Glistening vistas of crystal lakes and lush purple mountains fringed by the light of twin suns bombarding their far sides with life.  The cool moist air drifting up from the scattered lakes and brushing against the concrete bunkers rupturing the ground along a long grassy mound.  The mass of troops laying on their backs staring at the orange sky listening to the faint hiss of ghost tapes emanating from their concrete holes.  It’s all so wistfully out of reach, as if a narcotic slumber has descended upon the short-term memory of their bolt-holes.  One by one they sink slowly under the smooth blades of grass, the earth reaching up invisible figures, gently sucking them under.  Yet concrete, earth and far of voices are all lost under the perpetual stare of the orange sky.

Horrid Red’s MySpace location rather wonderfully mirrors the most obvious touchstones for their sound, Germany (Aachen) and the West Coast (San Francisco).  A watery blissed out guitar snakes through the fuzzy austere bass and Cold-Wave hand claps all knitted together with German vocals recorded in the red.  Easy point of entry #2: I wrote the above Sci-Fi fever dream before discovering that the lead singer goes by the name Bunker Wolf. You can find out a fraction more about the band here and thanks to Matt from Where To Now? for the tip.

Horrid Red – Transparent Streets

Diamond Vampires return to the pages of 20JFG once more to remind us all of why we lavish so much of our time on the celestial tones of neon flecked streets and the theological enormities of intergalactic physics.  Well, the soundtrack to those things…

The Mineral Room revels in the pleasure of the build, each element beautiful, sliding into place like Cunningham’s robots to form something greater, cumulative, beautiful.  Looping synth pulses slide around the space that’s carved out with every layer of sound, every filtered vocal breath.  It’s a rush, there’s no kickdrum to relieve you, the pleasure of the build is all.

Diamond Vampires – The Mineral Room

Diamond Vampires have a 12″ of different songs out now on Amateur Recordings which you can get from Phonica.

Bonus vid: Xeno & Oaklander playing Sex is Disgusting‘s 17th show at Brighton’s incomparable The Cowley Club.  If you haven’t, we humbly recommend you see them (and their label mates Led Er Est).