Vortex Rikers are an unsigned German electro band that creates dark atmospheric tracks, the sort you’d drive down a midnight autobahn too or stalk the rain dashed back streets of Berlin in search of danger and leather clad excitement. That’s not why I’m writing about them here though, interesting as that sounds. No the reason I’m putting fingertips to keys is due to their recent untitled EP which departs totally from their past sound and strays into the echo rich world of drag and Witch House!

Filled with doom synths and slow creeping claustrophobia, darkness and fuzz this EP is the perfect late night soundtrack. Vortex Rikers don’t seem to adopt the satanic, Twin Peaks and horror movie feel of a lot of Witch House bands but are defiantly buying into much of the rest of the genre. Their name comes from the 1998 first person computer game Unreal, of which the background music could easily slip in between the songs on this EP. They are also sticklers for the Witch House element of mystery, their Myspace, Facebook and Last.fm pages are stripped of information with no clue provided as to how many members make up the band or anything else of that nature, while their visual side is also kept as minimal as possible with only four pictures online, all in a bleak and blurry black and white.

I do notice that The XX and Salem are in the top line of their “top friends” and that at least provides a good context for where their sound is coming from. Their new direction has that crystalline and minimal melancholia that The XX bring while also dropping some great slow grinding distortion and trip-hop style beats à la Salems Frost or Trufours.

Though the EP is untitled the titles of the tracks from it read like a bullet point description of how to capture the Witch House zeitgeist: Crystals, Dreams, Nightmares, Illusions, O. While the few photos they have up have a distinct post punk, cold wave feel, stark, de-saturated and melancholic. So there’s definitely a mix of influences running through this band but the overriding mood of this new direction means its one for witch loving, doom embracing cultists who appreciate a bit of dark menace and slow drag in the soundtrack to their lives.

Vortex Rikers Untitled EP is available to download for free from their thei Bandcamp page or on the player below. Their first release Vrtxone which sports their original dance sound is still available to download for free from the blog section of their Myspace.

- Fokkawolfe