Quote:
Industrial music can be traced back to the futurist artist Luigi Russolo, who wrote a manifesto in 1917 called The Art of Noises (1). In this manifesto he argued that contemporary music lacked the range of timbres that the modern industrial age had brought with it. He believed modern industry had provided the people of today with noises that should be utilized in music, including industrial noise in its purest form.
Until the 70’s, there was no ‘scene’ established around noise or industrial music. Taking their transgressive art background into music, the band Throbbing Gristle debuted at the Prostitution art exhibit, making music centred on improvised industrial noise. A major influence on their music was Zanoni by the alchemist Edward Lytton, who had claimed that notes played randomly on a violin which were not included in the classical scales could send the player into a new dimension of existence.
TG took industrial noise in many directions that Russolo had not proposed, such as the incorporation of horror imagery, alchemy and controversy roused by using Nazi and pornographic imagery. This pre-dated The Sex Pistols and the British punk explosion of the late 70’s, and TG member Genesis P Orridge claims punk rocks success and image largely built out of TG and their Industrial Records label. (cite interview)
During the 80’s TG and Industrial Records slid, and Orridge found other projects, including a spiritual movement the Temple of Psychic Youth (link) together with industrial band Coil and neofolk band Current 93. Psychic TV was formed around TOPY, creating the first acid house LP’s and single-handedly building the rave movement which had the British government describing Orridge as a ‘wrecker of civilization’ until he was deported in the early 90’s. (cite)
Outside of the UK in Belgium the electronic band Front 242 released an EP titled No Comment, with the words Electronic Body Music written horizontally beside the song titles on the back. The term EBM had been used in the 70’s by Kraftwerk, but no genre had been attached to it until that point. Later Assemblage 23 would describe this genre as industrial dance, and the debate as to whether EBM is industrial at all rages on.
On the other end of the scale, industrial noise was forming into a new genre. In Japan Masami Akita set up the project Merzbow, a noise project far less musical than TG which inspired an entire genre of Japanese noise artists. In the UK Whitehouse began producing ‘power electronics’, a form of noise which is unrelated to the other subgenres of noise in that it resembles white noise more than anything musical.
In the early 90’s the band Nine Inch Nails brought industrial music to a mainstream audience. The NIN sound was more refined than its predecessors and incorporated more elements of rock - and especially metal – than most industrial artists of that time. Through the 90’s onward, many metal bands with heavy electronic elements have used the term industrial (such a Rammstein, Megahertz or Fear Factory), although they may not resemble industrial music as such.
1)http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/ma..._of_noise.html
2, 3) ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMsfjCChsCI
Until the 70’s, there was no ‘scene’ established around noise or industrial music. Taking their transgressive art background into music, the band Throbbing Gristle debuted at the Prostitution art exhibit, making music centred on improvised industrial noise. A major influence on their music was Zanoni by the alchemist Edward Lytton, who had claimed that notes played randomly on a violin which were not included in the classical scales could send the player into a new dimension of existence.
TG took industrial noise in many directions that Russolo had not proposed, such as the incorporation of horror imagery, alchemy and controversy roused by using Nazi and pornographic imagery. This pre-dated The Sex Pistols and the British punk explosion of the late 70’s, and TG member Genesis P Orridge claims punk rocks success and image largely built out of TG and their Industrial Records label. (cite interview)
During the 80’s TG and Industrial Records slid, and Orridge found other projects, including a spiritual movement the Temple of Psychic Youth (link) together with industrial band Coil and neofolk band Current 93. Psychic TV was formed around TOPY, creating the first acid house LP’s and single-handedly building the rave movement which had the British government describing Orridge as a ‘wrecker of civilization’ until he was deported in the early 90’s. (cite)
Outside of the UK in Belgium the electronic band Front 242 released an EP titled No Comment, with the words Electronic Body Music written horizontally beside the song titles on the back. The term EBM had been used in the 70’s by Kraftwerk, but no genre had been attached to it until that point. Later Assemblage 23 would describe this genre as industrial dance, and the debate as to whether EBM is industrial at all rages on.
On the other end of the scale, industrial noise was forming into a new genre. In Japan Masami Akita set up the project Merzbow, a noise project far less musical than TG which inspired an entire genre of Japanese noise artists. In the UK Whitehouse began producing ‘power electronics’, a form of noise which is unrelated to the other subgenres of noise in that it resembles white noise more than anything musical.
In the early 90’s the band Nine Inch Nails brought industrial music to a mainstream audience. The NIN sound was more refined than its predecessors and incorporated more elements of rock - and especially metal – than most industrial artists of that time. Through the 90’s onward, many metal bands with heavy electronic elements have used the term industrial (such a Rammstein, Megahertz or Fear Factory), although they may not resemble industrial music as such.
1)http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/ma..._of_noise.html
2, 3) ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMsfjCChsCI
