Out of Belgium, there’s a murky, forbidding free underground netlabel that has survived from another era. It’s aggressively anti-algorithmic, soul-chillingly dark in its aesthetics, and committed to free culture and commons like if social media and AI never happened. And it’s perfect for a frozen European night, wherever you might be.
Their Anti f:Orm compilation is full of the shady, weird electronics your parents really hoped you would stop hanging out with. I got this one from the stellar artist Syntax Erika (born Mexico, now Barcelona), who has a grimy, humming humdinger of a pulsing track on there. Industrial dark ambient/leftfield, wandered-down-a-dark-alley goodness throughout. It’s pay-what-you-want on Bandcamp, CC-BY-NC-ND licensed, even. (Actually, if you’re going to go there, wish they’d gone for an SA license!)
Patrick Masson curated this one. “Based in Belgium GHGR is an electronic, experimental, minimal, ambient, pop, post-rock, shoegaze, alternative, improvisation, concrete, techno and many more free underground music stream & download Netlabel since 2013”
Official site with loads o’ links:
https://godhatesgodrecords.wixsite.com/netlabel
You’ll also find them on Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/ghgrnetlabel?sort=-publicdate
Their video page hasn’t gotten a refresh in a while, but then you can enjoy the 90s/2000s aesthetics by way of the late 2010s, which seem now like another century.
What’s going on? I have no idea, but I’m all in.
Doggos! (This asked me for age verification, but it’s, uh, literally puppies wandering around a park. “I don’t have money for a music video.” Look, they made it work with a phone camera while walking their dogs. And the track’s actually frakkin great.)
Keep electronic music strange.
Want to find out how deep the rabbit hole goes? There’s this list of netlabel links:
https://sylphidesblog.blogspot.com/p/nice-blogs.html
Oh, and speaking of Syntax Erika, her Ambient flux label hasn’t been active in a little while but is great for digging nonetheless. And have a mix from her: