WARMER MIXTAPES #1192 | by Daniel Änghede (Crippled Black Phoenix, Astroqueen, ISON) and Tomas Almgren of Hearts Of Black Science
SIDE A | by Daniel Änghede
1. Type O Negative | Wolf Moon (Including Zoanthropic Paranoia)
Type O Negative is one of my all time favorite bands. Their Music has meant so much to me ever since I first discovered them around the release of Bloody Kisses back in 1993. By the time October Rust was released in 1996 it quickly became one of my favorite albums of all time and I still hold it as my top 5 album even today, some odd 18 years later! Type O Negative's Music is, and will always be, a very important source of Inspiration for me when writing and recording Music. It was a very sad day for me when I heard about the death of Peter Steele, not only because he was a true genius and followed his own path, but also the fact that this World will never be graced with more Music from Type O Negative. This is one of the best bands that has ever existed, period!
2. Fields Of The Nephilim | Wail Of Sumer
I was introduced to this band by Tomas (Hearts Of Black Science) in the summer of 1995. The first second I heard it I was in Love, this was the kind of Music I always had dreamt about hearing but didn't know where to find! I had just picked up Paradise Lost's album Draconian Times and I loved the way the clean guitars sounded, it was very dreamy and Gothic and I had not yet discovered any bands that sounded anything like that, but when I heard Fields Of The Nephilim I knew exactly what I had found. Another fact is that when I and Tomas decided to start the band back in 2005 we had one thing in common: The Love for FieldsOf The Nephilim and Type O Negative, we knew we wanted to do dark and atmospheric Music in the vein of our heroes, and even if we come from total different backgrounds in our taste for Music, these two bands were something we had in common, so it has always acted like a meeting stone for us, a guideline if you wish.
3. Paradise Lost | Yearn For Change
Draconian Times was the soundtrack to my summer of 1995. It is by far the best album from Paradise Lost, a band I discovered a few years earlier when I saw the As I Die video on Headbangers Ball. I was blown away by this new approach they took on Draconian Times, it was so dreamy and uplifting without being too catchy. Everything is perfect about this album, the vocals, the production, the guitars, the melodies... It is as much of a Gothic album as it is a dreamy Doom Metal album, a match made in Heaven.
4. M83 | Teen Angst
I discovered M83's universe around the release of Before The Dawn Heals Us, sometime in 2005. This was probably just a couple of months before we started Hearts Of Black Science and their Music has been a big source of Inspiration ever since. The Music is very epic and dreamy and sometimes I find myself just floating around while listening to them. I love this band! Every album is good but this will remain my favorite release and it brings back wonderful memories for me. I had this album on repeat the first time we flew to London to do our very first show with Hearts Of Black Science at the Water Rats Theatre and I can still feel like I get teleported back when listening to this amazing album.
5. Slowdive | Catch The Breeze
This is a band I discovered late, I remember that someone from Club AC30, the record label that released our first album introduced me to it. This was my first introduction to Shoegaze/Dreampop and I fell in Love. I had always loved dreamy Music, Type O Negative's October Rust, for example, is filled with dreamy guitars and keys, and they were inspired by Dreampop/Shoegaze acts. I could finally hear where these dreamy guitars came from, the same way I could hear where all these dark riffs in Metal bands came from when discovering the classic Black Sabbath. Slowdive opened many doors for me that would later lead me to bands like Cocteau Twins, Alcest, Lycia, My Bloody Valentine, M83, etc.
6. Edge Of Sanity | Twilight
This is a Swedish Death Metal band that I discovered as early as 1991. They were probably the first band to mix clean vocals with growl. I was a big fan of their previous two albums, but when Purgatory Afterglow was released in the summer of 1994 I was totally blown away! This is still one of my all time favorite Swedish releases. I can clearly remember that many of my friends that wasn't into Metal, and particularly not Death Metal, would love this album when I played it to them! It has something very unique to it, some weird mix of Goth meets Death Metal. This band was never featured in the media here in Sweden, highly underrated but still very important. It was also via Edge Of Sanity I was introduced to Opeth, since Mikael Åkerfeldt did some guest vocals on their follow up album called Crimson. Opeth later became my absolute favorite band from Sweden...
7. Iron Maiden | Caught Somewhere In Time
When I was at the age of 10 I discovered bands like Metallica, Anthrax and Slayer. On Fridays in School, we would have something called Roliga Timmen, translated as the Joyful Hour and sometimes this would mean then one person from the class would bring a favorite song and play it for the classmates. My friend Johan did exactly that, and he brought a song on cassette called Caught Somewhere In Time from a band called Iron Maiden. I was stunned and blown away by this song! The next morning I heard the very same song being played on the TV and I knew I had to get an Iron Maiden LP! I had never heard anything like it, everything was perfect about this band, the Music, the artworks, Eddie! Even to this day, I hold Iron Maiden as one of my favorite bands and it is probably the band I have seen live the most times. They are also the perfect band to love if you are, like me, a vinyl collector!
8. Lana Del Rey | Ride
The most important discovery in Music for me was last December when I finally got the chance to listen to the whole album by Lana Del Rey, Born To Die - The Paradise Edition. I had this album on repeat for months, something I find rare nowadays, simply due to the fact that I listen to so much Music I don't have time to focus on only one album. But this album was one of those I simply couldn't put aside. I must have been listening to it from start to finish over a 100 times. It is such an amazing album. The kind of album that just puts you in a trance. I think Lana Del Rey is one of the most important new artist in the last decade or so, simply stunning! Remember to pick up The Paradise Edition of Born To Die, it features her best song to date, Ride. A song that is so good that you will sometimes find yourself about to start crying.
9. Neurosis | Away
I discovered Neurosis late, I think it was around 1996 when they released Through Silver In Blood, but it wasn't until the release of Times Of Grace back in 1999 that I was totally hooked! This is one of the best albums of all time. It is filled with Drone, Doom & Gloom, yet it is a very beautiful and Ambient album. The production of this album is superb, it is huge, warm and thick and has an amazing room sound to it. Few albums has made such an impact on me as Times Of Grace has, a masterpiece.
10. Opeth | Dirge For November
My favorite band from Sweden. I discovered them when they released their second album called Morningrise back in 1996 via a sampler CD that came with a Swedish Music magazine. I was blown away and this band has kept me company ever since. All of their albums are masterpieces and it is impossible to pick a favorite album since they are all so different from each other. But Blackwater Park stands out. I first heard an advance promo copy a couple of months before its release when I was in Brazil. A record store owner had got this advance copy from a friend he had in America somehow and I remember standing there in this warm record store, in the middle of the Summer in Sao Paulo, listening to this new Opeth record... Once again I was blown away and I started to count the days until the release later that year. When I finally laid my hands on the vinyl I was in Heaven! I remember I had to record the LP to my computer just so I could burn a CDR copy for my car, yes, this was back when Internet was still too slow to download albums! This band has been very important to my life, both on sad times and happy times. Their Music has always been a great friend that I can find comfort in. Last year a dream came true for me, I would play on the same festival stage as Opeth with my other band Crippled Black Phoenix and I also got to meet the whole band. They are really a bunch of great people and I ended up drinking a few beers and talking Music with them and they also watched our show and enjoyed it. It was one of my luckiest moments ever!
+11. Mew | Special
It seems like I discovered lots of new Music around the time that we recorded the first Hearts Of Black Science album. Maybe not so strange when we look back because we spent almost an year locked inside our studio and we would always listen to Music between our recording sessions. A lot of Music! Tomas had already played some music from their previous album Frengers to me and I remember I liked it. However, I discovered Mew for real the first time we went to London to sign our record deal. We went to a party somewhere in London and the music playing that night was their new album And The Glass Handed Kites. Tomas had seen this band live the year before and was already well into it, but for me it was still fresh. I had never heard anything like it! The album is truly Progressive and every song fits together into the next, almost making it sound like the album only has one epic song on it! This album was on repeat for over 2 years and is still to this day my favorite Mew album.
