Total Industrial Warfare mix and commentary

I recently published a new mix on my mixcloud account, certainly the heaviest and most intense yet. “Reign of Steel: Total IndustrialWarfare” is a nightmarish apocalyptic soundtrack to a world-ending war between humans and machines. It’s a mix I’ve been planning for a long time and I’m really happy with the result, especially the last few tracks. Here is a tracklist with some commentary.

1. Kristoffer Nystroms Orkester: biTer. This amazing track is from a staggeringly good EP released a few years ago on Malignant Records, brakeHEAD. The opening blasts of noise set the aggressive tone, then the thundering percussions, drones and samples add amazing layers and structure. I knew I wanted this for the opening track of the mix as soon as I heard it. Fun fact: this project is a side project of Megaptera, much like Negru Voda, who we’ll be hearing more from later in the mix.

2. Ex.Order: Generated Invasion. This band is the twisted, angry cousin of German ambient legends Inade. And what a track! It’s from a great release “War Within Breath” that Malignant did of various rare and old Ex.Order tracks, and fits the theme perfectly. War Within Breath rated highly on my list of best power electronics albums of all time.

3. Anenzephalia: Final Pulse. Everyone knows that this Anenzepahlia albums kicks arse (don’t bother with Nohaem); but the main reason I actually chose the track was the title and the samples. “No more running. We stop them here!”. The fact that this has some of the most aggro vocals in the history of anything doesn’t hurt either.

4. IRM: The Disease. A great track from an old and essential Cold Meat Industry classic, Oedipus Dethroned. Don’t forget to check out their other work though, it’s all awesome. The vocals and sounds make me think of clouds of toxic chemical weapons enveloping and killing hapless soldiers.

5. Navicon Torture Technologies: The Last Day. Picking one NTT track for this mix was hard enough, picking one from his album Scenes from theNext Millennium was just as hard, because you could pretty much just use this whole damn album. The first half of this track has vocals that are just too damn crazy to believe, and the second half has a wall of noise that is just too damn crazy to believe. NTT is still the king of power electronics.

6. Muskel: For Syftet Amnads. Muskel is one of the 17,000 side projects of MZ412 / Nordvargr etc, this one being a harsh noise act that only ever put out one release on Malignant Records, Seven Days of Pain. And holy crap it is noisy and intense! Definitely one of the heaviest releases I own, without resorting to boring Japanese noise tropes. An overlooked release worth checking out.

7. Steel Hook Prosthesis: Atrocitizer. This one is a new up and coming act on Malignant Records, that I’m impressed with and is going places, and managing to do interesting things in the noise / power electronics / death industrial areas. Their new album is high on my current shopping list.
8. Negru Voda: Turku. I love love LOVE this track, so damn much. One of my favourite tracks at the moment, and my favourite on this mix. I don’t quite know how to describe this sound or what I love about it, but everything about it rules. It’s the final track off the 3 CD collection on Malignant Records, Val de Luxe.

9. Xenonics K-30: G.M.A.S. Well, this is the track that originally inspired this mix, a few years ago. It pretty much sums up the whole idea perfectly, from beginning to end, and is a fitting finale to the incredibly awesome Xenonics K-30 album, “Automated”, that was a major influence for this mix and the whole Reign of Steel concept. “Threat level to facility integrity is past level seven, enacting disaster protocol”…

10. Imminent Starvation: Please. This is is one of those interesting tracks that by itself is just a cute quirky way to end one of the mostmonstrously powerful noise albums ever recorded, but in this context, takes on a whole new level. The idea I’m following here is that after the catastrophic battle in the last track, where the main human force gets wiped out, the survivors who escape into the wasteland receive this baffling message over the radio. But is this really someone they can trust?

Cyberpunk mix and commentary

So I recently published a cyberpunk-inspired mix on Mixcloud, called Neon Sleep Empires, and it's being well received - currently 1st on the Industrial charts and 4th on the IDM charts! Pretty happy with that. Anyway, as per usual, here is my commentary on the tracks and why I chose them.

