As it is in Italy for Italo and Cosmic disco, Belgium is widely renowned for the club-inflected New Beat, a slowed down danceable concoction of EBM / Industrial / HNRG / Acid House and Techno; for my part instead, it stood for the exciting Coldwave/New Wave bands, Siglo XXX and Polyphonic Size, and two outstanding labels, with their distinct and rich Avant-New Wavish sound, difficult to pinpoint though, somehow still operating, such as Les Disques Du Crépuscule and Crammed Discs with all their imaginative countless sub-labels.
Since the beginning of the 2000s, a series of intriguing compilations and reissues from valuable labels such as Walhalla Records and Onderstroom and precious blogs as Mutant Sounds, No Longer Forgotten Music and a few years later Systems Of Romance, revealed a lively DIY ‘cassette scene’ with an undergrowth of often short-lived obscure minimal and icy, both mechanical and heartfelt, synth driven acts.
The solo Cold Wave project of Davy De Decker, under the Dachau David moniker, was nurtured on such an inspirative legacy adding the paranoid pop industrialism of The Normal/Fad Gadget and the catatonic reiterations of the Suicide, as shown in the ghost ride of “Bardo” from his latest, just dropped work.
Following the first album “Droeve Demo” in September 2020, re-released this Spring on cassette edition by the VLERK label, soon followed by the “Schoonselhof” EP, the Belgian musician returns with his second session called “Droeve Dagen” EP, 4 tracks, two of which are atmospheric instrumentals, characterized by a less raw and clearer, both angsty and obsessive, while still remaining dark and depressive, synth sound.
Lyrically introspective, “Abandon Hope!”, delivers ominous warnings of oppressive suffering and death at the hands of a wicked system, while sways with snappy tapping beats, scattered by a mesh of crispy and hollow percussive hits, to inject a relentless metronomic lilt into humming bass ripples, tensely throbbing with a nervous pace and stretching along with the sinuous desolate wandering, through glaring twirls and spirals, of unsettling keyboard swathes, shifting from swelling hypnotic pulses, rising woodwind-like shrill flows and austere ceremonial reedy organ sweeps, to define the hallucinated dire contours around urgent heartfelt vocals, disentangling anxiety and fear into a cold insidious web of control.
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