+12. Sophie Zelmani | To Know You
This is another favorite from Sweden. The haunting voice of Sophie Zelmani and the album Love Affair. This was the first album I bought from her and it was released back in 2003. I had just bought my first, and to this day my only house and I had this album on repeat for months to come. The Music is very soothing and haunting and her voice is just stunning! This album has the best audiophile recorded vocals that I have ever heard. The sound really fills the room if you listen to it on a high end system. She has released several albums and they are all good, but this is truly her masterpiece. It is a very sad album and that is always better than a happy sounding album. One of the best Swedish albums ever released.
+13. Woven Hand | Winter Shaker
I can't remember how I discovered this album called Mosaic by Woven Hand, but what I do remember is that I fell into a trance when hearing this song for the first time! This album is so dark and haunting, yet very beautiful! The first time I heard 16 Horsepower back in the 90's I was in a high fever and was listening to this live show they did on the radio and I was in a trance back then as well. It might have been caused by the fever, but I was very touched by what I heard. Somehow I forgot about this band and can't say I have been listening to them a lot, until I discovered Woven Hand that is. I prefer Woven Hand to be honest, and Mosaic is my favorite album so far by them. It is such an honest sounding record.
+14. Alcest | Autre Temps
Alcest is a band from France that I discovered by pure luck back when Écailles De Lune was released back in 2010. I instantly fell in Love with their beautiful, unique and Ambient mix of Shoegaze and Black Metal, that is something few bands has managed to pull off, even that many have copied Alcest's sound since then. This album called Les Voyages De L'Âme is my favorite Alcest album. It is simply stunning and brings forth many emotions. The perfect soundtrack to a cold and dark Swedish winter night.
SIDE B | by Tomas Almgren
1. Jean-Michel Jarre | Ethnicolor
This is the first song that completely floored me when I was maybe 7 or 8. Everything I had listened to up until this point (we played lots of Elvis and Classic Pop/Rock in the Almgren house) was easy to comprehend. There were drums and guitars and someone would sing a verse and a chorus and so on. Hearing Ethnicolor (and JMJ) for the first time was like making contact with an alien intelligence. It was Abstract. Melancholy. And scary as hell. I'm sure Jarre was trying to make some sort of sincere commentary on various cultures and ethnicities, but the irony is that it sounds like nothing born of this Earth. From the haunting howl that opens the song, followed by the grand robotic requiem of the centre piece, all the way to the bouncing Funk of the outro. It was less Pop and more Star Wars cantina. It was massively influential to me in the sense that Music structure suddenly no longer had a clear foundation. And it was the first time I realized that Electronic Music could sound like anything you fucking wanted it to.
2. Public Enemy | Bring The Noise
PE was another early influence. I grew up in a really quiet, predominantly white, upper middle class area and had almost zero connection to the things that Chuck D would Rap about. And it was a great sobering kick in the head to realize that not everyone lives a sheltered life in rural Sweden. And it was Music you could blast on your big puffy Walkman headphones and sort out all the shit in your head when your step dad had yelled at you. And listening to Chuck D plow through each line like an angry tank over those Terminator X beats was like shooting adrenaline directly into my teenage brain. Never losing his lyrical focus or finesse. Cleverly bending words around the craziest beats to come out of Hip Hop. Almost Industrial in its mission to annoy. It was raw, unpleasant and loud and my parents hated it.
3. Depeche Mode | Enjoy The Silence
Enjoy The Silence is the best Pop song ever written. It's not one of them. It's the most brilliantly written piece of Pop ever created. To be able to sink that much Melancholy and Emotion into it without losing the danceable party hook is crazy. I love Depeche Mode (obviously) and this is and always will be their best song.
4. Fields Of The Nephilim | For Her Light
A fellow Goth buddy of mine recommended Fields Of The Nephilim to me and I remember being skeptical as I was an uptight Synth purist that shunned most fucking Rock Music at the time. But, boy, was I impressed. Carl McCoy's commanding voice preaching over cosmic and haunting guitar riffs. It was a dreamy, swirling vortex of songwriting where four tracks would expertly melt into each other and become a much richer piece of Music. For Her Light is what sets the whole thing off. It's so in your face despite its melodic complexities. It completely spellbound me and made guitars sound incredibly cool again. I listened to it on repeat for days on end that summer. Reading H.P Lovecraft stories in my room or making Horror movies with my buddies on warm Summer nights. Fields Of The Nephilim instantly became one of my all time favorite bands. Years later they became a very important touchstone in the forming of Hearts Of Black Science.
5. Skinny Puppy | Harsh Stone White
Skinny Puppy is my favorite band of all time. I mean, THE band. I drift in and out of other bands that I like but SP's first eight albums are the most important pieces of Music I know. It is impossible to pick one song that is better than perhaps any twenty other songs of theirs. However, it takes time and effort to get into Skinny Puppy and Harsh Stone White was one of the tracks that instantly clicked with me. Which upon reflection seems perplexing considering its parts. The main melody never settles on a proper rhythm, the snare is a strangely disjointed machine gun and Ogre (vocals) lays down some incredibly tortured vocals. But it's also beautiful and a lot of melody cuts through the noise. And it has more atmosphere than a fog bank at night with the synth strings weaving in and out of the song like some sad orchestra fighting for air. It's a mesmerizing bit of Music. Most of Skinny Puppy's output treads this fine line between screaming Horror and subtle beauty. Sometimes it's complex and carefully structured. Sometimes it's like twisted pieces of audio shrapnel that happens to remind you of Music. I find it incredibly evocative and inspiring.
6. Makeup And Vanity Set | Collapse
Makeup And Vanity Set did a few albums that sounds like John Carpenter's music that I really like. But the 88:88 album is on another lever. Especially the massive Collapse. I love the slow build and the really spacious soundscape. There's retro stuff in there (a lot of Vangelis and Tangerine Dream), but it still sounds fresh to me. It's uncomplicated at the core but very atmospheric and really beautiful. Like a soundtrack for Space Exploration minus the cheese.
7. Aphex Twin | Polynomial-C
My sister and her boyfriend at the time introduced me to Techno, Underground Dance Music and Aphex Twin in 1995. This was just as Richard D. James was leaving the straight 4/4's and Ambient beats behind to become one of the most unique Music producers out there. However, Polynomial-C is still incredibly melodic and really stands out on the otherwise brilliant Classics record. I love the simplicity of the main arpeggio and how it creates so much mood on just a few notes in conjunction with the strings. It's difficult to do well, but Aphex Twin makes it seem effortless. This song was what sold me on Techno (or IDM if you're picky like that), and the Classics album seemed like the logical step from Industrial Music, which had become a sinking ship of cheap Thrash Metal loops over distorted beats at this point. I never seem to grow tired of this song.
8. The Knife | Heartbeats
I came home from Berlin one summer and drove around in a car with my brother. Suddenly this came on the radio and just kicked me in the nuts. It had been a long time since popular Electronic Music had sounded this fresh. Raw and in your face and to the point. Techno had mutated into either easy listening Eurodance or really hyper convoluted Glitch. Although Heartbeats sound seemed to owe more to Chris & Cosey than any current Dance act out there, it was inspiring to hear something so free of convention. The Knife has been another important influence for HOBS throughout the years.
9. M83 | Kim & Jessie
I've loved M83 since their second album. A French buddy of mine played them to me in the car one night as we were gliding through the streets of London. Drunk pals sleeping in the back seat. I remember thinking that it was so brave of M83 to go full out on the epicness. The big cheese. I loved that they didn't seem to care if it was cool or not. The pretense in the song titles and the unapologetic sincerity, void of any winking or satirical nudging for approval. And it all came to a head in Kim & Jessie. It's no longer a question if the 80's melodrama is accidental. The whole track reeks of it. Down to the imagery on the cover. I felt a much welcome return of an era of Music I had been missing for a long while.
10. Mitch Murder | Ravaged Skies
Mitch Murder is a fellow Swede and an incredible producer. There are many Synthwave acts out there but no one nails the 1980's morning Cartoon/Commercial break feeling like he does. I get all warm and fuzzy when I hear his stuff. It's my Childhood converted to Music. Ravaged Skies combines a driving bass with some incredibly exhilarating samples. They seem to tell the story of some botched test flight where catastrophe strikes as one of the pilots goes down in flames. That all too real radio chatter in combination with the epic Top Gun Music just makes for Magic. It sucks you right into the story of it. I'd love to work with this guy someday.
1. Type O Negative | Wolf Moon (Including Zoanthropic Paranoia)
Type O Negative is one of my all time favorite bands. Their Music has meant so much to me ever since I first discovered them around the release of Bloody Kisses back in 1993. By the time October Rust was released in 1996 it quickly became one of my favorite albums of all time and I still hold it as my top 5 album even today, some odd 18 years later! Type O Negative's Music is, and will always be, a very important source of Inspiration for me when writing and recording Music. It was a very sad day for me when I heard about the death of Peter Steele, not only because he was a true genius and followed his own path, but also the fact that this World will never be graced with more Music from Type O Negative. This is one of the best bands that has ever existed, period!
2. Fields Of The Nephilim | Wail Of Sumer
I was introduced to this band by Tomas (Hearts Of Black Science) in the summer of 1995. The first second I heard it I was in Love, this was the kind of Music I always had dreamt about hearing but didn't know where to find! I had just picked up Paradise Lost's album Draconian Times and I loved the way the clean guitars sounded, it was very dreamy and Gothic and I had not yet discovered any bands that sounded anything like that, but when I heard Fields Of The Nephilim I knew exactly what I had found. Another fact is that when I and Tomas decided to start the band back in 2005 we had one thing in common: The Love for FieldsOf The Nephilim and Type O Negative, we knew we wanted to do dark and atmospheric Music in the vein of our heroes, and even if we come from total different backgrounds in our taste for Music, these two bands were something we had in common, so it has always acted like a meeting stone for us, a guideline if you wish.
3. Paradise Lost | Yearn For Change
Draconian Times was the soundtrack to my summer of 1995. It is by far the best album from Paradise Lost, a band I discovered a few years earlier when I saw the As I Die video on Headbangers Ball. I was blown away by this new approach they took on Draconian Times, it was so dreamy and uplifting without being too catchy. Everything is perfect about this album, the vocals, the production, the guitars, the melodies... It is as much of a Gothic album as it is a dreamy Doom Metal album, a match made in Heaven.
4. M83 | Teen Angst
I discovered M83's universe around the release of Before The Dawn Heals Us, sometime in 2005. This was probably just a couple of months before we started Hearts Of Black Science and their Music has been a big source of Inspiration ever since. The Music is very epic and dreamy and sometimes I find myself just floating around while listening to them. I love this band! Every album is good but this will remain my favorite release and it brings back wonderful memories for me. I had this album on repeat the first time we flew to London to do our very first show with Hearts Of Black Science at the Water Rats Theatre and I can still feel like I get teleported back when listening to this amazing album.
5. Slowdive | Catch The Breeze
This is a band I discovered late, I remember that someone from Club AC30, the record label that released our first album introduced me to it. This was my first introduction to Shoegaze/Dreampop and I fell in Love. I had always loved dreamy Music, Type O Negative's October Rust, for example, is filled with dreamy guitars and keys, and they were inspired by Dreampop/Shoegaze acts. I could finally hear where these dreamy guitars came from, the same way I could hear where all these dark riffs in Metal bands came from when discovering the classic Black Sabbath. Slowdive opened many doors for me that would later lead me to bands like Cocteau Twins, Alcest, Lycia, My Bloody Valentine, M83, etc.
6. Edge Of Sanity | Twilight
This is a Swedish Death Metal band that I discovered as early as 1991. They were probably the first band to mix clean vocals with growl. I was a big fan of their previous two albums, but when Purgatory Afterglow was released in the summer of 1994 I was totally blown away! This is still one of my all time favorite Swedish releases. I can clearly remember that many of my friends that wasn't into Metal, and particularly not Death Metal, would love this album when I played it to them! It has something very unique to it, some weird mix of Goth meets Death Metal. This band was never featured in the media here in Sweden, highly underrated but still very important. It was also via Edge Of Sanity I was introduced to Opeth, since Mikael Åkerfeldt did some guest vocals on their follow up album called Crimson. Opeth later became my absolute favorite band from Sweden...
