Underground, K.H.D.’s new 17-track hardcore album, is out now on Bandcamp and Youtube! This is his first release since he made the switch to Bitwig, using all Bigwig-native plugins. Out on Spotify and the other major streaming services and digital retailers January 18th, 2025.
Red Ankh Black is OUT NOW, two hours of our darkest themes, melodies, and styles–but not always all at once, of course, or we’d be betraying Red Ankh’s odd dynamics! Continuing from the Classics Comp and Red the challenges of piling up instrument layers, mixing guitars and drums harsh without having them compete for space too much, and mixing vocals low so they don’t overtake the instruments, but remain intelligible. Out on Bandcamp, Youtube, Spotify, and many other streaming and retail sites. Enjoy!
From Red Ankh: We lost the mojo! Turns out, when ya take on albums this ambitious, the last 10% takes the longest. Also, we decided to write a new song for Black, pretty spontaneously, and with its base composition done it’s a whopping 18 minutes long. And then we got mega burnt out and needed a break from hearing these songs. But with a burst of inspiration, Bronze and Gloricia II are finally done and up on Youtube! Here’s to hoping more inspiration comes in the shadow of our perilous future.
Jake Kussmaul of Music Existence interviewed Shyft to discuss the latest Red Ankh album, and so on! It’s always good to emphasize the process in this results-and-ends-driven world, and to talk at length about what we’re passionate about.
A Stranger’s Life is K.H.D.’s first full-on downtempo release, moving through brights and warms, melancholia and hope, atmospheric and epic. Unlike all the hardcore ones, the most substantial percussion here is a oldschool breakbeat on the music video’d track, The World Beneath.
This will appear on Spotify and the other major streaming services and digital retailers January 1st, 2025.
Here we here we go go go! At long last, the first of the two central Red Ankh albums, Red, is finally finished! 101 minutes of weird melodic heavy goodness, and the most ambitious Red Ankh release yet. Out now on Bandcamp and streaming services EVERYWHERE!
Stay tuned for the companion album, BLACK!
As promised, Red Ankh has dropped 11 complete rerecordings, 1 new remix, and 7 new covers in the form of their Classics Compilation 01. Two hours and forty-four seconds of Red Ankh’s finest work, on new equipment, using new techniques, and this time with the whole band contributing vocals. From now on, they make what they imagine, not held back by technical restrictions. RED ANKH LIVES, BETTER THAN EVER.
This one’s on Spotify and the other major streaming services and digital retailers February 1st, 2024.
They haven’t forgotten about the Red/Black rework, and that’s coming up next!
Another single from the Red Ankh compilation is ready! This time it’s I Demand Order beefed up with disto kickdrums. More tunes are already ready to stream on the 19-track pre-order-able album on Bandcamp.
From Red Ankh: We’ve got the mojo back. Since 2014 we’ve released some major works pretty quietly via Shyfted Minds: the reconstruction of Red Ankh’s instrumental album UNIVERSE in 2015, a couple Synthetic Experiments EPs in the same year, the steamcore horror booms album Cing of Cogs in 2016, the hardcore compilation album Down the Road of No Return in 2017, and the giant rebuild and expansion of the [Feind] album plus its counterpart album [Shyft] in 2020, focusing on gritty, dark industrial aspects of a handful of genres and the limits of synthwave, respectively. These dropped on Bandcamp and Spotify but as soon as they did we put them down to focus on fiction writing and interpersonal stuff, having bursts of focus on a new Red Ankh album here and there, nearly finishing a few songs. After a couple major life changes we wound up with the resources to build a decent sound studio and the time and motivation to use it, so in April of this year it was the Red Ankh project’s turn to start getting something big ready for release, after ten years since the last fresh album. It’s strange to see that in writing. Ideas for Red Ankh are always turning over in our heads, and we’ve never lost a draft–they’ve just been waiting–so it doesn’t feel like that could possibly be right, ten years since Shadow. But here we are, with new tools, new skills, finally ready to finish the flagship Red Ankh double album that we started way back in 2006, finally ready to finish Red/Black.
The old drafts of albums Red (featuring the above song Gloricia) and Black were just under 70 minutes each, and we’ve only expanded some arrangements since then. They’re folky, they’re symphonic, and they got the big overdrive kicks. We’re all contributing our voices this time, our new grasp of philosophy to the lyrics, and the technical quality of things is going to be vastly improved over previous releases. And it doesn’t stop there. Some day, we’d like to rerecord all old Red Ankh releases (again, for some of them), but for now we’re simultaneously working on a compilation album of some of our favorite Red Ankh tracks (featuring the above version of Tahztey Greaggor), ones we thought could gain a lot from rerecording with current resources. On top of that, we’re also working on Red Ankh versions of old underground industrial/synthpop favorites from the 90s and early 2000s that have gained enough traction to be released on the compo. Much to do, much excitement to do it with!
Red/Black is about 80% there, and we hope to drop a couple more singles soon. The classics/covers compilation is maybe 70%.
And then… we’ll see how much momentum we have left for finishing the eclectic cyberpunk/folkprog synth metal album, Green.
OH YEAH, and K.H.D.’s Erinnerung is now on Spotify!
Stay mindful and weird, folks.
New GIANT 18-track K.H.D. album! Clicky image to get to the Bandcamp page where you can nab it for free. This one’s got a heavy hardcore CORE but does a lot of drum’n’bass, with industrial and ambient influences too, and hearing 3/4 time gabber is regular here.
This’ll hit Spotify and the other major streaming services and digital retailers September 9th, 2023.
Shyfted Minds 