1.Untitled by Gridlock. This track is from Trace, one of my favourite albums by my favourite band. It’s short and simple but sets the futuristic tone for the rest of the mix.

2.Vadus Arcology by Index. The name alone would have put this track in as a contender, and it has a great 90s futuristic feel to it. This is the first track of Index’s underrated 2000 album Ultra Hard Shadow.

3.Stockmarket by Cyclotimia. If you were pressed for time, you could do a cyberpunk mix by just playing this album: Wasteland by Cyclotimia. A really original and amazing work that typifies the motifs. Picking one track from this album was hard, but I really liked the subliminal voices combined with the subtle drones.

4.Parisville by Access to Arasaka. Another album that could stand as a cyberpunk mix on its own, or any of the other albums by this amazing new artist. The name is actually a homeage to a corporation from a cyberpunk pen and paper roleplaying game;  ‘nuff said!

5.Ghost of a working man by Architect. I wanted to start shifting the mix into darker and more sinister territory, and this track seemed to be a good way to do it. This is the first track off Lower Lip Interface, one of many strong albums by this Haujobb side project.

6.Thirteen by Dirk Geiger. I’m a very recent convert to Dirk Geiger, and I really like what I’ve found so far. Most of this album is much lighter IDM territory, but this is a great sinister track that works well in the mix at this stage. The guitars at the end take this up a level even further.

7.Cross fade by Haujobb. Putting together a cyberpunk industrial mix without Haujobb should be a criminal act. This fine work is the opening track off the often-overlooked Matrix release, consisting of remixes of the classic Solutions for a Small Planet plus other bits and pieces. The quality speaks for itself, really.

8.Pull the plug by Totakeke. Totakeke is one of the genuinely best electronic artists active in the world at the moment. This amazing track is from an early album, On the wrong side of the tracks. It fits the theme so well, and contains some really good samples from a really crap movie (The Thirteenth Floor).

9.Anticlinal by Ab Ovo. I had a funny feeling that this album by Ab Ovo would have something for this mix. I skipped past the first few tracks, wondering what I had been thinking, then found this one. Superb! It starts very subtle but builds up a really nice tension as the track progresses.

10.Underlying encryption by Scalar. Well this is my music project so it’s hard for me to talk about. I definitely had cyberpunk motifs in mind when I put it together.

11.Catch the Midnight Girl by Stendeck. This band is up there with Totakeke and This Morn Omina as the top electronic bands in the world at the moment. I love everything he has done. This is one of the best tracks off the truly excellent Scintilla album. It’s a lot faster than anything else on the mix but that was my idea, building up to a tense climax.

12.Observatory by Tinidae. Amazing stuff. This newcomer band on Tympanik Audio is the only post-Gridlock band to come close to the quality of the original masters. Picking one track off their debut Lights album was hard; there are a few others that could have worked very well in this mix (or might work well in the next cyberpunk mix I do… muahaha!).

13.Echo by Haujobb. More tracks from this band? Two tracks from Haujobb (and one from Architect, which is a Haujobb spinoff band) might seem excessive to some, but I feel that if Cyberpunk Industrial had an entry in the dictionary, it would just be a picture of Daniel Myer’s face. Many bands imitate Haujobb, few come remotely close to being this good.

Best industrial albums of 2013

Despite all the predictable complaining and doom prophets, there was a huge amount of amazing industrial music released in 2013. Picking 10 standouts was really hard, but here it is. This was a year dominated by Tympanik Audio and Malignant Records, with Hymen a close competitor. A bit sad to say that no Ant-Zen albums made the list (Diaphane's "Lifeforms" came very close), but there you go. Cold Meat Industry seem to have folded up indefinitely (permanently?), but that is a story for another day.

