Lightarmour Editions

08/07/2025

LIGHTARMOUR EDITIONS MOMENTS #7 - The Young Gods & the Subversion of Old Games…

The early Envoyé video by Switzerland’s The Young Gods is a bombastic taster of their signature collision of experimental music forms and the raw essence of rock’n’roll. To the backdrop of sampled guitars, gunshots and tribal drums, vocalist Franz Treichler (painted in what appears to be mud) feverishly counters a suspension harness that throws him around like a human puppet - all the while snarling guttural French & clever word-play. In this artefact alone, The Young Gods capture that distinct legacy of European avant-garde strivings, and all the philosophical ruminations that go with it.

The original trio took their name (as well as a good share of influence / resonance) from early Swans material, and there’s also the unmistakeable noise and counter-culturisms of Einstürzende Neubauten - but, in my eyes, they have always had an (abstracted) element of The Doors to them, especially in Franz’s pseudo-shamanic performance style as well as the romanticized-rebel poetry of the lyrics and themes. In turn (having shaped their own unique ID) The Young Gods would become major influences on an array of artists as varied as David Bowie, NIN, Ministry, Mike Patton (Faith No More, Mr Bungle, Tomahawk etc) and even The Edge (U2). I once had possession of their L'eau Rouge LP, a standout release on the consistently-brilliant Play It Again Sam Records (Neon Judgement anyone?).

Surprisingly, the avant-garders eventually hit the big time with a tasty crossover hit called Skinflowers (that snakey sub bassline sounded massive on big club systems) and things took off for the band internationally. Of course, been The Young Gods and not interested in any old games, the band dropped the whole spotlight-escapade and withdrew to their idealogical home base, reinventing themselves anew and reappearing in one fresh form after another. 2003’s album Second Nature saw them absorb Techno, IDM and Ambient influences into exhilarating Post-Industrial Electronica while Franz’s earnest semi-spoken vocals took on a Futurist sheen. The track “In The Otherland” even sounds like a darker glitchy Depeche Mode. I am yet to hear another album that sounds anything like Second Nature, TYG have eaten up genres like candy and created music that attempts to portray the unbridled forces of nature and an exhilarating sense of movement - something I think that has been at the foundation of their sound from day one.

Recently The Young Gods released a new album titled Appear Disappear - a perfect description of their mode of operation. Sonically it’s a closing of the loop, but on a whole other octave. Looking at the overall picture now, the most striking thing about this elusive band is how varied their evolutions and experiments have been but without ever losing the soul of their identity, or more importantly the joy / inspiration of the adventure itself.

In Lightarmour We Trust

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Classic Early Young Gods and Raw Video Power :
https://youtu.be/Mhwjb2X-lfU?si=zkqNqhJZkinsnZnz
Mid-Era Young Gods and their absorption of Techno / IDM :
https://youtu.be/NAbH1I7IpSE?si=bf6Az19rehvGNk97
Full Circle & The New Young Gods album :
https://youtu.be/JlHZoWgevPc?si=vRjh0MhnAYJnLHqV

07/06/2025

OUT OF THE DARKNESS CAME MORE DARKNESS, UNTIL IT WAS HAMMERED INTO LIGHT

This is the Cover Art for upcoming Fate Razor remix - BlackGuard Wolfpack (Tétaz Dub). It is a retro-snapshot of a headspace, a time, and an out-of-body experience and associated death that changed my entire paradigm. The BlackGuard songs come from the early ‘Melbourne’ era of Fate Razor - a portal of experience that was one of the darkest periods of my life and simultaneously one of the most creatively fruitful. There were many unforgettable characters I encountered in Melbourne; characters such as JeepMaster Warren the psychedelics merriment-maker, and Alt-Rocker Brett in his knee-high wellington boots and the pet python he kept in his lounge room (was not too keen, but harmless - the real problem was the snakes I encountered on my return to Perth…).

During my stay in East St Kilda I also met David Thrussell (of Snog, Soma, and Black Lung infamy) - in turn he introduced me to rising Producer & Mastering Engineer François Tétaz. Franc was a member of Industrial / Experimental / Ambient project Shinjuku Thief and would go onto re/master releases such as Merzbow’s Merzbox CD box set & The Triffids’ seminal album Born Sandy Devotional.

Fortunately François agreed to master what was to be the 1st Fate Razor release, a 7-Track CD.

