Industrial music
The first industrial artists experimented with noise and aesthetically controversial topics, both musically and visually, such as fascism, sexual perversion, and the occult.
Prominent industrial musicians include Throbbing Gristle, Monte Cazazza, SPK, Boyd Rice, Cabaret Voltaire, and Z'EV.
Electro-industrial music is a primary subgenre that developed in the 1980s, with the most notable bands in the genre being Front Line Assembly and Skinny Puppy.
"[5] Similarly, in 1972, The New York Times described works by Ferde Grofé (especially 1935's A Symphony in Steel) as part of "his 'industrial music' genre [that] called on such instruments as four pairs of shoes, two brooms, a locomotive bell, a pneumatic drill and a compressed-air tank".
[6] Though these compositions are not directly tied to what the genre would become, they are early examples of music designed to mimic machinery noise and factory atmosphere.
[7] AllMusic assessed 1960s English experimental group AMM as originators of the genre, as well as to electronica, free improvisation and noise music, writing that the "experimentation in sonic assault, noise, and chance sound (including transistor radios)" on their debut album AMMMusic (1967) would "reach the rock fringes in the work of industrial groups like Test Dept".
[8] Cromagnon's album Orgasm (1969) has been cited by AllMusic's Alex Henderson as foreshadowing industrial, noise rock and no wave, with the track "Caledonia" resembling "a Ministry or Revolting Cocks recording from 1989".
"[12] Industrial music was created originally by using mechanical and electric machinery and later advanced synthesizers, samplers and electronic percussion as the technology developed.
[12] Groups cited as inspirational by the founders of industrial music include the Velvet Underground, Joy Division, and Martin Denny.
[13] Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle had a cassette library including recordings by The Master Musicians of Joujouka, Kraftwerk, Charles Manson, and William S.
[19] Z'EV cited Christopher Tree (Spontaneous Sound), John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Tim Buckley, Jimi Hendrix, and Captain Beefheart, among others together with Tibetan, Balinese, Javanese, Indian, and African music as influential in his artistic life.
[33] The first wave of this music appeared with Throbbing Gristle, from London; Cabaret Voltaire, from Sheffield;[34] and Boyd Rice (recording under the name NON), from the United States.
Conservative politician Nicholas Fairbairn declared that "public money is being wasted here to destroy the morality of our society" and blasted the group as "wreckers of civilization.
[45] Clock DVA described their goal as borrowing equally from surrealist automatism and "nervous energy sort of funk stuff, body music that flinches you and makes you move.
[49] Boyd Rice released several albums of noise, with guitar drones and tape loops creating a cacophony of repetitive sounds.
[50] In Boston, Sleep Chamber and other artists from Inner-X-Musick began experimenting with a mixture of powerful noise and early forms of EBM.
[51] In Germany, Einstürzende Neubauten mixed metal percussion, guitars, and unconventional instruments (such as jackhammers and bones) in stage performances that often damaged the venues in which they played.
[52] Blixa Bargeld, inspired by Antonin Artaud and an enthusiasm for amphetamines, also originated an art movement called Die Genialen Dilettanten.
[53] In January 1984, Einstürzende Neubauten performed a Concerto for Voice and Machinery at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (the same site as COUM's Prostitution exhibition), drilling through the floor and eventually sparking a riot.
[58] Laibach, a Slovenian group who began while Yugoslavia remained a single state, were very controversial for their iconographic borrowings from Stalinist, Nazi, Titoist, Dada, and Russian Futurist imagery, conflating Yugoslav patriotism with its German authoritarian adversary.
[59] Slavoj Žižek has defended Laibach, arguing that they and their associated Neue Slowenische Kunst art group practice an overidentification with the hidden perverse enjoyment undergirding authority that produces a subversive and liberatory effect.
[60] In simpler language, Laibach practiced a type of agitprop that was widely utilized by industrial and punk artists on both sides of the Atlantic.
[64] Psychic TV's commercial aspirations were managed by Stevo of Some Bizzare Records, who released many of the later industrial musicians, including Einstürzende Neubauten, Test Dept, and Cabaret Voltaire.
[65] Around 1983, Cabaret Voltaire members were deeply interested in funk music and, with the encouragement of their friends from New Order, began to develop a form of dark but danceable electrofunk.
"[73] Carter of Throbbing Gristle invented a device named the "Gristle-izer", played by Christopherson, which comprised a one-octave keyboard and a number of cassette machines triggering various pre-recorded sounds.
Reynolds described the Cabaret Voltaire members' individual contributions as "[Chris] Watson's smears of synth slime; [Stephen] Mallinder's dankly pulsing bass; and [Richard H.] Kirk's spikes of shattered-glass guitar.
[78] The purpose of industrial music initially was to serve as a commentary on modern society by eschewing what artists saw as trite connections to the past.
"[79] 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,[81] as well as in other industrial pioneers.
The genre, previously ignored or criticized by music journalists, grew popular with disaffected middle-class youth in suburban and rural areas.
[87] A number of acts associated with industrial music achieved commercial success during this period including Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, Rammstein and Orgy.
