Urban Spree in Berlin hosted the release party for Front 242’s live album “Black Out,” with AD:keY as the live act and Machineries Of Joy part of the programme. Karo Kratochwil, who covered the evening in words and photos, describes a physical, good-humoured EBM set and an afterparty that included several tracks from the record. “Black Out” came out on Alfa Matrix on 19 June 2026.
“Black Out” is available now on the Alfa Matrix store as a 2CD with three bonus tracks and as a 2LP on solid silver vinyl, and it can be streamed on Bandcamp. The sampler given out at the door, “Sounds From The Matrix 027”, is available from the store as well, and on Bandcamp.
Urban Spree and the sampler at the door
Kratochwil starts with the setting. Urban Spree stands on the RAW-Gelände grounds, where brick, graffiti and metal give the area a staged look before an evening has properly begun, and the report finds the venue a good match for this event.
Early arrivals were also handed a copy of the label’s newest sampler, a 19-track CD with First Aid 4 Souls, Digital Factor, Alien Vampires, Lovelorn Dolls, Krystal System, Elektrostaub and others. To the reporter, handing out a disc at the entrance is a small but telling gesture for physical media at a time when most music lives in links and playlists.
What AD:keY brought to the stage
According to the report, AD:keY needed no warm-up. The duo’s approach is plain and strict, built on disciplined sequences, simple commands and repetition honed until it hits the body instead of merely ticking over, and Kratochwil stresses that they play EBM as a living practice rather than a period costume. The set had the genre’s pulse, clipped energy and forward drive, yet it sounded present-day and not like a reenactment, with no posing and no effort to out-harden anyone.
René is credited with the structure of the songs and with keeping everything tight, while Andrea engages with the beat bodily: pushing into it, pulling back, smiling and challenging the audience to take part instead of just watching. Humour and warmth ran through the performance alongside the hard delivery, which the report treats as essential, since EBM without them risks sliding into parody.
At one point Andrea went down into the crowd. Kratochwil did not read this as a staged highlight but as the natural next step in a set where the distance between stage and floor kept shrinking. Having seen the duo several times, the reporter says the impression stays the same: they want to share the room with the audience rather than tower over it, and the friendliness is integral to the drive, not an add-on. The crowd danced readily, and the mood was simply enjoyable.
From live set to afterparty
Once AD:keY had finished, the evening carried on under the Machineries Of Joy banner, and the tie to “Black Out” grew more obvious. The afterparty drew on the release, with “MasterHit,” “Welcome to Paradise,” “Quite Unusual” and “W.Y.H.I.W.Y.G.” among the tracks heard. As Kratochwil tells it, these songs were used as working dancefloor material, not brought out as relics.
The January 2025 farewell shows at Brussels’ Ancienne Belgique supplied the recordings for the album, which is covered in more detail in the earlier post on the live record. The report argues that it still carries too much physical charge to sound like an archive piece, and that the songs keep functioning as machinery.
Kratochwil’s closing assessment is that nothing in the evening was oversold. The sampler at the entrance, the physical live set, the Machineries Of Joy mood afterwards and the Front 242 selections late at night fitted together without commentary, and by the time those tracks played, the audience needed no explanation of why they matter.
About AD:keY
René and Andrea make up the EBM duo AD:keY, which records for Alfa Matrix. Among their latest releases is “Der Böse Gott”, and their live show formed the centrepiece of this Berlin celebration.
Other AD:keY titles on the label include the 2CD “0609” and the EPs “Kontraktion”, “Deine Augen” and “Nackt”.
About Front 242 and ‘Black Out’
The Belgian group Front 242 came together in 1981 and are counted among the acts that shaped electronic body music, with a body of work running from “Geography” via “Official Version” and “Front by Front” to “Tyranny >For You<.” Their final live album, “Black Out,” draws on the January 2025 farewell shows at Ancienne Belgique and was released by Alfa Matrix on 19 June 2026 in a range of formats.