Darktronica now has a presence on Myspace at http://www.myspace.com/darktronica. While Myspace is generally one of the worst sites on the Internet, it’s undeniable that they command a lot of attention in the music industry. The Darktronica profile there will make it easier for me to collect news on the artists covered here, as well as to communicate with bands about new releases and reviews. I’ll be checking it fairly regularly, so feel free to stop by and leave a kind word!

The review of Imperative Reaction’s latest, Minus All, is up and you can find it here. It’s a solid album, so check it out when it drops on Tuesday, October 7. From the band’s Myspace page, it appears they may be pushing “Minus All” and “Torn Down” as the first singles; I don’t feel like those are the best representation of the entire album, although they are two of the tracks which show off the new direction Ted has taken on a good chunk of the release. Plenty to love on the album though, even if you aren’t a big fan of the two previews on their profile right now.

Just got an advance copy of the new Imperative Reaction album, Minus All, in the mail today. Look here again for a review later this weekend before the album officially hits stores on Tuesday, October 7!

I’ve also gotten a bounty of other new releases lately and will try to say a few words about each of them soon. Here they are:

Informatik - Beyond

Aesthetic Perfection - A Violent Emotion

Helalyn Flowers - A Voluntary Coincidence

System Syn - End

It doesn’t take much poking around to see that not much has changed around here for a while. I spent much of the summer preparing to start grad school, and finally about a month ago moved out to the land of sunshine and smog–Los Angeles. But now I’m situated in Santa Monica and excited to pick up where things left off!

Classes start this week, but I’m hoping to update Darktronica twice a week with new band profiles and descriptions, as well as more album reviews. Right now only about 60 of the 320 bands on the site have full descriptions, so look for that to start changing. I’ll also be sharing tidbits about what’s getting played around the office.

I’m also coding some new features for the site that will give the News blog more action and also integrate it a bit into the band pages themselves. Look forward to it!

Peep the new review here. A Natural Disaster is rated as Darktronica’s top album of 2003, so check it out.

Very interesting article about audio engineering and the music industry… if you’ve ever wondered why music these days is so much louder than it used to be, or have been frustrated at a lack of dynamics in most bands, here’s your answer.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/aug07/5429

When you see a band on Darktronica, typically they won’t even be listed under “Pages under development” until a fairly complete discography is available along with member information and where the band is from. At the moment I’m working hard to write more reviews, but here is a list of other bands that are next on the list to be added to Darktronica.com. Please leave a comment if you’d like to suggest another band for inclusion, or would like to see one of these included sooner rather than later!

Please leave a comment here with any suggestion you may have about the site! Content, features you’d like to see, feedback about browser compatibility or design issues… anything is fair game, and I’d love to hear it. This site is still a work in progress, and I want Darktronica to be as useful as possible for visitors, so I’m very open to your ideas.

Cheers!

I’ve just added a new subpage to the navigation… from now on, when you click a letter in the menubar on the left, instead of keeping whatever band you were looking at in the main content area, you’ll see some quick thumbnail summaries of all the bands in the sidebar. Maybe you’ll see an intriguing album cover and browse around a bit more.

Let me know what you think of the new look!

After several months of design, coding, and content-entering, it’s time to open the gates and start promoting the site! Word slowly started getting out in the midst of all the design, but I feel like the original design of the site is now complete and there’s enough content to be useful for first-time visitors. Thanks for all the support so far, now please tell your friends all about Darktronica.com!

That certainly doesn’t mean I’ll be resting on my laurels, though. Over the next few weeks be on the lookout for a lot more bands to finally get described and reviewed, as well as many new bands still to be added. Once the band pages are more fleshed out, I’ll start reviewing more of my top ten album selections.

Phase two of the site design will include having search functionality, providing convenient links to Amazon and iTunes so you can easily check out music you find on Darktronica, better cross-linking between bands to identify who’s remixed who and such, and designing a voting system for all of you to cast votes for your own top ten lists! Please look forward to it!