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.
ApparatDevil’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.
CovenantModern 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 StiltsIn Love with Oblivion
Dark neo-psychedelic music that sounds like Joy Division in an argument with Phil Spector.
DisplacerNight Gallery
The enjoyment of this album is its ability to entrance the listener and let their imagination go wild.
Ghost & WriterShipwrecks
Each song here is a well told story captivating the listener every time, plus the music is top notch synthpop.
God ModuleSéance
A perfect blend of creepy electro-industrial and pop elements, these songs get stuck in your head for days.
HaujobbNew World March
With the end of the world coming in 2012, we’ll be playing this album as it all goes down.
IAMXVolitile 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 SystemNuclear
This heavy electro industrial album coming from the French underground emits enough powerful energy to fuel millions of people.
M83Hurry 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 FacilityWintermute
Industrial with a dose of pop worked wonders on this album. Necro Facility went from a follower to a leader with this album.
Nicolas JarrSpace is Only Noise
Experimental electronic that defies categories, each song creating its own strange living space.
ohGrunDeveloped
Nivek Ogre and Mark Walk made a highly addictive album, arguably some of the best music either have been associated with.
SelebritiesDelusions
A perfect example of how to pull influences from 70s postpunk, 80s synthpop, and new wave yet still sound current and fresh.
Skinny PuppyhanDover
Listen deep and this album comes to life. The originality and attention to details makes this puppy amazing!
Slug GutsHowlin Gang
Angst-ridden, old school, badass goth/postpunk with basement vocals a la The Birthday Party.
SONOIORed
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 & DaughtersMirror Mirror
What if The White Stripes and The Kills had been more influenced by The Cure and Gang of 4?
Tim HeckerRavedeath 1972 Hypnotic ambient electronic that weaves noise and beauty into one seamless whole.
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.
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.
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.
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.
After several rounds of “road tour” theater screenings Repo! The Genetic Opera was released on DVD and Blu-Ray on January 20th. Will Repo! The Genetic Opera prove to be a major cult classic?
film still
A Venetian style carnival at night, adorned in rich golds and blues, is a fine setting for any opera. But it is the little details that set the scene here: the bags of organs hanging from the vendors’ stalls, a young man wearing a woman’s face, an opera diva with mechanical eyes, and enough human oddities to cast several Tod Browning films. All this makes you realize that this might not be an opera in the classical sense of the word.
Based on the stage production of the same name by Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich and directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, Repo! The Genetic Opera is a new fusion of rock opera and apocalyptic futurism. This production is a shocking, horror-tinged look at what might happen should our culture’s obsession with cosmetic surgery and artificial perfection continue to their extremes. To quickly sum up the plot – a large biotech firm has perfected techniques for organ harvesting and transplanting and has made these advances available to the public, for a price. Financing is available but should you fail to pay your debt then GeneTech will send one of their cadre of lethal surgeon/assassins after you to reclaim the company’s property.
Anothony Stewart Head plays Nathan, one of the Repo Men that GeneTech employs. Nathan is a character possessed with an interesting juxtaposition of natures. In one regard, Nathan is a doting father and doctor, haunted by the sins of his past and trying to raise his daughter in a less- than-friendly world, but he is also a monstrous and skilled assassin who enjoys his work with an almost ecstatic glee. This role is a real showcase of Head’s talents. He turns in one of the strongest performances in the film, both musically and theatrically, though those familiar with his previous role on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, or his career on stage, know that he is no stranger to musical theater. Hopefully this role will prove that he is more capable of carrying an American film production as a lead rather than being relegated to supporting roles.
Other standout performances in the film are delivered by Sarah Brightman and Terrance Zdunich. Zdunich plays his role of Graverobber (one he has played in several incarnations of Repo! productions) with such cleverness and charisma that he is absolutely essential to the film as both a narrator and for his performances throughout the production. Of all the characters present in the film, his is perhaps the most memorable.
The set production and the costuming are aspects of the film that are true accomplishments. Lavish colors mix with the dull tones of stone, metal, and night to create the sort of world where things might have once been luxurious and plush, but the velvet drapes have rotted away to show the wall underneath. It seems that decay is at the heart of this film, both in plot and in aesthetics. The costuming mixes a certain operatic sensibility with a mix of futuristic haute couture and modern day fetish wear. Lace and ruffles are mixed liberally with leather and latex to create an anachronistically wonderful collection of looks.
Overall, the film has the potential to become a true cult classic. While lacking much of the camp of masterpieces of the genre like Phantom of the Paradise or the Rocky Horror picture show, Repo! just might have what it takes to become the cult musical of choice of the future generations of film fans. It mixes humor, style, edginess, and some genuinely well written songs like “Zydrate Anatomy” with a solid cast and great art direction. This film is definitely worth checking out.
Zydrate Anatomy - film still
Fashion
The costuming in the film is notable in its own right. Rorward thinking and an anachronistic blending of styles has created some great looks for the production. Especially the costumes for the characters of Shilo and Blind Mag. In fact I think Shilo’s wardrobe may end up inspiring a slew of imitators. A mixture of high end vintage looks with forward thinking tailoring and modern materials has created a real fashion syntax for the film. It’s far the from the silver lammé, or torn leather and rags of most post-apocalyptic visions, it seems as though they have followed the natural evolution of several current and past trends have created realistic and styling interpretations of what their future versions might be like.
Shilo - film still
Ogre Skinny Puppy’s Ogre also makes an appearance in the film as Pavi Largo, one of the three decadent Largo children, he may be one of the more frightening images in the film. Adorned in the skin of women’s faces over his own, he comes across as everyone surgical nightmare come true. Ogre’s character possesses vain and feminine characteristics that make him quite surprising in his role.