10. (ghost): Departure (n5MD). Departure is the debut album of a promising solo artist (ghost), from the US, on the respected n5MD label (started by the guys from Gridlock; nuff said!). It's a really nice, quirky and subtle electronica / IDM album, that works well as background music while working / reading, or can be listened to carefully, with nice production and melodies to be found. Firmly rooted in the Hymen / style of modern IDM, (ghost) still has his own sound and I think is definitely be one to watch. Track 2 is particularly good. And n5MD have all their stuff on bandcamp, so just go have a listen already!
9. ESA: Themes of Carnal Empowerment pt 2: Deceit (Tympanik Audio). One-man UK act ESA is a quiet and consistent achiever in the industrial power noise world; never signed to one of the bigger German labels (Ant-Zen and Hands), but he's been plugging away putting out some consistently good albums for some years now. The latest is no exception; I'd daresay it's as good as it's predecessor (Themes of Carnal Empowerement part 1: Lust), and packs some outrageously powerful tracks, including the best, No-one will ever Touch You (which ended up getting its own EP). Who says power noise is dead!
8. Zinovia: The Gift of Affliction (Tympanik Audio). I'm really in love with this stunning debut on Tympanik Audio. This solo female act comes out of Greece, and as I understand she's been working away on music for quite some time, but never got around to releasing any of it. Well the album is here and it's a doozy. Drifting, dreamy and moody electronica for sad Sundays and rainy afternoons, Zinovia's music merges the subtlety of analog sounds with the sophistication of beautifully produced electronica.
7. Trepaneringsritualen: The Totality of Death (Malignant Records). I raved about this album elsewhere; in fact I put it on my top 10 death industrial albums of all time. And for good reason - it's killer. Crushing, suffocating death industrial, in the finest Swedish traditions. Who needs Cold Meat Industry when we have these madmen running loose, inflicting their music on the world? Malignant Records show they are not a force to be messed with.
6. Architect: Mine (Hymen Records). For quite some time, Architect has been the IDM / electronica "side" project of EBM legend Daniel Myer aka Haujobb. But let's be honest, in the last 10 years, Architect has put out more and better music than Haujobb, and Mine is most certainly continuing in that direction. In fact, it's a serious candidate for best Architect album (a title previously held by Lower Lip Interface, in my opinion). It's not just the quality of the tracks here, it's the diversity. Myer shows he can move effortlessly from downtempo to glitch to trip hop to techno, outsmarting and outproducing the majority of people in any of those genres. Scary stuff.
5. R.roo: Innerheaven (Tympanik Audio). I liked R.Roo's first album on Tympanik Audio, mgnovenie, which came out early in 2013; it used a lot of pianos and strings to really good effect, and created some powerful emotions. Overall though I felt it was a bit too tense and restrained. This talented young Ukranian has followed it up quickly with Innerheaven; this moves beyond its predecessor and delivers an even more impressive album, with better consistency of production and quality of sound. There is some truly outstanding music here and it deserves to be heard. Tympanik have a bandcamp site too so you have no excuses to not go listen to this right now. (bonus extra: cover artwork by s.alt of Ant-Zen!!)
4. Navicon Torture Technologies: Your Suffering will be Legendary (Malignant Records). Huh? Wasn't 2009's the Gospels of the Gash the final album by NTT? Yes...... kind of. This isn't really a "studio album", but is a release of bonus tracks from a super limited edition of Gospels of the Gash, each of them done as a collaboration with another artist. I've raved and raved about how amazing NTT is before and I needn't do it again here. Suffice to say that on this album, as on others, he produces some of the most intense and mind-bending music you'll ever hear. This isn't quite as good as his other recent albums, but it's still NTT and it's still essential.
3. Tineidae: Lights (Tympanik Audio). There seems to be some secret facility in Ukraine that Tympanik have set up that spawns out amazing electronic musicians at a rapid rate. First R.roo, now another Ukrainian newcomer, Tineidae. Nothing was known about this act until this album dropped, and it dropped like a bomb. This is IDM firmly in the futuristic Hymen / n5MD camp, but I'd say it's some of the best music released in that style since Gridlock, and that is not a statement I make lightly. The production and composition here are jawdropping. The demand for the digital release of Lights caused Tympanik to do a physical release, which is nice. Just turn off whatever crap you're listening to now and get this. The only disappointment is the feeble final track (a topic I'm going to rant about on this blog at some point in the near future).
2. Phelios: Gates of Atlantis (Malignant Records). Massive. I can think of no better word to describe this album. The opening track, an amazing meld of cold dark ambient and intense tribal drumming immediately conjures images of colossal forgotten temples buried under thousands of miles of cold ancient water. And that is just the beginning of the journey, through deep space, abandoned ruins and cursed tombs. Phelios' previous album, Astral Unity, was extremely impressive and one I didn't think could be easily topped, but Phelios has done it, and is well on his way to cementing his claim of being the top dark ambient act active in the world at the moment.
1. Comaduster: Hollow Worlds (Tympanik Audio). I agonised a bit over the rest of this list, but there was never any doubt as to which album would be number 1. This crazy Canadian has released not only the best of 2013, but one of the best albums I've heard in years (if it wasn't for This Morn Omina's last album in 2012, it would probably be better than anything in that year also, and almost anything in 2011). The fact that this albums has a heavy dubstep sound to it, and I still love it, is a testament to how good it is (because generally I fucking HATE dubstep). Part EBM, part dubstep, part noise, part weird electronica, all awesome, Hollow Worlds is really, really hard to describe, but it's very easy to listen to and enjoy. So I suggest you do so. (Again, bandcamp, people!)

