Industrial music is a genre of electronic/experimental music that makes use of transgressive themes and is often associated with countercultural angst and anger. Although ideologically associated with punk,1 industrial music is generally more complex and diverse, both sonically and lyrically. The term was coined around the mid-1970s following the founding of Industrial Records by the Yorkshire (England) band Throbbing Gristle and the creation of the ironic slogan "industrial music for industrial people." industrial people").
Early industrial artists experimented with noise and aesthetically engaged themes, both musically and visually, such as fascism, serial murder, and the occult. His production was not limited to music, but also included mail art, performance, art installations and other artistic forms.2 Among the most prominent musicians of industrial music are Throbbing Gristle, SPK, Boyd Rice, Cabaret Voltaire and Z' EV. The precursors that influenced the development of the genre were projects such as the electronic music group Kraftwerk, experimental rock bands such as The Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa, psychedelic rock artists such as Jimi Hendrix, composers such as John Cage, writers such as William S. Burroughs. and philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche.
Although the term was initially used only by a small circle of individuals associated with Industrial Records in the 1970s, it was expanded to include artists influenced by the original movement or who embraced the "industrial" aesthetic. These artists expanded the genre by pushing it in more noise and electronic directions. Over time, its influence spread, industrial music merging with other styles such as folk music, ambient and rock, fusions that are classified as post-industrial music. Popular hybrid genres include industrial rock and industrial metal, with groups like Nine Inch Nails and Ministry achieving platinum records in the 1990s. Electro-industrial is a more modern development. These three genres are often known simply as industrial.
Industrial music draws on numerous predecessors. Alexei Monroe states that Kraftwerk were particularly significant in the development of industrial music, as the "first successful artist to incorporate representations of industrial sounds into non-academic electronic music." Industrial music was originally created using mechanical machinery and electric, and later synthesizers, samplers and electronic percussion. Monroe also considers Suicide a decisive contemporary influence. Among the groups that the founders of industrial music themselves have cited as inspiration are The Velvet Underground, Joy Division and Martin Denny.
Chris Carter also enjoyed and found inspiration in Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream. Boyd Rice was influenced by the music of Lesley Gore and Abba. Z'EV cites Christopher Tree (Spontaneous Sound), John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Tim Buckley, Jimi Hendrix and Captain Beefheart, among others, along with Tibetan, Balinese, Javanese, Indian and African music. Cabaret Voltaire cites Roxy Music as its reference, as well as Kraftwerk's Trans Europa Express. Nurse With Wound cites a long list of dark free inspiration as well as Kraftwerk as recommended listens.
Many early industrial musicians preferred to cite artists or thinkers, rather than musicians, as their inspiration. Simon Reynolds states that "being a fan of Throbbing Gristle was like enrolling in a university course in cultural extremism."4 John Cage was an initial inspiration for Throbbing Gristle. SPK appreciated Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Walter Benjamin, Marshall McLuhan, Friedrich Nietzsche and Gilles Deleuze. Cabaret Voltaire took conceptual references from Burroughs, J. G. Ballard and Tristan Tzara. Whitehouse and Nurse With Wound dedicated some of their works to the Marquis de Sade.
Another influence of the industrial aesthetic was Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. Pitchfork Music cites this album as "inspiring, in part, much of the contemporary avant-garde music scene, and noise in particular."5 The album consists entirely of guitar feedback, anticipating the use of industrial music by non-musical sounds.
Industrial Music for Industrial People was originally coined by Monte Cazazza as the logo for the record label Industrial Records, founded by artistic provocateurs Throbbing Gristle. The first wave of this music appeared with Throbbing Gristle from London, Cabaret Voltaire from Sheffield and Boyd Rice (recording under the name NON) from the United States. Throbbing Gristle first played live in 1976, and began as a side project of COUM Transmissions. COUM was initially an avant-garde rock group, but they began to describe their work as performance art in order to qualify for grants from the Arts Council of Great Britain. COUM was made up of transgender artist Genesis P-Orridge and pornographic artist Cosey Fanni Tutti. Since 1972 COUM has carried out various performances inspired by Fluxus and Viennese actionism. These included various sexual and physical acts of submission.
The group was renamed Throbbing Gristle in September 1975, the name coming from slang for erection. The group's first public appearance, in October 1976, took place in an exhibition titled Prostitution presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, which included pornographic photos of Tutti as well as used tampons and shocking live acts such as cutting skin from her navel. to the vagina on behalf of Tutti on her own body, etc. There were reactions against conservative politicians. The group released three albums and disbanded in 1981. After the separation, Genesis P-Orridge founded the post-industrial group Psychic TV.
Scene expansion
The bands Clock DVA,6 Nocturnal Emissions,7 Whitehouse,8 Nurse with Wound and SPK appeared next. Whitehouse intended to play "the most brutal and extreme music of all time", [citation needed] a style that would later be known as power electronics. An early Whitehouse collaborator, Steve Stapleton, formed Nurse with Wound, which experimented with noise sculpture and sound collage. 23 Skidoo, like Clock DVA, fused industrial music with African-American dance music, but also carried out a response to world music. Clock DVA described their objective as a development of surrealist automatism. When they played at the first WOMAD festival, the group related their project to Indonesian gamelan. In 1984, the Catalan Dadaist Jordi Valls, under the name Vagina Dentata Organ, made The Last Supper of Reverend Jim Jones, which was a feedback composition with the audio recording of the moment in which the leader of the People's Temple (Jim Jones) forces 900 people to take cyanide in Guyana. The Swedish group Leather Nun signed to Industrial Records in 1978, being the first foreign group to have an album published on IR.9 Their singles would receive a lot of coverage on college radio in the United States.10
Similar experiences were taking place on the other side of the Atlantic. In San Francisco, performance artist Monte Cazazza began recording noise. Boyd Rice released several noise albums, with guitar drones and tape loops creating a cacophony of repetitive sounds.11 In Italy, the work of Maurizio Bianchi in the early 1980s also shared this aesthetic.12 In Germany, Einstürzende Neubauten mixed metal percussion, guitars and unconventional instruments (such as the mechanical hammer and bones) in performances in which they often caused damage to the premises where they took place.13 Blixa Bargeld, inspired by Antonin Artaud and his enthusiasm for amphetamines, gave rise to an artistic movement called Die Genialen Dilettanten. Bargeld is particularly known for his earth-shattering hisses. In January 1984, Einstürzende Neubauten held a Concert for Voice and Machines at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (the same one where COUM's exhibition, Prostitution, took place), drilling into the floor and subsequently leading to riots. This event made the front pages of newspapers in England. Other groups that practiced a form of industrial "metal music" (that is, produced with metal-on-metal sounds) include Test Dept,14 Laibach and Die Krupps, as well as Z'EV and SPK.
Following the breakup of Throbbing Gristle, Genesis P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson founded Psychic TV and signed to a major record label. Their first album was much more accessible and melodic than is typical in industrial music, and included the work of hired professional musicians. His later work returned to sound collage and the noise elements of early industrial music. They also took elements of funk and disco music. P-Orridge also founded Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, a quasi-religious organization that produced video art. Psychic TV's commercial aspirations were managed by Stevo de Som