a model of control

Notes From the Universe comes in at #19 for top albums of 2022

Notes From the Universe comes in at #19 for top albums of 2022

Notes From the Universe comes in at #19 for Best Albums of the Year!!

To end the year, we'd like to give thanks to all of our supporters and listeners.

Since we began making music, a lot of magazines and websites have gone under, but one of the most well known and revered websites around, A Model of Control, made their list of their top 50 albums for 2022, and our album, Notes From the Universe, which came out 2/22/22, came in at 19 on their list!!!

There were a lot of albums released in 2022, so we were pretty happy to come in at 19, and appreciate Adam at A Model of Control for his continued support.

A Model of Control Collide Interview

A Model of Control Collide Interview

New interview with Adam from amodelofcontrol.com

The interview can be found here

Read about how working on the Blu Rays of Chasing the Ghost and Some Kind of Strange led to one of the songs on Notes From the Universe.

"New today, my first interview of 2022, as I catch up with kaRIN and Statik from Collide, discussing their excellent new album, their sound and their independent spirit."

A Model of Control picks Chasing the Ghost & Some Kind of Strange among the best re-issues of the year

A Model of Control picks Chasing the Ghost & Some Kind of Strange among the best re-issues of the year

Thanks to Adam at A Model of Control for helping to get the word out, and naming our Special Edition Releases, as among the best of the year.

Collide are a defiantly independent band – they have been releasing their material on their own label, Noiseplus Music, for well over two decades – and that has allowed them to plow their own furrow, having built their audience with a string of striking releases and a long-time internet presence, perhaps being one of the earlier independent bands to realise the importance of the internet, and indeed crowdfunding too. This year – and I suspect this was in train pre-COVID, anyway – they announced lavish reissues of their two greatest albums, Chasing The Ghost and Some Kind of Strange, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the former. Rather than just a quick brush-up of the mix, they went all out.

Included alongside a new “2020 Mix” of each album on CD – basically a very nicely done remastering, they’ve not fucked with the songs otherwise that I can tell – is a Blu-Ray which contains (deep breath) the original mixes, the 2020 mixes, instrumental versions and early demos, as well as a handful of previously unreleased tracks and a video of one track from each. So that’s a lot to get through. But it’s also interesting to listen to the demos, and see how they became the songs that they did – clearly there was a fair amount of reworking and retooling that went on, and it’s not something that we always get to see – a peek behind the curtain, if you will. Really, though, the re-release of these also gives the opportunity for them to reach a new audience, as they deservedly do – Collide stood apart from other bands of the time for resolutely doing something different, taking ethereal goth and harder-edged industrial and even trip-hop that even now still sounds unique. A trip down memory lane that’s well worth doing.

A Model of Control picks "Mind + Matter" in 2018 Best Of

A Model of Control picks "Mind + Matter" in 2018 Best Of

A Model of Control has picked Mind + Matter for their 2018 Best of List

It has become pretty much expected that Collide will release a remix album after each album nowadays – but what is remarkable to me is just how good each of them are. Collide have a very distinct style – guitar-assisted industrial darkwave with Karin’s ethereal vocals floating across the mix – so what is often obvious is that a desire to do something different really brings out the best in the remixers. Their smart habit of opening out the remixes to pretty much anyone that wants to do them – which often includes amateur musicians who might be just fans of the band – also means that there is an amazing variety in the output, and it also does the additional service of giving a “leg up” to these smaller artists, too. That said, there are certain moments worthy of particular note, particularly the Blue Stahli rework of Freaks Me Out, whose savage, anthemic take is easily the best Collide remix released since Vortex fourteen years ago.