3 Releases For Our 6 Year Anniversary

6 years ago this month we released our very first record, Eleven Pond’s “Bas Relief”. The release party was Sunday July 12th at Honey Soundsystem but the records were delayed so we hung up the silkscreened artwork we made around the club as decorations. We pushed the release date one week later to July 19th. This week we celebrate six years strong with 3 releases, spanning music from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and our first contemporary release of the year!

Second Layer was a side project of Adrian Borland and Graham Bailey, members of post punk band The Sound. The project was born from early punk band The Outsiders, which had both Graham and Adrian as members. Second Layer featured the voice and guitars of Adrian mixed with the bass and pioneering electronics of Graham. The music was bleak, detached, and desolate, but very beautiful. Honest songwriting and a harsh sonic backdrop set them apart from their peers.

The band’s first two singles were released by Tortch label. The first was ‘Flesh As Property’ EP in 1979 and the second ‘State Of Emergency’ EP in 1980. By 1981 Second Layer had found a home on London-based label Cherry Red and released their debut album “World of Rubber” in November of that year. Full of hard mechanical sounds produced by Adrian’s guitars and Graham’s homemade drum machines, the album actively engages the listener. Songs are manic and twisted, pervaded with haunting subterranean atmospheres. Adrian’s anguished voice tackles lyrics that are politically charged and morbidly fixated. Metallic guitar riffs, moody basslines, and Wasp synthesizer beeps are set to the band’s cache of processed tape loops. They are a homegrown electronic garage band that sit alongside their contemporaries Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire and Public Image Limited.

This deluxe 2xLP edition features the complete recorded output of Second Layer plus 5 unreleased demos from 1978-80. All songs have been remastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. Each LP comes in an exact replica of the original metallic sliver and black jacket from the 1981 issue with a never seen before fold out poster made by the band in 1980 with liner notes, photos and press clippings. Though Adrian passed away in 1999, his genius lives on in these recordings. “Clap the headphones on, squeeze the volume up.”

Dark Entries is proud to release the sophomore EP from Bézier entitled “Telomeres.” Bézier is the moniker of local SF musician Robert Yang, who also is part of the illustrious Honey Soundsystem crew. “Telomeres” is the follow up to Bézier’s debut EP “Ensconced”, released in 2013. The title relates to themes of time, science, analytics and procedures. Bézier integrates the refrains of Spanish new wave and Italo disco with the attitude and aggression of underground styles like synth-punk and industrial. These six tracks were written, produced and mixed by Bézier at his home studio in San Francisco between 2014 and 2015, and feature the debut of his own vocals.

All songs have been mixed by Mark Pistel (of Meat Beat Manifesto fame) at Room 5, San Francisco and EQed for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. The vinyl comes housed in a jacket featuring an illustration by in-house designer Eloise Leigh riffing on early 80s computer graphics. The matted sleeve is meant to resemble the side panels of early computing instruments like Macintoshes or the Commodore 64. Each LP includes a postcard with a photograph of actual telomeres captured by a microscope camera by the Blackburn Lab at UCSF. “Telomeres” are life’s building blocks, changing the lengths of chromosomes to determine lifespan. This music is an investigation of a future in which time elongates as well as contracts..

Miss Kittin & The Hacker are the Electro duo of Caroline Hervé and Michel Amato from Grenoble, France. The pair met during the early 90s at a rave and soon after bought turntables and began DJing. In 1996, they began writing music heavily influenced by 80s synth and post-punk bands like Fad Gadget, DAF, Liaisons Dangeuresues, and Yazoo, as well as Italo Disco. Bored by the techno scene at the time, they set out out to lighten the serious tone and bring a campy sexiness to the dour musical landscape. Upon hearing their demos DJ Hell signed them to his Munich-based International DJ Gigolo label and released their first 2 EPs in 1998 and 1999. Their debut album ”First Album” was released in 2001.

“Lost Tracks Vol. 1” contains 4 previously unreleased demos recorded between 1997 and 1999. The duo fused 80’s European New Wave/Italo Disco with 90’s Detroit Electro acts like Le Car and Dopplereffekt. By utilizing verse-chorus structures, they playfully shook up the loop based hard techno and electro that was popular at the time. Their studio set up at the time was a Korg MS-20, Roland SH-101, TR-606, TR-808, Siel DK80, and Boss DR-660 drum machine. The songs are direct, spontaneous, seemingly improvised in places. Miss Kittin sings about falling in love with an alien, sexy nightlife in Berlin, and explicit S&M leather play, all in her cheekily derisive French accent

All songs have been transferred from the original DAT tapes by the band and mastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. The vinyl comes housed in a glossy jacket featuring a black and white photo of the duo taken in 1996. Each LP includes a postcard with liner notes from Miss Kittin and The Hacker designed by Eloise Leigh. As Miss Kittin says of these demos, “We were naive, innocent, adventurous and we didn’t expect anything in return”.