
Industrial/ dark experimental music entity Dark Star has announced the digital release of Artefacts, a collection of previously unreleased tracks recorded in the mid-1990s. The release features six tracks, including contributions from prominent artists such as Edward Ka-Spel, Yaxi Highrizer, and Technogod. This release marks an important addition to Dark Star’s discography after a decades-long hiatus.
In the early 1990s German music project Dark Star gained some recognition in the independent cassette and DIY scene in Europe and the US with three cassette releases; the following two CD releases on Strange Ways Records in Germany and Soleilmoon Records in the US spread the word to the wider Wave/ Industrial/EBM circles.
Then life stepped in and things came to a halt.
Until 2018, when independently of each other three different 'vinyl only' labels from Italy, Netherlands and the UK approached Dark Star about releasing vinyl compilations with tracks off those 90s releases.
And so in 2019, thirty years after the very first Dark Star cassette release, two vinyl compilations were released, one of them a double album put together by renowned Dutch label Knekelhuis, introducing Dark Star's unique blend of minimalist electronic noise rock to a new generation of listeners.
While digging through the archives for these compilations, six tracks were rediscovered that originally were planned to be part of an album that never got quite finished at the time.
One of those tracks, an instrumental consisting mostly of 'field recordings', seemed to ask for a vocal track and so Dark Star contacted their old friend Edward Ka-Spel of The Legendary Pink Dots, who already had collaborated on the "Travelogue" and "Travelogue II" CDs together with his band mates Silverman and Ryan Moore, and invited him to lend his voice one more time.
So now, five years after its first ever vinyl releases, Dark Star is offering its likely final release digitally on Bandcamp, consisting of six unreleased tracks, one of them featuring Yaxi Highrizer of Alien Sex Fiend on guitar, another one featuring Technogod from Bologna (whose studio wizard Maurizio Liguori was also in charge of mixing the album), and one featuring a brand new vocal recording courtesy of the wonderful Edward Ka-Spel.
Dark Star Artefacts is out now (January 2025), and you can order it right here: https://darkstar4.bandcamp.com/album/artefacts