Music for the lost: HOLYGRAM‘s music blends post-punk and new wave with Krautrock and shoegaze elements into a headstrong, multi-layered and thoroughly contemporary homage to the sound of the 1980s, including a resolute look to the future: driving, dark and full of catchy moments. The wide range of influences of the five band members, who got together in Cologne’s vibrating musical landscape in 2015, are unmistakable: New Order meets NEU!. Their unpretentious approach to their own icons proves that references to the past must always be future-oriented, too. Previously impossible-to-combine elements come together cleverly to become the soundtrack of a city that appears threatening in the twilight.

The band who always wrap themselves in dense wafts of mist and cool lighting on stage have played numerous festivals, such as the Mailfeld Derby, Wave-Gotik-Treffen and New Waves Day and accompanied British act OMD on their 2017 European tour. At the end of the year, HOLYGRAM are set to embark on an extensive support tour with VNV Nation through Europe and the US to introduce their debut album Modern Cults live.

The recording takes up where their self-titled 2016 EP left off and intensifies HOLYGRAM‘s contemplation of themes such as big cities, alienation and anonymity, hope and memories, love and identity: These constant reflections always interact closely with the band’s unmistakable sonic guise. The atmosphere oscillates between the brutal sounds of the big city and the fragility of the people that lose themselves in it – intelligently observed scenarios of a world falling apart in which individuals have long ceased to play a leading role. The eleven songs were created over the past few years and some of them have already been tested in a live context. Numbers such as the title track Modern Cults or the spherical Still There follow their protagonist on a nocturnal trip through clubs, flashbacks, run-down neighbourhoods and the abysses of the human psyche. The diversity of the cityscape as a reflection of the people who live in it seems like an Ariadne‘s thread that the five musicians offer to their listeners to help them navigate this broad stylistic range. Because HOLYGRAM don’t see themselves as representatives of a specific genre. Melancholy walls of guitar sounds (Distant Light) interchange with uplifting bass runs (Hideaway), chilly synthesizers meet stoically driving rhythms and together make up the projection screen for the ambivalent stories that HOLYGRAM tell in their music. While 1997 wanders through forgotten places in a broken-up relationship, the song She’s like the sun is an ironic confrontation with the failure to achieve unreachable targets. Autobiographical elements blend with fiction, the past melts into the present and they all become a simultaneously oppressive yet hopeful vision of human (co-) existence: a person caught in the mist of their own dreams at the intersection of outer and inner world, between fiction and reality.

This is also where the first single release Signals (scheduled for release on 7 September) comes in, featuring a new-wave guise that belies an emotionally torn lyric, elevating the deeply melancholy chorus (“Sometimes when I close my eyes I see you walk away / And everytime the sun comes up the feeling is the same”) to a pop-like anthem, illustrating that in this world people are only cogs in a much bigger, increasingly autonomous machine.

For the production of their album, which was recorded at Cologne’s Amen Studios, Patrick Blümel (vocals), Sebastian Heer (drums), Marius Lansing (guitars), Pilo Lenger (synthesizers) and Bennett Reimann (bass) enlisted the support of Maurizio Baggio, who also produced The Soft Moon’s albums Deeper and Criminal. Together they worked on the band’s established sound, enhancing it with a myriad of facets.

HOLYGRAM will perform with VNV NATION at the Casino, St-Niklaas (B) on Sunday October 21st and tickets are going fast so click the link below to order those last available tickets now!

www.bodybeats.be/en/tickets/21-10-vnv-nation-de-casino

The Dutch Electro-EBM combo The Force Dimension have released a brand new album called Sorcery Pigs which is now available trough the band's bandcamp page!

Want this legendary band on your stage! Mail to info(at)bodybeats(dot)be now!

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We are proud to announce Clock DVA will return to BIMFEST in 2018. CLOCK DVA have played BIMFEST already once before in 2011, stunning our BIMFES audience with their mesmerizing multimedia performance!

This time these electronic music pioneers, since 1978, will be performing an exclusive Belgian show with tracks from their legendary albums Buried Dreams, Man-Amplified, some new stuff and much more!

More info and media here!

www.bimfest.be

Your beloved FREE underground music zine Peek-a-Boo is out there again!

This time with a feature interview with the notorious American Goth Rockers Christian Death! For this special occasion the band decided to treat our readers with two (temporary) free downloads of their song Peek-a-Boo, taken from their Born Again Anit-Christian album (1990).
Peek-a-Boo (click to download)
Peek-a-Boo (Cradle Of Filth version) (click to download)

Reviews within this magazine

• ANDERS MANGA : Perfectly Stranger
• APSURDE : See Me Coming
• ASTRASONIC : Passengers
• CONSPIRACY COVEN : Conspiracy Coven
• DARKNESS ON DEMAND : Back To Psychoburbia
• FERAL BODY : Chain Ritual
• HA:PEOPLE 355 : One Bear, Two Bicycles And One Xylophone
• JOHN FOXX : METAMATIC (2018 BOX)
• LIZARD SMILE : Wandering in Mirrors
• NEGANT : No !
• PAULINA CASSIDY : Drawing Up A Storm
• SIMPLE MINDS : Walk Between Worlds
• STRUCK9 : Ritual Body Music
• ANYTHING : directed by Timothy McNeil
• DER HAUPTMANN : (2017) German-Polish-French biographical drama, black & white, directed by Robert Schwentke based on true facts.

Interviews within this magazine

• CHRISTIAN DEATH
• DANA CALLEY (VAPORS OF MORPHINE)
• DANIEL B / PROTHESE
• DISTRICT 13
• GROUND NERO
• LEAETHER STRIP
• LIZARD SMILE
• PERSEPHONE
• WHISPERS IN THE SHADOW

www.peek-a-boo-magazine.be/en/magazines

ZANIAS (AUS/D)

The stunning voice and frontlady of former Linea Aspera and Keluar returns to BIMFEST 2018 for an exclusive Belgian show with her new electronic solo project Zanias!

Zanias was born in Australia, raised in South-East Asia and now resides in Berlin. She was once known as the head and voice of bands Linea Aspera and Keluar, and now performs and DJs as a solo artist as Zanias.

Her debut EP ‘To the Core’ was produced in collaboration with Alex Akers of the band Forces, a process which was completed in a dilapidated beach house on Australia’s desolate and wild southern coast in February 2016, and released in September on Austrian label Noiztank. Tying together industrial rhythms and unearthly vocals, the four tracks explore an intrinsically human journey through loss and upheaval.

In addition to performance and production, Zanias is a member of Berlin's Fleisch collective, an amalgam of DJs with primary careers as musicians and designers, and a taste for Electronic Body Music, New Beat, Industrial, Acid, and the darker, wavier fringes of techno. In 2016 their parties gave way to the founding of a record label, which made its debut with Schwefelgelb's body music masterpiece 'Wie Die Finger Durch Den Nebel'.

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Zanias - Follow the Body (video)

Zanias - Through This Collapse (video)

More names will be unleashed soon so stay tuned or even better subscribe to our monthly newsletter here to stay informed!

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The very limited and special priced Early-birds tickets are only meant for our true and loyal supporters who put their faith blindly in our BIMFEST programming.
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