These are the shownotes that go with this episode:

Additionally, you can always hear all tracks we have played on the show via this Spotify playlist:

Subscribe to this The Infected Selected playlist to automatically get the new tracks added to it for each new episode we publish.

And now, on to the shownotes for Treasures of the East:

Silent EM – Entre Otros 

Silent EM is the coldwave project of American artist Jean Lorenzo. 

He fell into his solo project by chance. Before moving to New York City, where he now calls home, he had played guitar and bass in post punk and punk bands. 

But found out that with his move to a new city, he was more interested in making music alone and not be dependent on band members. So what do you do: you buy some synths and drum machines and a good computer. He records live in his own studio and sings in both English and Spanish with dramatic lyrical themes that include lies, disillusion, numbness of love and lost dreams. 

The influence of 1980s coldwave and post punk is apparent in the uptempo, emotional songs that he makes.  

Silent EM released his first EP in early 2013 on cassette, followed by a 7″ that same year, and has released music on both American and European labels. 

NEVIRIMØ – Відстань (2023)
Our Insta Outcast for this episode – Written by Rostyslav Nosenko, who is a sound engineer currently living and working in Prague.

And indeed, on their Soundcloud and Youtube bio’s it simply says Prague, Czech Republic, Post-punk/Darkwave duo from Ukraine. So I guess they may have fled Ukraine because of the war and ended up in the Ukraine. I’d say indeed, the genre is somewhere between Dark Wave, Indie Rock and Post-punk. The song we’ll play is called Відстань, Distance.

They don’t have a site, but apparently Chat GPT wrote this bio for them: “Nevirimo personifies the Punk subculture with their unbridled energy and rebellious spirit. Their music is distinguished by ferocious guitar riffs, thunderous drumbeats, and powerful vocals that pierce the listener’s very soul. Nevirimo combine punk’s classic aspects with their own distinctive style. Their lyrics address both public issues and individual struggles. Nevirimo’s music is a fusion of aggressiveness and melody, offering listeners a cathartic experience.  Their music embodies the spirit of disobedience and nonconformity that has long been associated with punk. Their dynamic live performances and their uncompromising approach to music make a big impression on audiences.”

https://www.instagram.com/nevirimo
https://www.instagram.com/yoshicryer

поживна цінність – антипатія (2022)

Pozhyvna Tsinnist: “Nutritional value”. A young band from Shatsk. Shatsk is a village in Volyn Oblast, in the western part of Ukraine, towards the Polish border. About 5000 people live there. The village is in a picturesque area in the western part of the Volyn Woodlands, surrounded by lakes, sometimes called Shatsky.  The band bio simply reads “We don’t stick to genres and write what we feel.” Poorly recorded, but atmospheric post-punk.

Pojivna Cinnist has released 7 tracks. Their songs are on Spotify, where they have about 25K monthly listeners. This one is called антипатія, which means “Antipathy”. It is from 2022 and was released on their SoundCloud profile about 10 months ago. In the comments on Soundcloud, one fan describes it as “A track with a raw meat flavour.”

The song is about depression and the end of friendship. The singer sings “You are not my friend, and I don’t want to see you. It’s a good thing that won’t happen now. Your friends are so stupid, you are just like them. How could we ever be together, you never made me feel happy, it was just a way to distract myself. Because I don’t have the strength anymore to exist in this world. I don’t know how I made it to summer.

Portion Control – Crash Weight Gain 

Food is obviously is a theme with these guys. Such a band name and song title made mee look up more info and of course: these 3 gentlemen were chef students in London together. The term portion control was continuously taught to them to have restaurants make more profit.  
Not per se for health benefits of dosing your portion.  

The song you just heard is from 1983. 

Portion Control is a British electronic and industrial band from South London in 1980. You can place them alongside Front 242, Skinny Puppy and Frontine Assembly for instance. They called it quits in 1987 after disagreements with their record label and a loss of momentum in the Industrial scene and they sold all of their synthesizers and samplers.  

They are seen as pioneers of using sampling as an instrument. They used a home-made sampling device together with the Apple II computer. Their tracks were very simple with repeating 1 bar basslines, but with high energy. 

They spent hours and hours creating one shot samples and short loops from synthesizers routed through effects. These are then cycled into the tracks.  

At an early stage, a long loop of drum and bass will be vocalized and then the rest of the track added around the vocal. Now, that’s a Spartan way to go about things. But in limitation, true creativity and talent is seen. 

Долинушка – Дyшi.

This is a song from the EP called “Nothing but.” Dyshi is the artist name of Diana Shymanovskaya, an Indie artist from Belarus. She works as an English translator & tutor at the Belarusian State University in Minsk. Just 35 listeners per month on Spotify, but who knows, maybe she’s huge on Yandex Music, VK music or Zvuk, which are some of the streaming services you can find her music on 😀

She introduces a recent release as follows: Let’s imagine for a moment, we are a multitude of free thinking droplets, all part of the sea in different ways. Sometimes struggling to move sideways, and sometimes, for a while, almost upwards, but still we flow in the same direction, changing our direction with our mind. And each drop strives to experience as much of life as possible, living individually, and doe severything in its power to make the sea  even bigger and more beautiful in the end. I am thrilled to release my songs into their winding voyage. Enjoy listening!

https://www.facebook.com/fenix.upto

Самые страшные тени – конъюнктура & Убей меня, Эйс! (June 2020)

“The Darkest Shadows” by Conjuncture and Kill me, Ace! A track produced by Oleg Letuta, whose discography includes 74 songs. Here is a link to his work, check it out, some great tracks in there!

Conjuncture is a band from Saint Petersburg, Russia. They do not even have a bio online, so little is known about them. This song is a cooperation with Ukrainian one-man band Kill Me, Ace. His concept as an artist is his continouos internal dialog with his inner freak, named Ace.

This is a true cooperation, in the first verse you’ll hear Kill me, Ace!, the chorus is sung together, then the second verse is sung by Conjuncture and in the outro they rejoin together again. The song precedes the Russian invasion of Ukraine by almost two years, but has gained only more relevance since, because the song lyrics to “The Darkest Shadows” are, indeed, about war. Let’s hear it.

The lyrics describe how humans, once loved, end up finding a final home in the swamp graves that they have dug themselves, roots cutting their hands, bones wiped out by the sand, their blood mingled in the swamp. Together they sing, “This is the kind of love that’s right for us. We must remember, with our eyelids forever closed, the words have grown quiet, the worst prayers are behind us, the darkest shadows are behind us, the earth has buried love, the earth has forgotten love, we must remember, we must remember, ourselves.

https://kkkconjuncture.bandcamp.com

Soft Cell – Martin 

I picked this final track to be played last, because it’s around 10 minutes long but worth every second.  

Do I need to explain or tell you more about Soft Cell? Probably not but let’s do it quickly for some listeners that don’t know them.  

Soft Cell is an English synthpop duo that became quite popular in the early 1980s. The duo consists of vocalist Marc Almond and instrumentalist David Ball.  

The band are primarily known for their 1981 hit version of “Tainted Love”. 

They had quite some hits, especially in the UK and 4 top 20 albums in the eighties as well. They sold more than ten million albums worldwide. I’m not a big fan, to be honest, it’s all a bit too poppy for me, but there is a track that I really like: Martin.  

In 1983, fame and nearly constant drug use were having a bad effect on the two. Soft Cell’s third album release, appropriately titled “The Art of Falling Apart”, was a Top 5 hit in the UK and that’s where this dark track is on, Martin.  

In 1984, the duo split in good harmony. Only to reform in 2001 to tour and release a new album.