Great Bandcamp labels you should check out

Ant-Zen and Hymen
This one is a no-brainer; Ant-Zen is one of the best if not the best record labels in the world for power noise, and its sister label Hymen is arguable the best IDM / electronica label in the world (yes I know about Warp Records, I don't think they're anywhere near as good as Hymen, I don't care how sacriligeous that is). Both labels have pretty much their entire discography of the last 10 years on Bandcamp, where you can stream and listen to however much you want for as long as you want with no ads, or buy albums for a very cheap price (usually about $10 per album), with a big chunk going to the artist. How good is that! Want to find out which Synapscape album is the best? Keen to finally discover the tribal sounds of This Morn Omina or Tzolk'in? Knock yourself out!

Love Hz
This is a recent discovery of mine. It's a bandcamp-only label, and it is really interesting and unique music and I am totally in love with it. Love Hz (get it? cute title huh) produces basically hardcore techno, with a cinematic / emotional / atmospheric feel to it. Some strings, pianos, pads, etc, running alongside dark crunching German / Dutch style hardcore techno make for a wonderful combination. Even the aggressive German hardcore legend Stormtrooper released an EP on Love Hz, and it is fantastic. Definitely one to watch!

Cryo Chamber
This label was started by Simon Heath aka the busy dark ambient act Atrium Carceri, who put out a whole bunch of good albums on Swedish juggernaut Cold Meat Industry before they went into indefinite hibernation. I thought they were a bandcamp only label (especially as they advertise themselves as a 24 bit label, and audio CDs only store music at 16 bit resolution), but it seems they put out CDs as well. Anyway, Mr Atrium Carceri has put out a couple of recent albums on this label, a cool science-fiction themed ambient side project of his called Sabled Sun has put out a few albums, plus a whole bunch of new up and coming dark ambient artists have albums released here also. I guess they all have to find a new home now that Cold Meat is gone... and despite the name, Cryo Chamber seems to be a very warm and welcoming home. Go get yer dark ambient on right now dammit!

Industrial Propaganda Records
Well this label does what it says on the tin: it releases big, bad, ballsy hardcore industrial techno. Mainly via EPs, plus some compilations, and some old fashioned mixes. I don't recognise most of the bands on this label but who cares, they all sound awesome!

