AR.K. is, since 2020, the Germany based solo project of Artax Krux (that is, me), former frontman and producer in the now halted band Pronoise from Valencia (Spain), a country with a virtually unexisting Dark Electro or E.B.M. scene tradition.
Pronoise: a story of resurrection and second death
Pronoise was active in two periods. The first between 1996 and 1999, when we only managed to self-release a first album, and the second one between 2014 and 2019, when we had a much better experience.
In 2015 we released an internationally regarded whole new album (The Border Crossing) in vinyl, CD and digital formats. In 2014 and 2017 we got 2 different label re-issues of our late-90s first album (Low Light Vision – also in vinyl, CD and digital). And between 2016 and 2019 we had a good run of live concerts, with better-than-expected audiences results across the Valencia region.
By mid-2018, all looked great, we started working on a third album, had plans to take our new live show to stages in Madrid, Barcelona, France and Germany… and then it all collapsed. I had to move to Germany for a living, and the band did not resist some previously existing internal tensions and new opinion differences about how to properly coordinate and proceed. It was good while it lasted.
2020: AR.K. is born – based in Germany
Still, I could not stop conceiving lyrics and music, nor having the urge to bring them to life. Plus, there was already a lot of work I had done for Pronoise’s new album.
And thus, AR.K. is born. It’s a solo project in the music-creation process. Maybe I will also find the right fellow musicians and take it live. If that is the case, the Rhine-Main area where I now live would be the first to notice.
AR.K. builds upon my past legacy, especially in regards to lyrics and voice, danceable character and some punk attitude, but pushes the sound farther from Darkwave and closer to E.B.M. and Dark Electro territories. Lyrics are initially mostly in Spanish. Some are in English, and in the future I plan to also add Catalan and hopefully German, which I’m still not fluent enough in.
Summer 2020 is the moment when I will start releasing the results from my last years of internal turmoil and music writing work. Time, and your support, dear reader+listener, will tell how AR.K. turns out.