industrial music

The tradition & historical record

Industrial music (or simply industrial) is a subgenre of experimental music that emerged in the mid-to late 1970s, primarily inspired by industrial society, while drawing influences from avant-garde and early electronic music genres such as musique concrète, tape music, noise and sound collage. The term was coined in 1976 by Monte Cazazza and adopted by Throbbing Gristle with the founding of Industrial Records. Other early industrial musicians include NON and Cabaret Voltaire. By the late 1970s, additional artists emerged such as Clock DVA, Nocturnal Emissions, Einstürzende Neubauten, SPK, Nurse with Wound, and Z'EV, alongside Whitehouse who coined the subgenre "power electronics". During the 1980s, following the disbanding of Throbbing Gristle, industrial music splintered into a range of offshoots collectively labelled "post-industrial music", these included, EBM, new beat, hard beat, dark ambient, neofolk, power noise, industrial dance, electro-industrial, dark electro, aggrotech, industrial rock, industrial metal, cyber metal, Neue Deutsche Härte, martial industrial, industrial hip-hop and industrial techno. By the 1990s, elements of industrial music were made accessible to mainstream audiences through the popularity of acts such as Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Rammstein, and Marilyn Manson, all of whom released platinum-selling records. ¹

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the genre was first named in 1942 when The Musical Quarterly called Dmitri Shostakovich's 1927 Symphony No. 2 "the high tide of 'industrial music'." 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". 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. Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo laid the groundwork for industrial music with his book and work The Art of Noises (1913), which aimed to reflect "the sounds of a modern industrial society". ¹

Industrial music was a response to "an age [in which] the access and control of information were becoming the primary tools of power," defined primarily as a musical reflection of post-industrial society, with its rampant use of contemporary technology and incorporation of unconventional modernist lyricism and themes not commonly found in popular music. Industrial artists drew influence from modernist literature, art, philosophy and avant-garde music, rejecting formal rock music conventions, with Industrial Records wanting to use the term "industrial" to evoke the idea of music created for a new generation. Artist Genesis P-Orridge stated: ¹

there's an irony in the word 'industrial' because there's the music industry. And then there's the joke we often used to make in interviews about churning out our records like motorcars, that sense of industrial. And up till then the music had been kind of based on the blues and slavery, and we thought it was time to update it to at least Victorian times—you know, the Industrial Revolution. Early industrial music made by groups such as Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle, featured tape editing, stark percussion, vocal effects and loops which were distorted. Throbbing Gristle opposed traditional rock music structures associated with the punk rock scene, declaring industrial to be "anti-music." Early industrial performances often involved taboo-breaking, provocative elements, such as mutilation, sado-masochistic elements and totalitarian imagery or symbolism, as well as forms of audience abuse, such as Throbbing Gristle's aiming high powered lights at the audience. ¹

In 1913, Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo laid the groundwork for industrial with his manifesto The Art of Noises (1913) which aimed to reflect "the sounds of a modern industrial society". Around the same time, the utilisation of found sound as a musical resource was starting to be explored. An early example is Parade, a performance produced at the Chatelet Theatre, Paris, on May 18, 1917, that was conceived by Jean Cocteau, with design by Pablo Picasso, choreography by Leonid Massine, and music by Eric Satie. The extra-musical materials used in the production were referred to as trompe l'oreille sounds by Cocteau and included a dynamo, Morse code machine, sirens, steam engine, airplane motor, and typewriters. Arseny Avraamov's composition Symphony of Factory Sirens involved navy ship sirens and whistles, bus and car horns, factory sirens, cannons, foghorns, artillery guns, machine guns, hydro-airplanes, a specially designed steam-whistle machine creating noisy renderings of Internationale and Marseillaise for a piece conducted by a team using flags and pistols when performed in the city of Baku in 1922. In 1923, Arthur Honegger created Pacific 231, a modernist musical composition that imitates the sound of a steam locomotive. Another example is Ottorino Respighi's 1924 orchestral piece Pines of Rome, which included the phonographic playback of a nightingale recording. Also in 1924, George Antheil created a work titled Ballet Mécanique with instrumentation that included 16 pianos, 3 airplane propellers, and 7 electric bells. ¹

Early industrial musicians drew influence from modernist art and literature. SPK appreciated Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Walter Benjamin, Marshall McLuhan, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Gilles Deleuze, as well as being inspired by the manifesto of the eponymous Socialist Patients' Collective. Cabaret Voltaire took conceptual cues from William S. Burroughs, J. G. Ballard, and Tristan Tzara. Whitehouse and Nurse with Wound dedicated some of their work to the Marquis de Sade; the latter also took impetus from the Comte de Lautréamont. Artists drew influences from avant-garde and abstract art movements such as Dada, Fluxus, and Viennese Actionism. Subsequently, musicians cited as inspirations include the Velvet Underground, Joy Division, and Martin Denny. Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle had a cassette recording library by the Master Musicians of Joujouka, Kraftwerk, Charles Manson, and William S. Burroughs. P-Orridge also credited 1960s rock such as the Doors, Pearls Before Swine, the Fugs, Captain Beefheart, and Frank Zappa in a 1979 interview. Germany's krautrock scene which included groups like Faust and Neu! was also noted as an influence on industrial artists, alongside John Cage who was an initial inspiration for Throbbing Gristle. Chris Carter also enjoyed and found inspiration in Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream. Boyd Rice was influenced by the music of '60s girl groups and tiki culture. ¹

Following the disbanding of Throbbing Gristle in the 1980s, industrial music splintered into a range of offshoots collectively labelled "post-industrial music". ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Industrial music”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

industrial music is music genre, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 21 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²