Great Mixcloud channels you should follow

I've raved enough about how much I love Mixcloud. If you love Mixcloud too, make sure to check out and/or follow these cloudcasts:

Headphone Commute
This one is a no-brainer; Headphone Commute is a pretty serious weekly podcast for ambient, experimental, IDM, cinematic, etc music. They have a sizeable presence outside Mixcloud, and is one of the top 20 Mixcloud channels, with over 25,000 (!!) followers. The casts are usually guest DJs and I find they cover the experimental, ambient and cinematic end of things very well, the IDM and electronica end of things not quite so well. Still definitely worth following though, and also worth having a look through their back catalogue of mixes. The guest mix by Tympanik Audio / Ad Noiseam ambient artist Subheim is superb!

Low Light Mixes
This cast specialises in the very minimal ambient end of things, and does a really good job. Casts are usually "themed", e.g. based around the sun, air, ice, and so on, which is a bit wanky, but nice.

Led Manville
This Spanish fellow is a very solid DJ, who can beat and keymatch with ease. His regular mixes are of an exceptional level of quality, and he's also produced a whole bunch of fun industrial / synthpop mashups (though those seem to live mainly on youtube).

Neuromancer
This crazy Columbian is my favourite "hard" DJ on mixcloud. He plays a mix of club industrial and hardcore techno, and completely rocks! I wish he put out mixes more often (though I can't talk, I only put one up every few months).

End: The DJ
The most famous industrial DJ in the world. If you want to hear where industrial club music (e.g. EBM, aggrotech) is up to, listen to End: The DJ. End and Led Manville are currently the best in the world at this stuff.

Thingstocome aka The Horrorist
I don't actually love The Horrorist's music (I like a few tracks here and there but a lot of doesn't do much for me). However, he is one hell of a DJ. He plays regularly in New York and uploads his mixes pretty often, which are a weird but awesome combination of weird old acid, techno, electro and old-school EBM.

Leon Tranter aka DJ Dasein
Bit of blatant self-promotion... that's me! Go follow if you haven't already.

We live in a good era: Mixcloud and Bandcamp

I'm going to go against the overall trend of cynicism and gloom that pervades the industrial (and pretty much every other music) community, and say that right now we are living in an extremely good era. Well, definitely a great era for fans / listeners, maybe not such a great one for artists, labels and producers: that's a complex discussion for another day.

There are two well-developed and extremely useful tools around now that make it easy to research, discover and listen to music (new and old, but especially new).

The first of these is Mixcloud. I goddam love Mixcloud so much. I have my own Mixcloud account, and every few months I drag my lazy bum to the decks and record and upload a mix. But more importantly, I follow about 70 DJs / cloudcasters on Mixcloud, and every day or two I listen to a mix they have uploaded. I have discovered an amazing amount of exciting music by doing this, and cannot recommend it enough. If you don't know who to follow or where to start, just type in a genre name and see what comes up, or start clicking on mixes in the main news feed until you find something you like. The refreshing thing about Mixcloud is there is a huge amount of really good mixes and cloudcasters in the non-mainstream end of music, especially in the ambient and experimental area.

The next one is Bandcamp. Digital music distribution has been around for quite a long time, but Bandcamp is a refreshing alternative to the lazy bloated juggernauts that come to mind (Apple, Amazon, Google). There are many things to like about this channel. Firstly, Bandcamp lets you download your music DRM free, in whatever format you like, including FLAC, and we like FLAC because it's lossless, right? Right. Secondly, Bandcamp takes a very small cut: 15% of digital sales, and 10% of merchandise sales. My understanding of the big bastards is that you are lucky to see 50% of your sale price as royalties. Thirdly, and for me most importantly, I really like how Bandcamp strongly supports the concept of labels. If I want to hear some of the music that Ant-Zen put out last year, (because I love Ant-Zen and so should you), I don't have to dig around trying to find 20 websites or bandcamp sites for all these different bands, I can just go to the Ant-Zen Bandcamp site and all of their releases are right there. And not just the new ones; I can find out what that that weird Philip Munch solo album from a few years ago sounded like, or whether Nin Kuji is worth the fuss that's been made over him, or relive the fun of Morgenstern's "Cold" (ah good times). And then of course, if you like them, you can buy, for pretty damn cheap too: usually $10 or $11 per album, much less than the $19 or so that ripoff  iTunes charges Australians, which is a fourth thing to like about Bandcamp.

