[batreleaser]

Let's talk early Industrial. Starting with the easiest of topic starters, your ten favorite early industrial releases.

1. Throbbing Gristle-Second Annual Report
2. Neubauten-Kollaps
3. Whitehouse-Birthdeath Experience (they were not so called power electronics at this point, in my opinion)
4. Test Department-Beating the Retreat
5. Cabaret Voltaire-Mix Up
6. Clock DVA-White Souls in Black Suits
7. Severed Heads-Since the Accident
8. Throbbing Gristle-20 Jazz Funk Greats
9. Autopsia-Wound
10. Laibach-Laibach

[gualbert]

I like Cabaret Voltaire.
I'd label some bands in your list as "industrial noise", rather.

[dionysusundone]

I think Beating The Retreat would be my number 1. Love love love that fucking album.

[uhler]

i'm drunk and d.o.a by throbbing gristle is my favorite industrial album.

[Florya]

TG - D.O.A
Einstuerzende Neubauten - Halber Mensch
Test Dept - Beating the Retreat
Cabaret Voltaire - Three Mantras
V/a - The Elephant Table Album
Current 93 - Dogs Blood Rising
SPK - Leichenschrei
Clock DVA - Thirst
V/A - Rising from the Red Sands
Metgumbnerbone - Ligeliahorn

[demonrail666]

I had another go at trying to get into this kind of music earlier this year. I have to accept that I just don't like it. For some reason it just seems to remind me of the 80s, regardless of when the music was actually recorded.

[Toilet & Bowels]

yeah, i've never really been able to develop much of a liking for industrial, aside from neubauten who are great, and bits of tg and cabaret voltaire. the rest of it i just find way too serious.

a lot of it sounds dated and misanthropic.

[Toilet & Bowels]

as a result of this thread i tried giving test dept another go, i don't know how people can sit through that without getting ultra bored.

you must have accidentally read my mind, cause they're the first band that immediatly comes to mind when i think of industrial, and they're lame down to their shit name. neubauten is on a totally different level, not easily categorized.

[demonrail666]

I can deal with TG in small doses. There seems to be more going on in their stuff (at least in terms of reference points) than what I hear in a lot of other bands. I also like Neubauten but for some reason I don't really think of them as an industrial band. On the whole though, echoing what Sarramkrop says to some degree, I get rather tired of its whole anti-life stance. It all ends up sounding a bit juvenile after a while. Neubauten never strike me in that way. I always hear an element of positivity in their work that I simply don't in the likes of Whitehouse and SPK.

TG are special, though.

[max]

80ies and industrial go along together - so what's the big deal? it works fine for me.

KILLING JOKE - MINISTRY - PRONG are all great examples of what industrial pioneers like the bands mentioned here have produced.
that works even better for me.

I like this thing: www.whiteklaudia.tk

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by sarramkrop

TG are special, though.

Exactly. They tap into something that clearly goes beyond the merely 'industrial' (whatever that is). I tend to think of writers like Ian McEwan when I listen to them.Ultimately, there always seems to be a trace of humanity underneath the surface bleakness of what they do. From what little I've heard of Whitehouse, for example, I never sense anything like the same kind of subtlety or insight. To me, they're the musical equivelent of a suicidal drunk.

[_slavo_]

out of curiosity, I downloaded that Beating a Retreat album, gave it one listen and deleted it immediately.

[Florya]

Originally Posted by sarramkrop

a lot of it sounds dated and mysanthropic.

I guess if you don't know the underlying inspiration for the 'industrial' movment in Europe in the late 70's and early 80's then you could interpret the genre as a whole as misanthropic.

But if you look at it's origins in the disassembly of heavy industry and manufacturing in the UK and beyond at the time (steel works, mining, hundreds of thousands put out of work. etc) and the breaking of the trade unions at the same time, you would probably see it more as a movement borne of protest at the death of traditional industries.

Test Dept raised money for the families of miners that had been put out of work and brought the workers struggle in Poland to the notice of a whole new audience with tracks like 'Gdansk'.
To be fair, they did turn to utter shite when they tried to jump on the dance bandwagon in the late eighties and early ninetie.

Metgumbnerbone's 'Ligeliahorn' was a requiem for traditional heavy industry in the North East of England in the early 80's, and was actually recorded in the abandoned factories along the river Tyne using the equipment left behind and the actual buildings as instruments.

I suppose because it reflects the time in which it was created then it probably does sound 'dated', but I view the early works by TG, EN, Test Dept and Cabaret Voltaire as 'historical' rather than 'dated' documents

Of course, some of the early industrial acts came at the genre from an entirely artistic angle. TG and Einsturzende Neubauten always put me in mind of the Dadaists and Futurists of the 30's and the situationist movement of the late 60's and 70's.
The one exception in my opinion was Mufti who always looked like he would have been more at home with Test Dept than EN.

I think that some of the more recent 'Industrial' artists can come over as misanthropic, but I've never really thought of NiN, Ministry and all the other IDM bands as 'industrial anyway.

[demonrail666]

I think you're right, at least in terms of certain artists anyway: most notably Test Department. I think a number of the other ones were informed more by a kind of post-sixties 'mind-control' thingy, very much inspired by the likes of Burroughs. This seems particularly true of bands like Whitehouse and SPK.

[acousticrock87]

I like Ministry-esque-industrial, but not the "real" shit.

[Florya]

back in the early 80's, there were 3 main weekly music publications, NME, Melody Maker and Sounds.
Sounds carried a series of articles by a guy called Dave Henderson called Wild Planet that focuses mainly on the emerging industrial scene.

Here's a link to a transcript of an A-Z of difficult music that he wrote in 1983. http://undergroundmusiclibrary.blogs...cle-about.html

[batreleaser]

Originally Posted by sarramkrop

a lot of it sounds dated and misanthropic.

yeah, but sometimes dated is good. the sonics certainly sound dated, yet that sound is something that could never be repeated. the same goes with early industrial music, its totally indicative of that time period and couldnt be repeated.

and as far as misanthropic goes, when did that become a bad thing? if tg wasnt misanthropic they wouldnt be tg.