Advanced Art
Darkhive: The Tape And Vinyl Years

Listening notes

Advanced Art's *Darkhive: The Tape And Vinyl Years*, released in 2015 on Artoffact Records (catalog number AOF199), is a vinyl collection drawing on material the Canadian EBM and synth-pop act produced across different periods of their career. Spanning eleven tracks across two sides, the compilation brings together 7" versions of earlier recordings alongside demo material dated to 1987 and 1990, offering a structured look at the band's output from those years in a single physical format.

Side A opens with four tracks identified as 7" versions: "Black Roses," "No Answers No Solutions," "From Nothing To Nothing," and "Steel," running between three minutes eleven seconds and three minutes thirty-nine seconds each. These are followed by two 1987 demos, "You're A Pretender" and "You Need Love," the latter marked as a second demo, clocking in at three minutes fifty seconds and two minutes forty-two seconds respectively.

Side B shifts primarily to 1990 demo recordings. After "Wake Up" and "Tear Open These Scars," neither of which carries a demo designation in the tracklisting, the side closes with three tracks explicitly identified as 1990 demos: "This Blue Moment," "Til I Beg For Mercy," and "Life Before Death." The two longest tracks on the record both appear here, with "This Blue Moment" at four minutes forty-two seconds and "Til I Beg For Mercy" at four minutes fifty-two seconds.

The release sits at the intersection of EBM, electro, synth-pop, and broader electronic genres. As a compilation drawing from tape and vinyl sources indicated directly by its title, *Darkhive* functions as an archival document of Advanced Art's recorded work from the late 1980s and around 1990, made available through Artoffact Records in a vinyl edition more than two decades after the earliest material it contains was made.