So if you haven't already, start using these great tools! There is plenty of amazing music out there, despite the predictable cynicism of the boring naysayers and tiresome gloom merchants. In the next week or so I'm going to run through some of the best finds on those two great sites.

Top 10 Power Electronics albums

Power Electronics is a genre I don't listen to much anymore. I discovered it via Navicon Torture Technologies' 2001 album Scenes from the Next Millenium (an excellent "gateway drug" for the genre), fell in love with it, then a few years later lost interest in it. I rarely listen to it nowadays, but there are a few artists and albums that still rock my world. It is for me a genre completely dominated by one artist, and one record label, to an extent rarely seen. Also, yes I am pefectly aware that there is no Whitehouse, Genocide Organ or Con-Dom in this list and no it is not a mistake. I think Whitehouse put on a good live show and I understand their influence and importance but their music doesn't do much for me. Genocide Organ and Con-Dom I do not rate at all. Also: I can't quite explain why, but I don't feel Haus Arafna's "Children of God" counts as power electronics. If it did, it would be on this list, probably around 6 or 7.

10. Brigther Death Now: May All Be Dead (Cold Meat Industry, vinyl release 1998, CD release 2000). I’m much more of a fan of the early Brighter Death Now albums, which were thoroughly death industrial, rather than the harsh noise / power electronics direction that the later albums took. However the first couple of power electronics albums Roger Karmanik put out (May All Be Dead and Innerwar) were pretty good, before the decline set in (Obsessis and 90% of everything after that). It was a close call between those two albums, but May All Be Dead just beat Innerwar with the trump card of hearing crazy Roger scream “I wish I was a little girl!”. Don't tell me that's not super creepy.
9. Control: Control (Malignant / Black Plagve 1999). Thomas Garrison aka Control has been a mainstay of the US power electronics scene for quite some time, and is a solid performer. He’s released albums all over the place, on his own and other labels (he’s even put out a couple of interesting ones on Ant-Zen recently), and most of them don’t disappoint. I really like the first self-titled one released many years ago on the mighty Malignant Records, though. It had a distinctive and interesting tone that got a little lost on later works. Maybe it was Phil Easter’s mastering talents that brought it out? It’s possible. (Interesting trivia: Thomas Garrison has recently become quite respected as a mastering engineer himself, now doing work for Malignant amongst other labels).
8. Propergol: Renegade (Tesco Organisation, 2001). I’ll freely admit that French act Propergol’s albums don’t follow most of the trademarks of power electronics. However, they play at power electronics festivals, they appear on power electronics compilations, and I feel they just belong here. And they are really great. Other releases United States and Program Vengeance are fantastic albums, but the cult classic Renegade stands out from the pack. This is menacing, vicious music, that still has a subtlety that many of the other acts in this style do not understand and cannot replicate.
7. IRM: Oedipus Dethroned (Cold Meat Industry, 2000). This is old-school Swedish power electronics, executed very well. What I like about IRM is that, like Anenzephalia, he doesn’t overdo the distortion on the vocals. OK so maybe it makes it less “PURE” and “TROO” for the posers in their laughable army gear and balaclavas, but I’m happy alienating them anyway. IRM displays more talent in one track than most “cult” power electronics band have in their entire discographies. Apparently his recent works (which I still have yet to get my hands on) are awesome as well. Now that Navicon Torture Technologies has called it quits, IRM is the only really innovative and interesting artist still operating in the genre.
6. Navicon Torture Technologies: Power Romance (Cranial Fracture Recordings, 2002). This strange album has been described as existing in a genre entirely of its own, power romance. I’ll leave the genre debates for people who actually care about what we call things. This is, as Leech intended it, a very emotionally intense album, that switches between creepy, to cathartic, to abrasive, to romantic, to aggressive, quite effortlessly. A bewildering, original and essential album. (I should disclose that I’m a bit biased, since I was honoured to have the opportunity to release this album on my own record label, Cranial Fracture Recordings, many years ago. But it is really amazing).
5. Anenzephalia: Anenzephalia (Cold Meat Industry / Death Factory, 2001). There is a rumor that Anenzephalia are a side project of the overrated Genocide Organ. Completely untrue! Anenzephalia are their own band and stand on their own two feet (I think one of the guys from Genocide Organ helps with live shows or something). Anyway, skip the unimpressive Nohaem ambient album, go past the obligatory "Live in Russia" release every second band seems to put out, and head straight to this self-titled bad boy. This has some of the best vocals and lyrics in the genre, and more bad-arse samples than you can handle. The opening track is subtle but still powerful and very atmospheric (evidence below) Classic!

