A brief word of warning. I have to confess to a level of discomfort when the term industrial is put to me. As a musician and producer who, it would seem, had more than a passing flirtation with what the media and music consumers broadly label “industrial music,” or “industrial beats,” I tend to bristle a little. As a founding member of Cabaret Voltaire, a group who hail from a northern British industrial city, it seems I can offer little defense, though. We made music that was often sonically brutal, we challenged ideas of authority and control, we toyed with moody and often taboo imagery, we were simultaneously intellectual and anti-intellectual, we thought ourselves iconoclastic, and we wore raincoats sometimes; in our defense it was the north and it did rain occasionally.
Perhaps the initial reaction is justifiable, as “industrial” was never a term we applied to ourselves. Wary of being burdened with a media definition, we felt a natural fear of having a spectrum of work reduced to a single classification. There was also an issue of courtesy. Throbbing Gristle, with a commensurate serving of gravitas and mischievousness, tagged their record label Industrial Music for Industrial People. As friends and peers, we were honored to have releases on the label, but understandably we avoided any identity conflict out of respect.
In truth it has to be said that the muted response to being called “industrial” is much more complex. Fearful of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, we did not find the idea that we would become a short-lived sonic reification of our city’s monocultural identity appealing. Similarly, we felt under no obligation to answer for a whole subsequent genre as the media began to box it up. Like all artists, we felt responsible for ourselves alone, and as the industrial banner unfurled to incorporate disparate protagonists, some too singular in ideology for our tastes, a diplomatic distance was put in place. But perhaps for many who are invested in the meaning of the “I-word,” particularly in the context of the dominant rock modality, this arm’s-length riposte has put “industrial” outside the general music discourse or academic reflection for too long. Many of the implications, connections, and consequences of the music made in its name have been overlooked, denied proper scrutiny.
It should be recognized that music movements are in large part externally constructed and driven; they are convenient labels to help market and shelve. In truth, music and the creative process do not work in isolation or mutual exclusion but are part of a much more complex series of associations and connections. There is clearly a need to progress beyond classification to unpack the rich complexity contained inside. It is important and appropriate to look at the wider contexts in order to appraise the etymology, processes, ideologies, and legacies of what we term industrial. This book addresses the industrial cultural spectrum from esoteric to populist, presenting evidence of the diverse and dispersed roots of the industrial story and its sonic, text-based, visual, and performance heritage.
Music, as ever, proves to be a medium that translates and disseminates ideas quickly and effectively. The industrial narrative is not exclusively one of music, but the immediacy of popular sound has enabled it to progress and articulate its ideas. We can see here the industrial account is one that has remained in constant flux, has multiple trigger points and infinite destinations, and has carried along pathways that continue to resonate. On a macro level, the ideological challenges to social and cultural control—and our tacit compliance—that the key protagonists who are identified here threw down were truly prescient; we ignore their commentary at our own peril. On a more discrete level, the actual sounds and processes on which the industrial templates were drawn continue to echo through contemporary urban sounds of dubstep, grime, and electronic dance music and are evident in work by noise and sound artists. In addition, the accompanying imagery, which forms a large part of the industrial narrative, continues to provide a benchmark for the gritty realism or dystopian futures in television and film production.
The industrial story, at least for me, acknowledges the importance of time and place. At the beginning of the 1980s, the defining period, there was a fusion of raw elements: readily available technology, postpunk ideology, a vibrant DIY ethos, burgeoning Reaganomics, and a whiff of insurrection in the air. Speaking a little of my own industrial credentials, those boxes were clearly ticked. To those of us living and making sounds in a northern English city, there was unavoidable synergy between the place and its output. Everyone was collaterally implicated. The city’s sounds during the 1980s were both a considered response and a practical resolution to the industrial atrophy that was well under way by this time. Against a backdrop of Thatcherite fiscal policy and regional confrontation, Sheffield’s regeneration was in every sense postindustrial. Built upon the bones of its once-thriving steel and cutlery production, the abandoned offices, workshops, and factories proved useful to would-be musicians, producers, and artists who would come to occupy these lost properties. Cultural redemption came to those who were happy to exploit Youth Employment schemes and the cheap council housing of the time to provide their own solutions to southern capital abandonment. However, as much as the geography was helping configure the sounds that began to emanate—Clock DVA, Hula, Human League, BEF, et al.—many of a northern disposition feared entrapment, the conviction being that music was an agent of escape, an effective means of transcending those very spaces and signifiers that shaped or confined you.