I had received an unexpected letter from Chicago’s Wax Tax records requesting a follow up demo as they liked the tracks I’d sent months earlier; I was excited obviously and some of the songs on the 7-track were part of a 2nd demo intended to nail the prospect. What happened during and after the mastering/mixing sessions would take a novel to describe, but to summarise - my Father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I spent months torturing myself over whether to return to Perth or selfishly pursue the potential record deal (at least in the short term), one night in North Carlton had my first vivid out-of-body experience in which I watched Fate / Death (represented as a pack of merciless wolves) dragging my father from his house by the throat and realised it was all going down quickly, wrote BlackGuard Wolfpack as a cathartic coping mechanism, returned to Perth to be with my Father at his death, never got to respond to Wax Trax, and in a desperate & broken plight for answers ended up on the radar of a coven of serpentine/occult/religious delusions and practitioners (another novel, another day)…

Amidst the storm, Franc delivered a Dub-ish remix of BlackGuard Wolfpack which blew me away - it was finally released on Bandcamp in 2018, and remastered again for the upcoming Spotify / Streaming release (goes live on the 17th June). The remix is a fresh soundtrack-ish abstraction of the original, but the original version is the one that captures something of the weight and atmosphere of the circumstances that informed it. Strangely enough, later in 2006 François went on to win an award for Feature Film Score of the Year - for the Australian Horror film “Wolf Creek”; There are so many synchronicities in the arc of this story, It’s a metaphysic mathematician’s dream.

It took more than a decade to grasp the central realisations of what I experienced and perceived in that most vivid and traumatic out-of-body. In the years that followed I was to encounter and confirm those startling paradigms again and again in my travels to the deserts in Australia (Uluru) and Turkey (Cappadocia was a haunting experience), across Europe and in the Andes mountains crossing Chile and Argentina. It is the foundational stuff and back-story of the Fate Razor project, and its evolution into the upcoming new albums and EPs currently in progress. For those that resonate with the thread in the words, images, and music, I hope you follow the story as it takes the form it was always intended to.

PS the new releases feature two covers (1st covers for Fate Razor) - The Order of Death by PIL, and Sunshine Felt The Darkness Smile by DAX RIGGS. Stay sane in the membrane.

LE42 - In Lightarmour We Trust

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Fate Razor Playlist now on Spotify...
https://open.spotify.com/track/7afTHKHrcqxGxnyX0aZNUE?context=spotify:playlist:1Ow800Kp3TGubjJyZ72QMo&si=8477145931143457

03/12/2024

LIGHTARMOUR EDITIONS MOMENTS #6 - Modern English & The Forever Hope

Recently I attended a live performance of Modern English and it was an amazing real-world time-travel experience. The glittering spire of their quintessential Post-Punk Future-Pop still conveys a sense of some amorphous, romantic, modernist promise; the emotional hit is as vivid as it was on first listen to 1982’s brilliant “After The Snow” album. Everyone knows their “I Melt With You” New Wave anthem, a complete and perfect tune that captured the moment definitively - with its generational catchphrase ‘The Future’s Open Wide’ - and to this day it continues to hold it, crystallised in time.

The gig reminded me also of the mystical allure and off-the-scale ‘cool’ of that early 4AD era. 4AD was a delicious secret amongst the underground subcultures. It was Post-Punk intelligentsia; one of the most seminal of all the seminal record labels. In 1992 I had back-packed around Europe with a stash of my own 12” pressings, visiting a Hitlist of influential labels in pursuit of that elusive record deal (Contempo in Italy, Play It Again Sam in Belgium etc). In England, on the way to Mute Records, I took a detour to the 4AD Earl's Court office and sat in a pub across the road to chill out a bit and savour the moment. Of course secretly I was also hoping that maybe members of The Wolfgang Press or Cocteau Twins might just pop in for a drink and a chat…

Modern English were one of the more brightly-coloured feathers in 4AD’s cap, and finally seeing them live (their first time to Australia if I heard vocalist Robbie correctly) was to witness that they still embody the spirit that moved so many people from the outset. By the way, first track was Sixteen Days - one of the classics from their rawer post-punk era (links below). Those fine English modernist dandies whipped up a no-bullsh*t angular-yet-melodic rite of rejuvenation, and I’m grateful that by the end of the night I walked out into the calm night air stripped of the dust that time had gathered.

