Industrial-Creep-Camp-Wrong-Un-Musick

john eden

male pale and stale
is Englands Hidden Reverse really worth reading though? i ask because ive known about it and thought about reading it for ages but its always been slightly out of my reach for some reason.

also anybody here ever tried to listen to Legendary Pink Dots?

I think it's a great book even if you don't like the music.

LPD are OK but I don't really understand why someone would listen to them over some other psychedelic rock band.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
curious for expert thoughts on 2 things. first, anything beyond the usual TG/CV/NWW, Einsturzende, SPK, etc canon. the U.S. - Factrix, Monte Cazazza? lesser-known or slightly later British things - Zoviet France, Bourbonese Qualk, The New Blockaders, etc? anything from continental Europe besides Neubauten? Laibach? I would say Japanese noise too but seems like its whole own universe. again, just trying to cherrypick the best stuff.

Monte Cazazza is an interesting figure but someone I always thought was more interesting interviews than on record. "To Mom On Mothers Day" is probably a classic early industrial single. People seem to rate his 2010 album "The Cynic" but I've not heard it.

I saw Zoviet France recently and they were amazing. Also like the radio show they do (on Mixcloud) which is called "A Duck In A Tree" - very good industrial ambient. Intend to explore more but they were another one whose records I'd pick up in a shop and then put back because I had no idea where to start.

Bourbonese Qualk, Clock DVA, The Box, Hula etc - All have good stuff but generally filed in my head as "like Cabaret Voltaire but not as good".

Laibach - early stuff is a bit like Test Dept. "Opus Dei" is probably the classic LP though, with the totalitarian cover versions of disco hits. They now seem to be in a weird hinterland where a large section of their fans uncritically like the irony of the totalitarian aesthetic which I have misgivings about. They are nowhere near as dodgy as Death In June but there is an overlap with people who like wearing leather trousers and insignia.

The New Blockaders - very influential "free noise" but I don't think you need much of it. That said their classic "Changez Les Blockeurs" is about the be re-released and there is going to be a whole remix album by Nurse With Wound of it which I am excited about. Will be forever cherished by me purely for this great quote "my Dad went all the way to Bristol to pay and see a man take a cabbage to pieces"

Never really checked out much US stuff like Factrix, Tuxedomoon, Chrome etc (if they even count).

Boyd Rice's two 80s albums as NON are superb but he is a dick so I am reluctant to recommend them.
 
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martin

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I really like the two Monte Cazazza 7"s on Industrial Records ('To Mom On Mother's Day /Something for Nobody'). In some ways "Rabid Rats", "Candy Man" and "Mary Bell" epitomise that industrial ethos: media outrage, real life horror, etc, turned irreverently (and knowingly) into 'entertainment' - and riddled with black humour. He seems to have an interesting life, but yeah, never heard 'The Nihilist' either. I would recommend those two anyway, though probably via download as the vinyl's sadly entered collector prices hell. Speaking of Industrial Records, massive props to Slow Death by The Leather Nun - Motorhead meets TG with some pricelessly poor-taste lyrics.


Bourbonese Qualk, Clock DVA, The Box, Hula etc - All have good stuff but generally filed in my head as "like Cabaret Voltaire but not as good".
- a spot-on assessment, although Clock DVA did have flashes of genius.

Boyd Rice's 'Mode of Infection' and 'Rise' EPs are well worth a listen. I like the concept of 'Pagan Muzak' too, even if I never want to listen to the damn thing! After that, it was all soundtracks for Saturday afternoon rallies in Charlottesville (though, must admit, 'People' makes me laugh - dock me 300 Antifa points).

In terms of dancey industrial, would recommend most stuff by Severed Heads - esp. Blubberknife, Since The Accident and City Slab Horror. If you like Chris & Cosey, you should dig SH, though they could easily turn on the noise/skree with the best of early SPK when they felt like it.

Do Die Form (France) count as dancey industrial? Straddling electro/industrial, with a focus on kinky sex and black magic that seems a bit juvenile in retrospect. Trying to be edgy with titles like "Sex By Force", etc. Though the bloke behind them did do this really eerie tape as Krylon Hertz in 1978, which is all over the blogs and which hits the spot for me.

Italy had this 'ritual industrial' scene, with scores of weirdos making music using Korgs and thigh bones, with endless references to Crowley and the 93rd Aeon, or whatever. John E will surely know more about this- to be honest, a lot of it sounded like the same person. This was a bit later though, when PTV were making acid records and sub-Happy Mondays indie, and Grey Wolves were being the 'new Whitehouse'.