7. Iron Maiden | Caught Somewhere In Time
When I was at the age of 10 I discovered bands like Metallica, Anthrax and Slayer. On Fridays in School, we would have something called Roliga Timmen, translated as the Joyful Hour and sometimes this would mean then one person from the class would bring a favorite song and play it for the classmates. My friend Johan did exactly that, and he brought a song on cassette called Caught Somewhere In Time from a band called Iron Maiden. I was stunned and blown away by this song! The next morning I heard the very same song being played on the TV and I knew I had to get an Iron Maiden LP! I had never heard anything like it, everything was perfect about this band, the Music, the artworks, Eddie! Even to this day, I hold Iron Maiden as one of my favorite bands and it is probably the band I have seen live the most times. They are also the perfect band to love if you are, like me, a vinyl collector!
8. Lana Del Rey | Ride
The most important discovery in Music for me was last December when I finally got the chance to listen to the whole album by Lana Del Rey, Born To Die - The Paradise Edition. I had this album on repeat for months, something I find rare nowadays, simply due to the fact that I listen to so much Music I don't have time to focus on only one album. But this album was one of those I simply couldn't put aside. I must have been listening to it from start to finish over a 100 times. It is such an amazing album. The kind of album that just puts you in a trance. I think Lana Del Rey is one of the most important new artist in the last decade or so, simply stunning! Remember to pick up The Paradise Edition of Born To Die, it features her best song to date, Ride. A song that is so good that you will sometimes find yourself about to start crying.
9. Neurosis | Away
I discovered Neurosis late, I think it was around 1996 when they released Through Silver In Blood, but it wasn't until the release of Times Of Grace back in 1999 that I was totally hooked! This is one of the best albums of all time. It is filled with Drone, Doom & Gloom, yet it is a very beautiful and Ambient album. The production of this album is superb, it is huge, warm and thick and has an amazing room sound to it. Few albums has made such an impact on me as Times Of Grace has, a masterpiece.
10. Opeth | Dirge For November
My favorite band from Sweden. I discovered them when they released their second album called Morningrise back in 1996 via a sampler CD that came with a Swedish Music magazine. I was blown away and this band has kept me company ever since. All of their albums are masterpieces and it is impossible to pick a favorite album since they are all so different from each other. But Blackwater Park stands out. I first heard an advance promo copy a couple of months before its release when I was in Brazil. A record store owner had got this advance copy from a friend he had in America somehow and I remember standing there in this warm record store, in the middle of the Summer in Sao Paulo, listening to this new Opeth record... Once again I was blown away and I started to count the days until the release later that year. When I finally laid my hands on the vinyl I was in Heaven! I remember I had to record the LP to my computer just so I could burn a CDR copy for my car, yes, this was back when Internet was still too slow to download albums! This band has been very important to my life, both on sad times and happy times. Their Music has always been a great friend that I can find comfort in. Last year a dream came true for me, I would play on the same festival stage as Opeth with my other band Crippled Black Phoenix and I also got to meet the whole band. They are really a bunch of great people and I ended up drinking a few beers and talking Music with them and they also watched our show and enjoyed it. It was one of my luckiest moments ever!
+11. Mew | Special
It seems like I discovered lots of new Music around the time that we recorded the first Hearts Of Black Science album. Maybe not so strange when we look back because we spent almost an year locked inside our studio and we would always listen to Music between our recording sessions. A lot of Music! Tomas had already played some music from their previous album Frengers to me and I remember I liked it. However, I discovered Mew for real the first time we went to London to sign our record deal. We went to a party somewhere in London and the music playing that night was their new album And The Glass Handed Kites. Tomas had seen this band live the year before and was already well into it, but for me it was still fresh. I had never heard anything like it! The album is truly Progressive and every song fits together into the next, almost making it sound like the album only has one epic song on it! This album was on repeat for over 2 years and is still to this day my favorite Mew album.