In Lightarmour We Trust

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Raw Post-Punk Set from John Peel Show
https://youtu.be/ezDbSQC1T1g?si=7GsjpzucIihKVEC-

Sparkling Lushness Circa 1982
https://youtu.be/5pdoOF7537A?si=TWz9lswDYw0DQpAL

05/10/2024

Here’s a code for 30% OFF ALL VINYL & DIGITAL releases on Lightarmour - New Wave / Industrial / Dark Ambient IDM / Doom Metal / Neo-Classical Drone / EBM / Post-Industrial Soul / IDM BreakCore / Power Noise / Techno Noir…etc…sale runs until Sunday the 6th (Midnight UTC).

Code: friday30wam
Link: https://lightarmoureditions.bandcamp.com

In Lightarmour We Trust

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03/03/2024

SPARTAN DRUM MACHINES - THE CURE Vs CRIMSON BOY

As this write-up is in progress there’s a storm brewing outside, light rain steadily coming down, and a thick cover of dark clouds moving over sunset-lit suburbia; a fitting synchronicity to the vivid teenage memory of The Cure’e seminal Faith album and its deep impact on a whole generation. Walking in the rain while listening to All Cats Are Grey on a Cassette Walkman was just perfect really - the funereal yet beautiful emotional landscape of the track was and is unavoidably resonant. At that time I listened to The Cure & Orchestral Manoeuvres in The Dark as much as Andy listened to Depeche Mode & Sisters of Mercy; a fair profile of the DNA that formed Crimson Boy and the trio that preceded it - Childhood’s End.

The Iridescent Remix of All Cats is a far more cranked up version than the original cover that was included on the 2017 album Street Gods and Neon Dogs; the album that launched the label. Our forever love-affair with flange-effected basslines, moody and bright analog synths, and spartan drum machine programming has been given full sway in this propulsive 2nd take on The Cure’s haunting masterpiece. As always, the lyrics are a big part of the surreal magic contained within - there are so many interesting interpretations out there, a deep-dive is recommended…

Crimson Boy is Andy Brown & Vince Valentini
Main Sound Devices - Roland JV880 Synth Module / DSI Mopho X4 Synth / Ventris Dual Reverb

Live now on Bandcamp (Streaming platforms in a week or so)
https://crimsonboyofficial.bandcamp.com/track/all-cats-are-grey-iridescent-rmx

LE35RMX - In Lightarmour We Trust

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track by Crimson Boy

01/03/2024

BANDCAMP FRIDAY - 25% OFF ALL VINYL & DIGITAL

Bandcamp Fridays means Bandcamp waives their revenue share of all sales so that it all goes straight to the label & artists. Use the code below to get 25% off any vinyl or digital releases, running from now to Saturday the 2nd (Midnight UTC). Current catalogue covers New Wave / Post-Punk / Industrial / Dark Ambient IDM / Doom Metal / Synth Punk / Neo-Classical Drone / EBM / Post-Industrial Soul / IDM BreakCore / Power Noise / Techno Noir….

Code: fridaylight25
Link: https://lightarmoureditions.bandcamp.com

In Lightarmour We Trust

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Lightarmour Editions is a Music Label inspired by an underlying spirit rather than any specific genre.

09/02/2024

SNOG's David Thrussell recently gave a track-by-track commentary on the iconic LIES INC album on Melbourne's 3CR Radio, along with a self-effacing and intriguing back-story to the formation of his infamous & influential Electronic Industrial act... "David Thrussell is a poet trapped in the body of a hillbilly, a hopeless romantic hidden in the twisted frame of a dark electronic musician. Late at night, Thrussell fantasises that he actually lives next door to Hieronymous Bosch in medieval Europe, and hallucinated the whole dreadful modern era while suffering from acute ergot poisoning. We're not entirely convinced that this is not the case. Mr Thrussell is also a philosopher who’s comments are insightful and illuminating."...

The album has been meticulously Remastered for an Anniversary Vinyl Edition available via Australia's Lightarmour Editions & Metropolis USA.

David Thrussell is a poet trapped in the body of a hillbilly, a hopeless romantic hidden in the twisted frame of a dark electronic musician. Late at night, Thrussell fantasises that he actually lives next door to Hieronymous Bosch in medieval Europe, and hallucinated the whole dreadful modern era wh...

