Industrial Music

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I love Throbbing Gristle and Einsturzende Neubauten. But I think if you start adding dance beats and anything that might make the records remotely listenable you ruin the point of industrial music.

thrak, Saturday, 1 March 2003 22:13 (twenty-one years ago) link

does it matter any more?

Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Saturday, 1 March 2003 22:17 (twenty-one years ago) link

i think you are missing the point entirely. Industrial music was never just about unlistenable noise.

Read Wreckers Of Civilisation and then come back for a proper discussion.

Jack Battery-Pack (Jack Battery-Pack), Saturday, 1 March 2003 22:17 (twenty-one years ago) link

no but the only way it could evolve was by absorbing other musical influences, and that was always going to dilute the sound. compare einsturzende neubauten's early albums with ende neu or silence is sexy; the early albums are much more powerful. besides, i like unlistenable noise.

thrak, Saturday, 1 March 2003 22:21 (twenty-one years ago) link

i don't know, there are some great TG songs that have steady rhythms and actual chords, but there seems to be a particular set of aesthetic values driving them that have a lot to do with unlistenable noise. personally, i dislike just about every influence that industrial absorbed/acknowledged in the 80s (metal, awful third rate electro, goths, etc)

Dave M. (rotten03), Saturday, 1 March 2003 22:29 (twenty-one years ago) link

''no but the only way it could evolve was by absorbing other musical influences, and that was always going to dilute the sound''

not dilute but changes it.

Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Saturday, 1 March 2003 22:35 (twenty-one years ago) link

What industrial started out as and what it eventual turned into are so far removed its absurd to compare the two.

Thrak, what do you think about power noise (Imminent Starvation, Noisex, etc.)? Its very noisy yet dancable, sometimes.

fletrejet, Saturday, 1 March 2003 22:46 (twenty-one years ago) link

It's 1989 all over again.

donut bitch (donut), Sunday, 2 March 2003 00:01 (twenty-one years ago) link

Have y'all heard the "Field Tales" comp? Noise & industrial artists spanning the last 30 years, provided all new tracks for a three hour cassette compilation.

Dave Fischer, Sunday, 2 March 2003 03:12 (twenty-one years ago) link

wolf eyez.

your null fame (yournullfame), Sunday, 2 March 2003 07:56 (twenty-one years ago) link

i'm just saying.

your null fame (yournullfame), Sunday, 2 March 2003 07:56 (twenty-one years ago) link

its a post-industrial world, surely?

gaz (gaz), Sunday, 2 March 2003 09:13 (twenty-one years ago) link

it's post-industrials world, we're all just living in it

Mr. Diamond (diamond), Sunday, 2 March 2003 09:17 (twenty-one years ago) link

It's all about diversification now.

Jack Welch, Sunday, 2 March 2003 09:24 (twenty-one years ago) link

i like modernism without the post-modern bits.

gaz (gaz), Sunday, 2 March 2003 09:26 (twenty-one years ago) link

six years pass...

I was talking with a pal about how we both got into Black Sabbath through 1000 Homo DJs' cover, and started thinking back about industrial music. I was a huge rivet-head in high school, and then kind of aged out of a lot of it when I realized how ridiculous it was. I mean, I used to have serious arguments about whether Gravity Kills was just ripping off Stabbing Westward…

So now, some 10+ years later, I'm starting to think about going back. I've pulled out some of the albums I never sold (either because I had too many sentimental attachments or, more likely, no one in their right mind would pay me any money for them), and have been slowly ticking through them. I tend to like heavy percussion, especially the EN noisy sort, more than the synth stuff—Skinny Puppy has never really done it for me, and Front Line Assembly sounds kind of laughably earnest now. I still really like that Supernaut cover, and a lot of the early Stabbing Westward stuff has great oil can drumming that almost makes up for the retarded lyrics. I dug the Front 242 stuttery stuff—"Serial Killers Don't Kill Their Girlfriends"—and Nitzer Ebb is fine, though I find myself wishing that all of their songs were about half as long, though I think they'd be pretty cool in a DJ set mixed with something else. I'm not wild about the obligatory samples that seemed to pervade the genre, though I was at the time. Thrill Kill Kult seemed the only band that could use them well, and they got really spotty as they went on.

For new stuff, I like it when Wolf Eyes gets dubby and woozy, and I think that Lightning Bolt and Black Dice both kind of flit around the borders of industrial.

I guess I'm wondering what's worth revisiting, what I may have missed (since I got into industrial in the mid-90s and kind of worked my way back through TG, EN and CV), and if anyone is making industrial music worth checking out these days, especially some sort of dubby or psychedelic industrial.

Industrial s/d?

Giorgio Marauder (I eat cannibals), Wednesday, 16 September 2009 17:04 (fourteen years ago) link

boyd rice & frank tovey - Easy Listening For The Hard Of Hearing is a current favourite. parts sound like a primitive porter ricks, other parts sound like looped field recordings of factory ambience, but it's really deep listening stuff and not as noisy or abrasive as you'd expect.

damo tsu tsuki (r1o natsume), Wednesday, 16 September 2009 20:05 (fourteen years ago) link

seven months pass...

This'll be great:

http://mackro.tumblr.com/post/556137535/hola-rivetheads

Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 28 April 2010 16:12 (fourteen years ago) link

two years pass...
eight years pass...

Treblezine put together an article and Spotify playlist:
A HISTORY OF INDUSTRIAL MUSIC IN 45 SONGS

http://www.treblezine.com/history-industrial-music-best-tracks/
http://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Mh6LgPm1qL4s3oHrd1Y6l

Not all of it is specifically "industrial music" per se, but that's not the point:

What we have in the end is an attempt to tell a story from the earliest experimental musique concrète and cacophonous psych acts on up to the terror pulse of the present day. These are industrial music’s roots, inspirations, landmarks, triumphs and the songs upon which its influence has been imprinted. Follow us on our dizzying descent.

I think they do a pretty good job of that and the Spotify list is a lot of fun to listen to in chronological order.

Loud guitars shit all over "Bette Davis Eyes" (NYCNative), Friday, 5 November 2021 02:59 (two years ago) link

one year passes...

RIP Monte Cazazza, all time hero and inventor of the term 'Industrial Music'.

stirmonster, Friday, 30 June 2023 22:30 (ten months ago) link


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