Special shout out's due to Controlled Bleeding from the US - their 'Knees and Bones' album is tuneless, irritating noise, and pretty much the equivalent of a baby throwing shit around to infuriate its parents, but has a gleeful "look, I'm making a record!" charm to it that makes it quite loveable - from the cover art of a badly drawn scientist destroying his own face with rats, to the bit 10 mins in where his little sister gatecrashes the recording session to complain about the noise while she's trying to study. "I don't wanna go down the library!"
 

martin

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in general I get the vibe that a lotta the power of industrial was in the moment and it's mostly loss outside of that context

can see the huge appeal of something like the NWW list, or high-concept TG things, to a certain kind of young person in the pre-Internet age

I kind of agree. Seems almost ludicrous now that 'taboo' subjects like S&M, etc, were ever that shocking - especially post-tumblr.

Things in the UK were a lot more regimented then - much more illiberal, and with a much wider gulf between young and old people. I get the whole punk/industrial thing about delving into dark areas, to expose the filth behind the veneer of 'respectable society' - Denis Nilsen vs state-sanctioned slaughter in Northern Ireland and the Falklands, etc etc. I think people were just more shockable then, anyway. You can spend an hour on YouTube and find way more offensive stuff than TG ever covered.

Industrial just seemed to go that much further than punk. The Sex Pistols caused an outrage but were basically playing rock and roll - SPK and TG actually wanted to sound like factory floors. The anarcho-punks might have looked weird, used bad language and wanted the end of government, but at least their goals were somewhat utopian - not idolising some hippy banged up for allegedly inciting mass slayings. The problem I (personally) found is that you can end up staring into the abyss a bit too long - these people were dedicated to exposing THEE LIE but also creating numerous fictions themselves. Next thing you know, you're unwrapping a tape or LP with a totenkopf or AWB symbol and can't help wonder where it's all heading - the symbols started to become the point, as the music/originality invariable deteriorated.



Should also add that Facebook makes it very hard to maintain 'cult outsider mystique' - especially when you have members of Ramleh arguing over who can eat the hottest chilli, and suddenly get Philip Best's mum as a friend recommendation.
 

martin

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Then again, with drone tech, dole claimants setting themselves on fire, military policing, fake news, etc etc etc, industrial's tendencies to narky paranoia and fascination with urban apocalypse make it a fitting soundtrack for now too.
 

luka

Well-known member
was just saying today (in relation to nick land and to conspiracy-freaks turning nazi but it doesnt matter)
there are certain ideas, beliefs, desires
that operate as a kind of black hole. people get
too close and are sucked in.
hqdefault.jpg
 

luka

Well-known member
and part of it is a kind of machismo and look how close i can get to the edge without falling in
then you fall in.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
and part of it is a kind of machismo and look how close i can get to the edge without falling in
then you fall in.

Yes there is definitely that aspect to it. I think a lot of this also ties in with the public school education of the originators - initiation rituals, one upmanship, veneration of obscure books and artists, a very intellectual take on the Power Ov Sexuality which is a bit creepy, etc.

Also this focus on extremity is very limiting. If you walked around the extreme edges of a country you would find out something about it I'm sure but if you said you had uncovered "deep truths" because of it people would look at you a bit funny. Same as having a shelf full of books about serial killers and sex magick.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
thanks again to Martin + John for the thorough answers

US stuff like Factrix, Tuxedomoon, Chrome etc (if they even count)
Chrome is p cool, like a more (acid) rocked out, American Neu!, filtered through West Coast garage rock/psychedelia instead of Stockhausen, experimental LSD punk basically, v much my kinda thing. they exist in a weird liminal prepostpunk territory with things like Simply Saucer, the Cleveland bands, and so on. Half Machine Lip Moves is probably their best record but everything ca. 1977-82 is worth checking. interestingly Damon Edge was hugely influenced by Arabic/North African (shades of Reich, Riley etc) music he heard on a trip to Morocco in the mid-70s. Tuxedomoon is more avant/RIO kinda thing, i.e. they spent most of the 80s on Crammed Discs. Their discography I'm not as up on. No Tears is obv a canonical jam but they don't mostly sound like that I think.

most early U.S. punk scenes were v arty, queer-influenced, those kinds of sensibilities, blurred lines between punk and experimental things, i.e. Suicide, The Screamers, early Pere Ubu. the SF scene in particular tho was all jumbled up. the punk bands were noisy and weird (Negative Trend, Flipper), the weirdos were punk (Chrome, Nervous Gender), and so on. hardcore unfortunately eradicated nearly all the queer/arty influences in punk - they did eventually filter back in, but it took awhile - by like 1981 or so, tho SF managed to avoid that a bit unlike say, LA or NY.

weirdo punk not punk I know v well, less up on the noisier, power tools, factory floor etc industrial side.