From a creative perspective, this conflict between day-to-day reality and otherness offered a useful tension central to what was produced. The shiny modernity of technology, an escape route to an idealized future, was in turn anchored in the more subversive dirt of reality. The pyschogeography of the city was an indelible stain on us, as I’m sure it was for others. Drop hammers, fiery furnaces, and steel forges—the clichéd sounds and sights of heavy industry were part of the sonic deal being made. In many cases, this filtering was pretty literal. In our case, the first gig we ever played, which had some dynamic consequences, was perhaps inflamed by the use of a tape loop of a steam hammer (from Ostend, as Richard proudly pronounced) as the rhythm track. “Nag Nag Nag,” a more successful Cabs single, made sure that it wasn’t to be emasculated by claims of rank commercialism; percussion fills came courtesy of bashing metal keyboard legs. Some of our earlier machines were ex-government tape recorders, dangerously heavy and built, it would seem, to withstand nuclear attack. For our part, we walked the walk.
The inspiration of Dada offered a guidebook of how to go about deconstructing a world that did not adequately represent the one we actually inhabited. Suitably driven by Duchamp, Tzara, and other past pugnacious artists, this was a sincere if somewhat naïve attempt to tear up the plans and devise new strategies. Process meant the rejection of traditional methods and instrumentation. The recording studio became the most valuable writing tool; tape machines, effected voices, “treated” instruments, tape loops, and drum machines. Song structures and linear arrangements were abandoned; the logocentric norm of most contemporary music was dismissed for a sonic democracy. The music was intended to be primal, visceral, and provocative. Noise, for us a Sheffield birthright, was the most effective tool in the box. Although most at the time were unaware of many of the readings into the inherent political and social power of noise, it was clearly a language of subversion. Noise defied order and control. It was a musical taboo. Sonic belligerence. It could destabilize. This was not entertainment, but it was fun. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music worked, for us, in perfect … well, perhaps not harmony.
To understand the thinking behind the sounds, there needs to be some recognition also of the images that were processed. It can be argued that an expanding media meant the post-1960s were primarily visually driven. Bombarded with television and film images, much of the music that was produced under the industrial banner sought to align sounds with other media. Music was in effect a translating medium. For many bands at the time, inspired by Velvet Underground and the dark psychedelia of Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, the thinking was to encourage immersion into a total experience. Multimedia and text were an important component, an attack on all fronts; like others, we filtered, collated, and cut up visuals in true Gysin style to accompany gigs and later produce video releases. Still, rather than anodyne, psychedelic textures and colors, punk had conditioned most into the power of representation the shock tactics of realism. This was a generation seeped in the imagery of the Cold War, the inheritors of Oppenheimer’s nightmare. As an example, for British players the vision was made startlingly real by the disturbing footage in Peter Watkins’s 1965 documentary-drama War Games that followed the buildup and aftermath of a Soviet nuclear attack on a UK city. The sights and sounds were strange pre-echoes of the Burroughs-esque dystopian world we inhabited. As a group, we continued to draw on this imagery. Our 1984 video for “Sensoria” was shot in the abandoned hospital where the postnuclear apocalypse Threads had been filmed.
