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Industrial music
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Industrial music comprises many styles of experimental music, including many forms of electronic music. The term was coined in the mid-1970s to describe Industrial Records artists. Since then, a wide variety of labels and artists have come to be called "industrial."
The first industrial artists experimented with noise and controversial topics. Their production was not limited to music, but included mail art, performance art, installation pieces and other art forms. Prominent industrial musicians include Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, NON, SPK, and Z'EV.
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Encyclopedia
Industrial music comprises many styles of experimental music, including many forms of electronic music. The term was coined in the mid-1970s to describe Industrial Records artists. Since then, a wide variety of labels and artists have come to be called "industrial."
The first industrial artists experimented with noise and controversial topics. Their production was not limited to music, but included mail art, performance art, installation pieces and other art forms. Prominent industrial musicians include Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, NON, SPK, and Z'EV. While the term initially referred to musicians signed to Industrial Records, it broadened to include artists influenced by the original movement or using an "industrial" aesthetic. The broadening of the term's definition has led to a number of subgenres.
Terminology
Industrial Records intended the term industrial to evoke the idea of music created for a new generation, previous music being more "agricultural". A fatalist-but-realistic, slightly misanthropic and often intensely dehumanized or mechanical atmosphere was present in the music and its gritty, hands-on technologies and techniques, rather than any concrete compositional detail. Industrial music often includes the sounds of found objects, such as trash cans and bottles. Peter Christopherson, of Industrial Records, once remarked, "The original idea of Industrial Records was to reject what the growing industry was telling you at the time what music was supposed to be."
History
Industrial Records
Industrial Music for Industrial People was originally coined by Monte Cazazza as the strapline for the record label Industrial Records (founded by British art-provocateurs Throbbing Gristle, the musical offshoot of performance art group COUM Transmissions).
The first wave of this music appeared in 1977 with Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, and NON. These releases often featured tape editing, stark percussion and loops distorted to the point where they had degraded to harsh noise. Vocals were sporadic, and were as likely to be bubblegum pop as they were to be abrasive polemics. Early industrial performances often involved taboo-breaking, provocative elements, such as mutilation, sado-masochistic elements and totalitarian imagery or symbolism, as well as forms of audience abuse.
Swedish rock act The Leather Nun, were signed to Industrial Records in 1978, being the first non-TG/Cazazza act to have an IR-release. Their only IR-release, Slow Death EP (IR 007, nov '79), climbed the alternative charts in the UK and was often played on John Peel's BBC1 radioshow for two weeks in December 1979.
Bands like Test Dept, Clock DVA, Factrix, Autopsia, Nocturnal Emissions, Esplendor Geometrico, Whitehouse, Severed Heads and SPK soon followed. Blending electronic synthesisers, guitars and early samplers, these bands created an aggressive and abrasive music fusing elements of rock with experimental electronic music. Artists often used shock tactics, including explicit lyrical content, graphic art and Fascistic imagery; at the forefront of this was Laibach. Industrial Records experienced controversy after it was revealed that it had been using an image of an Auschwitz crematorium as its logo for a number of years.
Across the Atlantic, similar experiments were taking place. In San Francisco, performance artist Monte Cazazza (often collaborating with Factrix and Survival Research Labs) began working with harsh noise. Boyd Rice (aka NON) released several more albums of noise music, with guitar drones and tape loops creating a cacophony of repetitive sounds. In New Zealand, art rock groups sprouted from the underground, such as The Skeptics, Ministry of Compulsory Joy/Death Korporation, Fetus Productions and Hieronymus Bosch (NZ). In Italy, work by Maurizio Bianchi at the beginning of the 1980s also shared this aesthetic. In France, early artists influenced by Industrial Records included Vivenza, Art&Technique, Pacific 231, Étant Donnés, and Die Form. In Germany, Einstürzende Neubauten and Die Krupps were performing daring acts, mixing metal percussion, guitars and unconventional instruments (such as jackhammers and bones) in stage performances that often damaged the venues in which they played.
Conceptual elements
Industrial groups typically focus on transgressive subject matter. In his introduction for the Industrial Culture Handbook (1983), Jon Savage considered some hallmarks of industrial music to be organizational autonomy, shock tactics and the use of synthesizers and "anti-music". Furthermore, an interest in the investigation of "cults, wars, psychological techniques of persuasion, unusual murders (especially by children and psychopaths), forensic pathology, venereology, concentration camp behavior, the history of uniforms and insignia" and "Aleister Crowley's magick" was present in Throbbing Gristle's work, as well as in other industrial pioneers.
1980s
In the early 1980s, the Chicago-based record label Wax Trax! and Canada's Nettwerk helped to expand the industrial music genre into the more accessible electro-industrial genre. At the forefront were bands such as Chicago's Ministry, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult and Die Warzau as well as the German import, KMFDM. Wax Trax was one of the first labels to carry this new strain of industrial music. At the same time, Skinny Puppy, a Canada based group composed of cEvin Key, and Nivek Ogre, released their album Bites. Soon after, many bands followed, such as Nine Inch Nails. Trent Reznor confides his first hit single "Down in It" was inspired by "Dig it", released on "Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse." By the late 1980s, the scene had grown, as the music became a staple of the club scene. Artists emerged worldwide; record sales of key artists increased. The genre especially influenced industrial metal groups, who enjoyed mainstream attention throughout the mid-1990's. Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine, released in 1989, broke the style into mainstream rock culture.
Bibliography
V. Vale and Andrea Juno, Re/Search #6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook, San Francisco: V/Search, 1983. ISBN 0-9650469-6-6
See also
External links
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