(I thought about putting a "besides Boyd Rice, cos fuck him" disclaimer, but figured everyone already knows)

Next thing you know, you're unwrapping a tape or LP with a totenkopf or AWB symbol and can't help wonder where it's all heading
this has always been a big factor in my not delving into industrial etc

also the only person I've ever heard talk about magick + not have it sound just hugely embarrassing is Alan Moore (and even then it was kind of embarrassing)

black metal has the same problem with demystification in the social media age
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Italy had this 'ritual industrial' scene
yes I am somewhat aware of this. just a few bits + pieces. this is one of my favorite ambient things of all time by anyone. if anyone knows more like it, by all means.
one of the guys involved was in Pankow, the Italian Front 242. Another was in I Refuse It!, who were at the weirder end of the (super awesome) 80s Italian hardcore scene.

as ever I bet if you clicked around enough on YT/discogs you'd start finding more similar connections.

fun fact: the guitar player of legendary, and great, Italian Oi band Nabat later went on to be one of the authors in Luther Blissett aka Wu Ming.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
also agree w/Martin about anarcho-punk, v strait-laced musically. punks in general are (speaking from lengthy) personally repressed + conservative, even w/radical politics.

and ofc when Crass did more experimental stuff people hated it, tho tbf it sucked. there are some pretty terrible Crass Records things (D+V, ffs).

Rudimentary Peni's a bit of an exception, cos of Nick Blinko I'd imagine, tho still really just a weirder version of rock + roll.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Did Liaisons Dangereuses ever do anything else half as awesome as this?


Edit: not a rhetorical question, I'd love to know if so. Or anything from the same era with the same sort of sound.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
But speaking of 'camp', I guess it's inevitable that Laibach would come up here. I saw them in London a couple of years ago without much knowledge of their catalogue beyond some of their campy covers and I have to say it was a lot of fun. On the coach back to Oxford there was this guy maybe a decade younger than me, perhaps a postgrad student, who was on the phone to his mate or girlfriend and was, like, horrified! by the spinning axe-swastika thing (a work from 1934 by the anti-Nazi artist John Heartfield) and that he'd never seen anything so awful. After he'd hung up I tapped him on the shoulder and tried to explain that these guys are completely tongue-in-cheek and have been taking the piss out of both fascism and communism from day 1, but I don't think he was having any of it so I dropped it. At any rate he was in the same boat as the supposedly perspicacious John Oliver, whose take on their famous statement that "Laibach are fascists as much as Hitler was a painter" was "So they are fascists, they're just really bad at it".

I guess the flipside of that is the people John mentions who don't get the subversion either but actually just love the jackboots-and-armbands aspect of it.

I'm still not sure what to make of their recent 'Sound Of Music' tour in North Korea (which I'm sure is largely the point). Act of complicity with an abhorrent regime on a par with playing apartheid-era South Africa, or ingenious piece of postmodern culture-jamming that must've made Bill Drummond mad with envy? Who knows?
 
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padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
anything from the same era with the same sort of sound
I personally could do without the sub-no wave skronk sax, but this is still p danged tite. El Macho y La Nena is another good one.

the obvious answer for similar sound is DAF - Der Mussolini, Verschwende Deine Jugend, Ein Bisschen Krieg, etc

and to varying extents all the (mostly Belgian) early/proto-EBM types - Absolute Body Control, early Front 242, Neon Judgment, etc
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
EBM is v interesting. much harder to pin down because outside of a small core, DAF + the Belgians basically, there's not really a canon like in industrial, and "EBM" bleeds into, depending on what part of the 80s you're in, so many different things, so you're retroactively assembling it out of other things, kinda like cosmic/balearic. when done well it is SUCH a great sound but it also such a short distance to abomination - terrible 90s industrial rock, grown men dressing like cybergoths, etc. there's a healthy amount of EBM in the DNA of Rammstein + (via Ministry etc) Marilyn Manson. my personal EBM canon would include some things that are more properly minimal wave, industrial or whatever and would exclude a lotta things - Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, Ministry + Wax Trax in general.

not surprised EBM influence is a big trend in hip techno (L.I.E.S. etc) rn. strip out the embarrassing grown man angst and kick out the dark, pulsing, sexy jams.

btw the tl;dr answer is that nothing gets near Los Niños Del Parque. like Eisbaer, Camino Del Sol, etc it exists on a pedestal outside of normal space-time.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
for example, here is a mindblowing French electroacoustic record from 1973 that sounds like DAF crossed with mid 90s hard minimal techno
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
yeh that Igor Wakhevitch record is killer, sounds like something cristian vogel would put out. madly ahead of its time.

i really want to get into muslimgauze (in theory it should appeal to me, industrial w middle east percussion) but in practice it all falls flat. doesn't help that he was a crude orientalising oh let's be an edgelord and flirt with political islamism, as well as having a kneejerk unprincipled absolutely anti-anything is good anti-israel stance. bleeding into antisemitism. *sigh* white people sometimes.

I guess I'm sensitive towards this shitt what with being a turkish kurd and liberals supporting the power grab of the political islamists in the 00s, and remaining quiet when the left was decimated two decades before. so i really don't find it transgressive in any shape or form.

But thats for another time i suppose.
 
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