AOTY #5. Code Orange - Forever

Forever is indeed a hardcore record, but without sacrificing the aggression, brutish intensity and passionate vehemence that makes it so, its tropes and conventions are toyed with at every turn, either accentuated or subverted completely. The first listen is an absolute thrill ride, the listener quite simply strapped in, tossed around in wild different directions and told to deal with it. The joy of further listens comes not only in that maintained visceral high but getting inside those twists and turns and becoming part of the mayhem.

Lena Platonos

Lena Platonos is a Greek musician, pianist and music composer. One of the pioneers in the Greek electronic music scene of the 1980s, she remains active today.  She released 3 collaborative albums between 1981-1983 and her debut solo album in 1984. Her work is surreal, abstract, in places futuristic but always full of unpretentious honesty and tenderness. Through complex imagery, telegraphic lyrics, and analog synths accompanied by the Roland TR-808 drum machine, she paints an intergalactic and elusive soundscape capable of transforming punchy and haunting basslines into cryptic messages. Like the untranslated poetry of Platonos it makes sense beyond the usual; beyond it's own time, beyond words.

Malaria!

Malaria! was an experimental electronic band from Berlin formed in 1981 by Gudrun Gut  and Bettina Köster following the dissolution of Mania D with Karin Luner, Eva Gossling later Die Krupps and Beate Bartel (of Liaisons Dangereuses). Other members included Manon P. Duursma, Christine Hahn, and Susanne Kuhnke (also a member of Die Haut). They are most often associated with Neue Deutsche Welle and post-punk.