ohGr, an interview with Amelia Arsenic of Angelspit, a designer spotlight on Gore Couture, and Cassia Sparkle in House of Etiquette as our PinUp.  The issue also contains a daydream notebook fashion editorial that brings art and illustration to fashion, a fashion editorial full of retro and hip swim and casual wear, an editorial of reclaimed vintage fashions, a sleek dark cyber beauty editorial, a lolita inspired Style feature, and an article that looks at the underground of skateboarding.  It features photography by Saryn Christina, Steve Prue, Deek Images, Andriy Zolotoiy, Erica Eichelkraut, and Zach Rose and fashion from Iron Fist, ModCloth, Cats Like Us, Futurstate, Ichigo Black, Kali Clothing, Monster Muffin, Dystropolis, TUK Shoes, Revamp Productions, Once Vintage Couture, Dungaree Dolly, and much much more.

You can download it for free at :
www.auxiliarymagazine.com/issue16/AuxiliaryMagazineJune11.pdf

Print copies are available for purchase online at :
www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/205936
And for purchase in stores at :
www.auxiliarymagazine.com/distribution

Enjoy!

focused music news for week 19 : May 8th to 14th 2011

May 10 – Nivek Ogre is back in the spot light but it’s not the Skinny Puppy album that has been teased for three years or so, instead we get the ohGr album unDeveloped.  Well the last release Devils in my Details was a bit lackluster for the five-year wait, unDeveloped has only two and a half years of expectations to live up to. Let’s just say you wont hear anything like “Feelin’ Chicken”.  Be sure to check out our full review in the upcoming June/July issue.

May 10 – In the April/May issue we featured exclusive photos and interview with the multi-instrumentalist, Tim Skold, who has contributed to many bands over the years, including KMFDM and Marilyn Manson. On May 10th he released his second full length album since 1996, Anomie.  I personally listened to the début album way too many times to count and once I dug it out of storage I instantly remembered all the lyrics. Anomie doesn’t disappoint this long time fan.

Check out our interview with Tim Skold in the April/May 2011 Issue!

- Mike