6SISS

Our second New Blood 2017 winner is Belgian musician Peter Adriaenssens, better known to most nerds as 6SISS. This is not a completely new project – Peter has been using the 6SISS moniker since at least 2013 when his first official releases were made. A few things quickly become clear whilst listening to his music, the most recent of which was released as The Locked Room just last year. While not easy to label, Peter’s musical style could (perhaps not entirely fairly) be categorised as glitch/IDM by way of industrial. There is a strong obsession with rhythmic structure, which manifests in intricate and dynamic patterns covered in a persistent layer of grain and overarching synth-based atmospheres. Everything is masterfully tied together through the subtle use of sampling and a clever approach to composition. 6SISS plays the type of music that is always in danger of crossing into the unfortunate area of well-meaning frivolous baroque. Thankfully, Peter’s meticulousness seems to always keep him on the right path.

A Belgian underground, recovered from tape

This New Blood entry focuses on the Belgian EBM/industrial/power electronics scene of the ‘90s. 6SISS gives us a compilation of obscurities, many of which have been lost to time, stuck on tapes released by dead labels or on limited homemade editions. Some of the artists are legends, appearing here by way of forgotten compilations cataloguing seedy analog dungeon music, while others may as well be anonymous. 6SISS’ mix takes us on a stunning tour of the entire landscape of one of the most iconic scenes in dark electronics: from echoey, lonely ethereal soundscapes to cold and alienating, downright suicidal bangers, to even rather beautifully melancholic pieces, such as Militia’s Zege Hymne. Peter manages to submit a truly versatile narrative on genres frequently criticised for their uniformity, and doing so with the elegance of deep familiarity. The feel of 6SISS’ mix is reminiscent of Gunther Gerszo’s 1958 Untitled masterpiece, which has a remarkably evocative structure, as well as a great deal of variance within the bounds of the bleak, the cold and the murky. November is closer than you might think – get acclimatized.

In the records

6SISS on the mix

In the late eighties, Belgium embraced the New Beat scene. But deep underground, in the beginning of the ‘90s, Belgian electronic producers were more preoccupied with static, screeching waves of feedback, analogue synthesizers making sub-bass pulses or high frequency squealing sounds, and screamed, distorted, often hateful and offensive lyrics. Deeply atonal, there are no conventional melodies or rhythms. This mix takes you on a journey through that underground of Belgian composers of ‘90s EBM – Power Electronics and Industrial scene. A part of this mix are releases only on tape, driven by the DIY approach.