+12. Sophie Zelmani | To Know You
This is another favorite from Sweden. The haunting voice of Sophie Zelmani and the album Love Affair. This was the first album I bought from her and it was released back in 2003. I had just bought my first, and to this day my only house and I had this album on repeat for months to come. The Music is very soothing and haunting and her voice is just stunning! This album has the best audiophile recorded vocals that I have ever heard. The sound really fills the room if you listen to it on a high end system. She has released several albums and they are all good, but this is truly her masterpiece. It is a very sad album and that is always better than a happy sounding album. One of the best Swedish albums ever released.
+13. Woven Hand | Winter Shaker
I can't remember how I discovered this album called Mosaic by Woven Hand, but what I do remember is that I fell into a trance when hearing this song for the first time! This album is so dark and haunting, yet very beautiful! The first time I heard 16 Horsepower back in the 90's I was in a high fever and was listening to this live show they did on the radio and I was in a trance back then as well. It might have been caused by the fever, but I was very touched by what I heard. Somehow I forgot about this band and can't say I have been listening to them a lot, until I discovered Woven Hand that is. I prefer Woven Hand to be honest, and Mosaic is my favorite album so far by them. It is such an honest sounding record.
+14. Alcest | Autre Temps
Alcest is a band from France that I discovered by pure luck back when Écailles De Lune was released back in 2010. I instantly fell in Love with their beautiful, unique and Ambient mix of Shoegaze and Black Metal, that is something few bands has managed to pull off, even that many have copied Alcest's sound since then. This album called Les Voyages De L'Âme is my favorite Alcest album. It is simply stunning and brings forth many emotions. The perfect soundtrack to a cold and dark Swedish winter night.
1. Jean-Michel Jarre | Ethnicolor
This is the first song that completely floored me when I was maybe 7 or 8. Everything I had listened to up until this point (we played lots of Elvis and Classic Pop/Rock in the Almgren house) was easy to comprehend. There were drums and guitars and someone would sing a verse and a chorus and so on. Hearing Ethnicolor (and JMJ) for the first time was like making contact with an alien intelligence. It was Abstract. Melancholy. And scary as hell. I'm sure Jarre was trying to make some sort of sincere commentary on various cultures and ethnicities, but the irony is that it sounds like nothing born of this Earth. From the haunting howl that opens the song, followed by the grand robotic requiem of the centre piece, all the way to the bouncing Funk of the outro. It was less Pop and more Star Wars cantina. It was massively influential to me in the sense that Music structure suddenly no longer had a clear foundation. And it was the first time I realized that Electronic Music could sound like anything you fucking wanted it to.
2. Public Enemy | Bring The Noise
PE was another early influence. I grew up in a really quiet, predominantly white, upper middle class area and had almost zero connection to the things that Chuck D would Rap about. And it was a great sobering kick in the head to realize that not everyone lives a sheltered life in rural Sweden. And it was Music you could blast on your big puffy Walkman headphones and sort out all the shit in your head when your step dad had yelled at you. And listening to Chuck D plow through each line like an angry tank over those Terminator X beats was like shooting adrenaline directly into my teenage brain. Never losing his lyrical focus or finesse. Cleverly bending words around the craziest beats to come out of Hip Hop. Almost Industrial in its mission to annoy. It was raw, unpleasant and loud and my parents hated it.
3. Depeche Mode | Enjoy The Silence
Enjoy The Silence is the best Pop song ever written. It's not one of them. It's the most brilliantly written piece of Pop ever created. To be able to sink that much Melancholy and Emotion into it without losing the danceable party hook is crazy. I love Depeche Mode (obviously) and this is and always will be their best song.
4. Fields Of The Nephilim | For Her Light
A fellow Goth buddy of mine recommended Fields Of The Nephilim to me and I remember being skeptical as I was an uptight Synth purist that shunned most fucking Rock Music at the time. But, boy, was I impressed. Carl McCoy's commanding voice preaching over cosmic and haunting guitar riffs. It was a dreamy, swirling vortex of songwriting where four tracks would expertly melt into each other and become a much richer piece of Music. For Her Light is what sets the whole thing off. It's so in your face despite its melodic complexities. It completely spellbound me and made guitars sound incredibly cool again. I listened to it on repeat for days on end that summer. Reading H.P Lovecraft stories in my room or making Horror movies with my buddies on warm Summer nights. Fields Of The Nephilim instantly became one of my all time favorite bands. Years later they became a very important touchstone in the forming of Hearts Of Black Science.
5. Skinny Puppy | Harsh Stone White
Skinny Puppy is my favorite band of all time. I mean, THE band. I drift in and out of other bands that I like but SP's first eight albums are the most important pieces of Music I know. It is impossible to pick one song that is better than perhaps any twenty other songs of theirs. However, it takes time and effort to get into Skinny Puppy and Harsh Stone White was one of the tracks that instantly clicked with me. Which upon reflection seems perplexing considering its parts. The main melody never settles on a proper rhythm, the snare is a strangely disjointed machine gun and Ogre (vocals) lays down some incredibly tortured vocals. But it's also beautiful and a lot of melody cuts through the noise. And it has more atmosphere than a fog bank at night with the synth strings weaving in and out of the song like some sad orchestra fighting for air. It's a mesmerizing bit of Music. Most of Skinny Puppy's output treads this fine line between screaming Horror and subtle beauty. Sometimes it's complex and carefully structured. Sometimes it's like twisted pieces of audio shrapnel that happens to remind you of Music. I find it incredibly evocative and inspiring.
6. Makeup And Vanity Set | Collapse
Makeup And Vanity Set did a few albums that sounds like John Carpenter's music that I really like. But the 88:88 album is on another lever. Especially the massive Collapse. I love the slow build and the really spacious soundscape. There's retro stuff in there (a lot of Vangelis and Tangerine Dream), but it still sounds fresh to me. It's uncomplicated at the core but very atmospheric and really beautiful. Like a soundtrack for Space Exploration minus the cheese.
7. Aphex Twin | Polynomial-C
My sister and her boyfriend at the time introduced me to Techno, Underground Dance Music and Aphex Twin in 1995. This was just as Richard D. James was leaving the straight 4/4's and Ambient beats behind to become one of the most unique Music producers out there. However, Polynomial-C is still incredibly melodic and really stands out on the otherwise brilliant Classics record. I love the simplicity of the main arpeggio and how it creates so much mood on just a few notes in conjunction with the strings. It's difficult to do well, but Aphex Twin makes it seem effortless. This song was what sold me on Techno (or IDM if you're picky like that), and the Classics album seemed like the logical step from Industrial Music, which had become a sinking ship of cheap Thrash Metal loops over distorted beats at this point. I never seem to grow tired of this song.
8. The Knife | Heartbeats
I came home from Berlin one summer and drove around in a car with my brother. Suddenly this came on the radio and just kicked me in the nuts. It had been a long time since popular Electronic Music had sounded this fresh. Raw and in your face and to the point. Techno had mutated into either easy listening Eurodance or really hyper convoluted Glitch. Although Heartbeats sound seemed to owe more to Chris & Cosey than any current Dance act out there, it was inspiring to hear something so free of convention. The Knife has been another important influence for HOBS throughout the years.
9. M83 | Kim & Jessie
I've loved M83 since their second album. A French buddy of mine played them to me in the car one night as we were gliding through the streets of London. Drunk pals sleeping in the back seat. I remember thinking that it was so brave of M83 to go full out on the epicness. The big cheese. I loved that they didn't seem to care if it was cool or not. The pretense in the song titles and the unapologetic sincerity, void of any winking or satirical nudging for approval. And it all came to a head in Kim & Jessie. It's no longer a question if the 80's melodrama is accidental. The whole track reeks of it. Down to the imagery on the cover. I felt a much welcome return of an era of Music I had been missing for a long while.
10. Mitch Murder | Ravaged Skies
Mitch Murder is a fellow Swede and an incredible producer. There are many Synthwave acts out there but no one nails the 1980's morning Cartoon/Commercial break feeling like he does. I get all warm and fuzzy when I hear his stuff. It's my Childhood converted to Music. Ravaged Skies combines a driving bass with some incredibly exhilarating samples. They seem to tell the story of some botched test flight where catastrophe strikes as one of the pilots goes down in flames. That all too real radio chatter in combination with the epic Top Gun Music just makes for Magic. It sucks you right into the story of it. I'd love to work with this guy someday.
