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.