06/02/2024

THE EXALTATION OF INTROSPECTION - GAZELLE

Ambient and Noise, Neo-Classical, Drone and even Shoegaze all meet in the distinctive, highly emotive and immersive debut of Melbourne’s Gazelle. Composer Nic Ruggero’s The Sum Of All Desires is a paean to startle-eyed aspiration; simultaneously strong yet fragile whilst moving gracefully before the spectacle of life’s tribulations, exaltations, heartbreaks, and revelations.

Ambient masterworks by Stars Of The Lid, Tim Hecker, and Willamette (Portrait Of A Sleeping Girl With Radio), are woven into the ethereal noise-burst of Cocteau Twins and a warmer take on Norway’s Biosphere.

Alternate ‘Zentropy’ version brings the underlying shoegaze & orchestral textures to the surface.

Live now on Bandcamp
https://lightarmoureditions.bandcamp.com/album/the-sum-of-all-desires

LE14 - In Lightarmour We Trust

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2 track album

24/01/2024

LIGHTARMOUR EDITIONS MOMENTS #5 - The Brutalist Collage of Life & Skinny Puppy Incisions…

As a lover of all things musically edgy and adventurous, coming across Skinny Puppy’s Mind The Perpetual In*******se and (later) Cleanse Fold and Manipulate albums was a humbling and exhilarating moment; the cohesive sum of the Visual / Thematic / Musical / & Vocal aesthetic was an emotional depth charge and an instant teleportation to another planet. As for so many others, the grandiose yet feral vibe felt like home; the very human language of pain resonated meaningfully, nail on the head - especially thru the signature combination of hurt, disgust and rage conveyed in Nivek Ogre’s stream-of-consciounsess words & vocals. In fact, Nivek Ogre’s poignant, tongue-twisting wordplay was always one of the elements that elevated SP above the Industrial-by-numbers conveyor belt.

The Art of Hardware Sampling had become a significant part of the language of many underground music genres, and Skinny Puppy were masters of it (along with one of their early influences and studio collaborators - Australia’s Severed Heads (Tom Ellard). As alluded to in the album title of Cleanse Fold And Manipulate, Dwayne Goettel and Cevin Key operated as audio editors and reshapers, snatching sound glyphs from the collage of life and recombining to form entirely new abstracted and brutalist insights. Samples as rhythm & drums, samples as textures, dialogue, effects, stings & transitions, atmosphere…everything was put under the editing knife towards SP’s clinical Dark-Futurist punch. As is well known, one of the main sources for the sound bites was a connoisseur’s array of Horror and Underground Cinema; check out sample-heavy Stairs and Flowers or Draining Faces for classic examples of SP’s splicing euphoria.

Personal beat-centric favourites like One Time One Place, Three Blind Mice, Dig It, First Aid, & Addiction changed the landscape of Industrial and Electronic genres and left most of the pack behind, bewildered; the avant-garde power, menace, and cliche-destroying arrangements were on another level entirely. The more experimental soundtrack-ish material exalted noise and ambience in fresh ways., and Mind TPI’s God’s Gift (Maggot) announced itself as one of the most unforgettable, powerful and unique Industrial tracks ever committed to an unsuspecting audience. Again (just like the recommendation in the Coil post & the track Blood From The Air) it’s not for the faint-hearted, but the vocal delivery and pitch-black alien soundcraft are without comparison.

In 2024, as the Skinny Puppy entity exits the stage, we tip our hats in gratitude for the inspiration and the illuminance of their cathartic majesty. Stay alert, and best wishes for the new year,

In Lightarmour We Trust

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Link : https://youtu.be/RUxtQzMlSFw?si=6x9fWoH5wUlbpsZ4

Lightarmour Editions is an Australian Music Label inspired by an underlying spirit rather than genre

05/12/2023

RAW ANALOG NEW WAVE - MODUS OPERANDI

It was 1984 and the project name Modus Operandi was a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of main influences at the time - primarily Depeche Mode obviously, but also Fad Gadget / Duet Emmo / Yazoo / Kraftwerk / OMD / Human League / Portion Control / The Normal etc.

The excitement of Post-Punk Electronica, New Wave, and the promise of a new Avant-Garde Pop was electric. Modus Operandi was a side project from moody synth trio Childhood’s End (with vocalist Andy Brown, which would soon morph into Crimson Boy).

The explosion of affordable analog gear was a teenager’s dream come true & Petar Zadraznik was the first of our gang to master programming those early hardware sequencers and drum machines. The Machine Breathes was an improvised jam (recorded sometime early to mid ’84) saturated not only by the nice noisy cassette, but also by the stylistic and thematic tropes of the era and the underground scene of the time.

The bassline is the primal and distinct-sounding Roland MC202 (which also triggers the Sample’n’hold sci-fi bubbling on a Roland SH101), drum machine chugga-chugga is the Korg DDM-110, and the melodies and ambient textures come from the Roland Juno 106 (which had just been acquired and was like owning a space ship). The original cassette recording has been used as the source for the master, but a good portion of tape noise has been kept so as to not steal from the tones of the instruments. The Machine Breathes is the sound of musical innocence, of self-conscious bright-eyed New Wavers, and of the excitement of electronic lurrve.

Modus Operandi operators :
Petar Zadraznik - Synthesizer Sequencer / Drum Machine
Vince Valentini - Synthesizer

Live now on Bandcamp / All other platforms 19th of December.…
https://lightarmoureditions.bandcamp.com/track/the-machine-breathes-cassette-master

LE31 - In Lightarmour We Trust

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track by Lightarmour Editions

17/11/2023

CRIMINALLY INSANE & NUMB WITH NOISE

Vancouver’s Don Gordon - of NUMB fame - infuses his distinct & complex hi-res Industrial Electronics in the latest remix of Institute For The Criminally Insane’s “Truth Or Scare”; It’s a fresh, driving interpretation of Bo Heidelberg’s hook-laden EBM.

Institute For The Criminally Insane’s tight sequencer grids are put through some concisely sculpted noise & propulsive drums. Fans of both the ICI and Numb sound/style will find the remix embodies an interesting mesh of both; a tussle of mechanic and organic.

Live Now on Bandcamp / Spotify / iTunes etc - https://lightarmoureditions.bandcamp.com/track/truth-or-scare-numb-rmx

LE26RMX - In Lightarmour We Trust

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track by Lightarmour Editions

13/11/2023

LIGHTARMOUR EDITIONS MOMENTS #4 - Demdike Stare, into the Eyes of Horror-Dub Techno…

The clean minimalist lines of Techno & the luscious spaces of Dub have been ripe for creative mishandling from the outset. As influential as Birmingham’s British Murder Boys, but in a very different way, Manchester’s Demdike Stare took the prevailing underground influences of their environment, deconstructed playfully, and rebuilt a tidy little Frankenstein. Initially they appeared with a gloriously creepy and cavernous Dark-Ambient Dub aesthetic. For good measure, they also sutured-in abstracted Dance tropes, Jungle, Drone, and Industrial power & edge. The spartan punch of their productions is also reminiscent of Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound Records & Tackhead. In summary - they sound original,

There must be something in the British water system, some beneficent ghost in the air, or some exceptional code in the DNA of its peoples - for such a small landmass it perpetually blows apart the global music scene with ever-inspiring and unexpected musical ideas & twists; only the envious and the miffed would deny it. DJ Sean Canty and Producer Miles Whittaker have (in another prevalent tradition of subversive English music) infused an intriguing occult back-story into their project; apparently the term ‘Demdike Stare’ is derived from local witchcraft lore.

I was introduced to Demdike Stare by graphic designer I+T=R (Richard Grant), who has designed some of the Vinyl releases for the label. That initial song is still, in my opinion, the most potent audio-visual capture of Demdike Stare’s originality and magic; “Savage Distort” (2017) and its accompanying video is a masterpiece-moment in the adventurous arts. Sonically, thematically, visually, lyrically - it’s welcomingly devastating, the receiving of pure liquid gold into the husk of “I’ve heard it all before”. The lyric “May I never see your face cut by the knife of fate, may I never see your body immobilised, ashen and cold…” alone is enough to warrant ‘Seminal’ status to the track.

The real A-level artistry of Savage Distort, though, is the slowly intensifying creep of filmic sound design, distant and close precision-hits, ominous rattles, sparse bass echoes, found-sound percussion, and ear-candy reverb trickery. The composition escalates emotionally with such precision it seems all the atoms have become aligned. The accompanying video’s narrative & style is, without a doubt, stunning; the result of a consummate love affair with the audio…link below.

Until the next moment, hope you are staying sane,

In Lightarmour We Trust

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Link : https://youtu.be/5gaOsrksjs0?si=2w2Aziwp38ZNUBlG