A bit of the veil was lifted off of Holodeck Records during CMJ. The label has the tendency to deal in the nebulous, and the air of mystery begins with the music the label chooses to release and extends even to the guys who run it. That Friday I spent a good portion of the day with Jon, one of the label heads, as we trekked all over Brooklyn before making our way to the Portals showcase at Shea Stadium. Up until that day Jon had sort of just been a name attached to a series of emails to me. Keen to keep his digital footprint near nonexistent, he had virtually no online presence and even kept from sharing his last name. And yet there he was, sitting across from me at a Mexican restaurant.

We discussed a lot of stuff, mostly music, and Jon was as friendly and engaging as he had been over all those emails we’d been exchanging for the past year or so. What struck me most about him, though, were the reasons he listed for why Holodeck Records does what it does. Simply put, these guys want their listeners to forge meaningful, hands-on relationships with the music they put out, and if that means shelling out the money for surplus copies to send to friends free of charge, then so be it. If that is what it takes for people to latch onto the music, then they are more than happy to do so. Because of that, I feel that it is my duty to pay the same respect to the music. With all the work that goes into the releases, the least I could do is sit down and give the music 100% of my attention. Of course this is made easier by the fact that Holodeck releases nothing but solid gold, but that’s beside the point.

For their latest release, the label has put out Ruleth, the long-awaited debut album of Austin import José Cota’s SSLEEPERHOLD. Having spent time in the short-lived but much-loved Medio Mutante, José is no stranger to the underground synth scene. Using Medio Mutante’s darkwaving post-punk as a jumping off point, SSLEEPERHOLD takes an already dark sound into colder, more alien territory by calling on industrial to give it a rusted, mechanical edge. The synth work is most certainly the meat on the bones here, but there is a fire in this music’s belly that churns and creaks thanks to the bits of jagged feedback, crushed-up tape noise, and heavy percussion that make up the album’s cyborg skeleton. It’s certainly a lurching monster, but one that trades clumsiness with more calculated and methodical movements. Even the mess of yellow paint splatters on the cover have been digitally re-imagined with an electric glow. Nothing on Ruleth happens by accident.

Ruleth is a release that is all about celebrating the future by way of the past. If you’re the sort of person who dabbles in weirdo, outsider cinema, then the fuzzy stomp of the album’s opening title track will no doubt elicit a lot of mental images. Locating a sticky spot between 1980′s sci-fi and Giallo film scores, SSLEEPERHOLD finds a way to take those dated soundscapes and put a modern spin on them, making them feel fresh in the process. This is the silent flight into John Carpenter‘s Escape from New York for the modern age where the camp has been stripped away and all you’re left with is the bleak realization that the end times might truly be upon us. In that sense, SSLEEPERHOLD’s world is a dark one, but a fascinating and, thanks to some melodic turns in the synth work, a welcoming one as well.

That weird but welcoming nature ties back in nicely with the tenets of Holodeck Records itself. Dealing mostly with forward-thinking synth artists, it has built up an impressive roster that SSLEEPERHOLD fits into squarely. The depths of the underground synth scene can be a scary world to tackle, and it’s no secret that this is the world Holodeck’s artists and founders deal in. But for as challenging as their output can be, it’s never off-putting or esoteric for unlearned ears. I know that I’ve learned a lot since my relationship with the label began, and with how dependable they’ve become over the last year or so, I eagerly anticipate learning even more at their hands.

Ruleth is available now via Holodeck Records.