The "Industrial" roots are sometimes acknowledged, often overlooked.
The truth is that a lot of "Techno" pioneers were very active in the earlier Industrial and EBM movements, and the darker parts of the Synth Pop culture.
It was a very straight evolution - being an Industrial musician in the 80s, then the "switch" to Techno when the 90s began.
Yet there is a reason that there is not as much attention on this Industrial influence than on the other "roots".
These musicians usually stayed attached to the darker, harsher, more brutal forms of Techno, and when Hardcore and Gabber got into full swing, they went there, too. And to even more extreme sounds like Speedcore and Breakcore as the 90s went on.
So let us look at some of these.
Given the topic, the view is mostly on artists from the earlier days of Techno, in the 90s.
Industrial Strength Records
One of the earliest American Techno and Hardcore labels - based in New York City
And the name gives it away - there is a huge Industrial influence.
By the mid 90s, and onwards, it gained a huge surge of popularity within the "Gabber" scene. But its eggs found their way into many baskets - the sound fueled the US warehouse rave scene, the European squat underground, or its compilation CDs were released on the prime extreme Metal label of the 90s - Earache Records.
While Techno / Rave / Dance elements are a-plenty on this label, this is not some cheese / good-time music for sure! We hear the sound of hammering pistols, screaming metal, and howling machines on this one.
Listening suggestions:
DX 13 - Mother F**ker New York
Temper Tantrum - Industrial Strength
Nasenbluten - Concrete Compressor
Planet Core Productions
"Phuture - An Industrial Project" is written in big black letters on the pages of the booklet, when you open up the eponymous 1994 compilation by this Frankfurt label. Marc Acardipane - "head honcho" of the label - once stated his mission was to combine the dark sounds by the likes of Front 242 with the more funky sounds coming from Detroit and Chicago at the same time.
And while the label later found fame within the stark raving Dutch Gabber scene, the industrial roots are undeniable.
Listening suggestions:
Mescalinium United - We Have Arrived
Cold Blooded Split - Invaders
Reincarnated Regulator - Mindeater
The Horrorist
The Horrorist was so industrial that Depeche Mode actually invited him and a few other hand-picked fans to join him in their bus of the 101 tour and video!
But all silliness aside, Oliver Chesler was deeply ingrained in New York's industrial electronic underground. He later picked up the Techno beats, too, and joined above-mentioned Industrial Strength Records, and other labels.
He spawned several worldwide hits ("Flesh is the fever" became a Dutch Gabber hit, "DJ Skinhead" became a terror-speedcore hit, and "One night in NYC" went #1 on the German dance charts). But there was always a fling with industrial music as the backdrop, now and then.
Listening suggestions:
The Horrorist - Can You Hear the sound?
The Horrorist - Flesh is the Fever
The Horrorist & Marc Acardipane - Metal Man
Praxis Records
The Praxis crew was deeply embedded within the Swiss industrial and electronic underworld of the 80s. In fact, Praxis has an industrial avant-garde precursor, Vision Records.
But then they went to the UK, got entangled in the dangerous London anarchist / squat / traveler / rave culture.
How many successful electronic labels of the 90s can rightfully claim that they were run by itinerants who did not even have a residential address (let alone a shower) ?
Before finally settling in Berlin, and becoming part of the new Breakcore "thing".
Listening suggestions:
Bourbonese Qualk - Logic Bomb
Base Force One - Phuturist
Society of unknowns - Dead by Dawn (The Endless Mix)
Fischkopf
From Berlin we move to another German city, Hamburg. The home of Fischkopf was a record store on the second floor of a clothes outlet selling subcultural fashion within the city's red light district. So a trip to Fischkopf always became a rite of passage, passing by bondage gear stores, blue movie cinemas, pimps with brass knuckles, and cracked heads with jackknives.
The label's roster was international and the influences were wide-spread. You had more Gabber or Techno types doing releases, but also a lot of artists who were active or fans in the original industrial scene before they sailed to these new horizons.
Listening suggestions:
Auto-Psy - Ovoide
Taciturne - In Nomine Dei Nostri Satanas Luciferi Excelsi
Eradicator - Worringen
Digital Hardcore Recordings
We are back in Berlin again! DHR was not only a label with industrial influences (input), but also one that made it quite big within the industrial community itself (output).
Which 90s industrial-goth teen did not have a crush on Alec or Hanin? (I know I did!)
There is also breakcore, metal-gabber, hard acid on this label, but, yup, it's industrial too!
Listening suggestions:
Ec8or - Discriminate the next Fashionsucker
Sonic Subjunkies - Central Industrial
Atari Teenage Riot - Redefine the Enemy
Biochip C / Street Trash Alliance
German producer Martin Damm became involved in the projects of music publishing company ZYX and the labels Boy / Generator Records. These helped to spread Industrial music to the masses in Germany and across the borders via some of their compilations and releases.
Martin Damm later became a Hardcore, Speedcore, and "Frenchcore" legend. But his early releases were ingrained in the Industrial, EBM, and New Beat sound.
And maybe he is the one with the most "immediate" Industrial influence. A lot of tracks contain plainly visible nods to early bands and projects.
O - Das Spiel
Cyberchrist - Information Revolution Part 2
Napalm - Napalm !!!
There is more out there. But we will talk about that when "The Stars Turn and a Time Presents Itself".
Part 3
So, how did Industrial culture cross over into Techno and, later, Hardcore?
On a technological level (pun intended), it's the production methods, synths, ideas...
Industrial artists sampled movies, speeches, other records... and put these vocal snippets into their songs / tracks.
Often these were otherwise "instrumental" tracks where, on a conceptual level, the sampled narration of a horror movie or a political speech "replaced" the singer that would be there if it was a conventional pop / rock song.
This was done in early Techno, too. With the addition that these short voices or truncated parts of a speech got looped - or got re-triggered at machine-gun speed.
When Techno producers dropped this habit as the 90s went on, the industrial sampling heritage found its new home in the Hardcore and Gabber scene. Where the choices of sources were oddly similar to that of the Industrial community: horror flicks, alien movies, interviews from the mental asylum...
The hippies had their electronic Krautrock / Ambient, playing 11+ minute long synthesizer "solos" that went everywhere and nowhere while being stoned out of their mind while eager european businessmen and journalists watched by in the 70s.
But it took the advent of Industrial to finally get some sequencer-based, "tight" electronic form of music - that was not done by a funky Moroder in a Beverly Hills sound studio (no diss against Giorgio at all - but you know what I mean!).
Like some German New Wave legend remarked on TV once: "I would never have considered 'Hot on the Heels of Love' to be part of disco music. Even though everyone danced to it." [paraphrased]
And the choice of sounds. Peter Gabriel might have spent 4 weeks finding a way to record a metal pipe hitting a metal object (or was that Phil?). Yet the artists of Industrial music took this way farther.
Machinery, drills, jackhammers (hello, Neubauten!), pile drivers were now a welcome addition to an artist's music. Recorded, used for improvisation, during live shows, or for drilling a hole through a wall, into the green room, during a live show (hello again, Neubauten!).
Noise was now a type of music too, you know.
I must admit that early Techno and House had not much of that. But later Hardcore and Gabber had a similar sweet tooth for sheer loudness and abrasive hissing+screeching mayhem.
Just three examples - and this just covers the technical side of things so far.
And with these words, dear reader, we leave you for the night.
No comments:
Post a Comment