Although never perceiving this as any kind of movement or collective, there was a clear sense of connection. Throbbing Gristle, as mentioned, were key agents and offered a gateway for a number of kindred spirits—23 Skidoo, David Tibet, Last Few Days, et al. On a wider scale, the importance cannot be overstated of Vale at RE/Search Publications, whose San Franciscan North Beach apartment became an important transit point and destination during the late 1970s and 1980s for musicians, writers, and an array of general nonconformists. Vale’s seatless VW Beetle was industrial by default, and collaborator Mark Pauline, artist and inventor extraordinaire, made kinetic art that encapsulated the zeitgeist perfectly. Vale and RE/Search’s connections to the City Lights bookshop around the corner added extra cachet, linking those passing through the North Beach hub to America’s postwar renegade literati. Across the water, Chrome were a big influence at the time, and we had our home-grown companions—Hula, Clock DVA, and Workforce, to name a few. It is interesting to note that at this point, as a shared sense of identity was beginning to emerge, the fear of being trapped or simply standing still meant that most looked to their own map to find an interesting path to the next destination. Other people had joined the conversation. When Cabaret Voltaire moved to Some Bizzare Records, there was a growing sense of collective spirit, but one (it must be said) that had no name and no slogan—just attitude and ideas. The label, whose rise was colorful and whose ultimate demise was a divisive and cautionary tale, drew together a roster that included two of the toughest kids on the block, Einstürzende Neubauten and Test Dept., who literally played with the detritus of industry. These together with Coil, Psychic TV, and Jim “Foetus” Thirlwell ensured that the label was defining its own aesthetic, leading rather than being led.
There was also acknowledgement of changing dynamics during the mid-to-late 1980s, particularly from the east coast of the United States, where perceptions of beats and dance floor cultures were being transformed. The industrial ethos, which sought to configure body and mind, was being remodeled by fresh rhythms that equally made play with social and cultural themes in nocturnal spaces. The embryonic hip-hop and electro sounds emanating from that side of the Atlantic Ocean were making an impact on embedded understandings of race, gender, and the body. It seems that British audiences who had already absorbed soul and Jamaican rhythms into their sonic lexicon assimilated these beats and cultures more readily. With changing drug practices as a timely accelerant, it was only a matter of time before the tougher beats of Detroit techno would form an affinity with places like Sheffield and Düsseldorf. As is often the case with game-changing music, this became a loose cartel of second-tier cities, places away from the moneyed business capitals that shaped their cultural identity through manufacturing, ancillary trades, and pastimes. In the late 1980s, Richard Kirk and I worked in Chicago recording with house producer Marshall Jefferson, but also spending time with Al Jourgensen and Chris Connelly making the Acid Horse twelve inch for the pivotal WaxTrax! label. As outsiders, it seemed natural—no conflict of ideology or technologies, just simple shifts of emphasis. The sounds evolve. Sheffield made its own adjustments, integrated its cultural idiosyncrasies. Warp Records became the city’s first real label, and significantly, with a track by the seemingly industrial sounding Forgemasters, the label would also become known for Sweet Exorcist’s and LFO’s onomatopoeic “bleep” releases. Although not part of the industrial canon, nevertheless the sound of industry was made corporeal.
At this point, as we shift gears toward the connecting tissue of the web, the fractal changes of sounds, rhythms, and shall we say attendant practices become difficult to map. The micro cultures and myriad splinters become ever more impenetrable as they eventually move and in many cases dissipate online. Perspectives become a little more subjective in a digital domain, and we enter a kind of Möbius strip of meaning: reference points and destinations endlessly feeding back on themselves as we search for patterns in the complexity in order to compartmentalize and find meaning. Back to our start point: we have to acknowledge the reductionist nature of music taxonomy. Like all genre descriptions, “industrial” can potentially be misunderstood through no fault of those who contribute, but rather the consequences of trying to shoehorn disparate elements into one tidy space.
However, as this volume eloquently details, away from these exhausted formulas, the notion of industrial, although diverse and often conflicting, is inclusive, rich, and complex. It presents a nucleus around which sounds, images, words, processes, and ideas fly. This is not simply a case of a literal translation of terms but rather requires the mapping of sources, pathways, and possibilities. Industrial music should not be seen as the mere mimicking of sounds, signifiers, and attitudes but considered as part of a much wider conversation. We have progressed from the celebration of machines and power for their own sake that characterized the early Futurists to a much broader discourse that addresses the technologies, processes, implications, and consequences of industry, technology, and mass production. It is important that the discourse continue. The tacit and explicit control exerted through current online and digital technologies are rooted in the state and corporate cultures of the recent past, during which all things industrial thrived. Perhaps it is a significant time to appraise the work of musicians, writers, and artists whose combative stances challenge the dominant ideologies and practices that surround them.
Stephen Mallinder
September 3, 2012