4. Ex.Order: War Within Breath (Malignant Records, 2001). This project is where the guys from German dark ambient act Inade go to release all their tension. This fine album from Malignant Records pulverises listeners like a Terminator from the future; pulses of deep-fried static noise and barrages of sonic tactical missiles reduce all resistance to smouldering rubble. Completely industrial and completely awesome.
3. Navicon Torture Technologies: Scenes from the Next Millenium (Malignant Records, 2001). This is where it all started for me; the first power electronics album and the first Navicon album I heard. It’s become a cliché, but listening to this utterly brutal and corrosive album really was a life-changing experience. These three top NTT albums stand so far above the rest it is difficult to comprehend the distance. There are 14 tracks here and they are all gold. Why people rate Genocide Organ higher than this material I cannot fathom. This, War Within Breath or Oedipus Dethroned are excellent introductions to the genre.
2. Navicon Torture Technologies: Gospels of the Gash (Malignant Records, 2009). Deciding which of the top two albums gets the number 1 spot was a hard decision. Gospels of the Gash is probably the most diverse NTT album, and one of the most interesting and enjoyable (in the strange way that listening to any NTT is ever enjoyable). This is one of those albums so good that I listen to it very rarely, to make sure I never get sick of it. The fact that it is the final chapter in the amazing career of this artist lends it an additional poignancy.
1. Navicon Torture Technologies: Church of Dead Girls (Malignant Records, 2002). This makes Brighter Death Now's "Innerwar" sound like a Wiggles best-of. If you want to hear the most horrible, intense, hate-filled music anybody has ever created, listen to this album. If you don’t, then don’t go anywhere near this, whatever you do. It will leave permanent scars.

Keef Baker, I love your music but you're wrong.

I love Keef Baker. Well, I love Keef Baker's music. If you don't know him, he's a really good IDM / electronica artist who has had a bunch of great albums released on Hymen, n5MD and Ad Noiseam. Anyway, he also has a music blog, and recently published a post entitled "A Metaphor for the Decline of Industrial Music". Go have a read. I think it's a thoughtful and well-written article, though I think it's completely wrong. To be more specific, I think it contains some interesting and truthful ideas, but I do not think he puts forward any reasonable case for the "decline of industrial music" (a strange concept something I've been hearing loads and loads about ever since I started listening to industrial music, which was around 1994... wow, it seems like it's dying a particularly slow death!).

The metaphor he uses is that of abstract versus cat pictures. Someone becomes interested in abstract art, and then becomes disillusioned because lots of people start putting out cat pictures and calling them abstract art. Hence, the decline and fall of abstract art. The metaphor is that there is so much junk non-industrial music around, calling itself industrial music, that the overall genre collapses upon itself in a pile of crap.

There are a number of problems with this line of reasoning, but the main problem is that it confuses what something is, with what it is called. In Keef Baker’s metaphor, why did the abstract art fan become saddened by the cat pictures, irregardless of what people were calling them? Here’s a metaphor that describes how I see the situation.

I’m an abstract art fan (i.e. where abstract art represents industrial music). I’m happy because every weekend I go to a local art gallery and check out the new great abstract art paintings. Every weekend there are new ones and they’re generally really good. After a few weeks I notice that a gallery called “Abstract Art World!” opens up across the road, and it’s full of cat paintings. I shrug my shoulders and go into the gallery that has actual abstract art, which I love, and it’s still there and still great. Next week there are another half dozen more galleries opening up, all claiming to be full of abstract art, and all full of cat paintings. I again ignore them and go check out the gallery I love which still has amazing new abstract art.

You could continue this metaphor to any extreme you like, where every gallery, or even building in the world is full of cat paintings claiming to be abstract art. And as long as my favourite gallery is there, week after week, full of great new abstract artworks, then I should be happy, and my life is not affected one tiny bit. So it would make no sense to talk about the decline of abstract art, just as it makes no sense to me to talk about the decline of industrial music.

Now the obvious retort would be “Of course it’s declining! At the beginning, there was great abstract art (industrial music), but now it’s 1% abstract art and 99% cat paintings!” (fake industrial music). No, it’s not. Assuming that either a) anyone sensible and informed can understand what actual abstract art is, or b) abstract art is simply whatever I declare it to be (I’m happy with either of those options), then the amount of abstract art (industrial music) has not changed one bit. If (a) is true, then all the cat painting people are wrong and lying when they say they are making abstract art. And if they’re full of shit, why would I care what they say? If (b) is true, then music genres are entirely subjective. In which case, I can invent away any problems I like by just redrawing what I constitute abstract art to be: starting by excluding cat paintings would be a sensible first step.

The only way you’re in trouble is if you believe (c), which is that the overall sum of human opinions form the truth of what constitutes a genre name. So the vast masses of cat painting fans have in fact “reclaimed” the term “abstract art”, and the art as you understand it doesn’t meaningfully exist anymore. But if you’ve fallen for this “socially constructed” guff, then you can just socially disassemble the problem yourself too: invent a new genre name, call it “blabstract art”, and declare that you love “blabstract art”, which is what used to be abstract art. In which case, abstract art is dead, but has been reborn as a healthy, vibrant “blabstract art” movement.

“But that’s just shuffling words around!” would be the reply. “It doesn’t help save abstract art / industrial music!”. Indeed, which shows the foolishness of the argument in the first place: a problem of words, not of music. Industrial music is perfectly well and healthy. If you go to discogs.com, and inspect the release roster of the quality industrial music labels out there (Malignant, Hymen, Ant-Zen, Hands, Ad Noiseam, n5MD, Tympanik), you’ll find an extraordinary amount of amazingly good and completely “industrial” (whatever that means) music was released in 2013; I would say just as much, as in any other recent year. I’ll be posting my best of 2013 soon, and it’s really hard picking just 10 amazing albums from last year. Sure there has also been a lot of crap. But we remember Sturgeon’s Law, don’t we? It applies to everything, including industrial music. You can accept the legions of Suicide Commando clones (even Johan has now become a sad clone of himself) as the 90% of crap in industrial music, or shuffle them into a different genre, it doesn’t matter. There is still a core of great industrial music being produced and released, and it’s even easier to find and access it than ever before. There might be a decline in the accuracy of terminology around industrial music (I actually wouldn’t say there is anyway, since the term has always been nebulous and ill-defined), but there certainly isn’t any decline in the quality of the music. You would think of all people, someone putting out great industrial music would realise this.

Top industrial bands to watch in 2014

Dead When I Found Her
Portland one-man act Dead When I Found Her had been attracting attention for a while, and I recently got around to picking up their second album (released 2012), Rag Doll Blues. It was an enormously fresh and invigorating blast of wind into the musty air of EBM, and I'd say the best EBM album since Mind.In.A.Box's Crossroads in 2007 (or maybe even since their 2005 masterpiece, Dreamweb). Suffice to say I was very pleased that the hype was not misplaced. If you haven't already discovered Dead When I Found Her, go and check them out. I have a strong feeling that there are seriously great things to come from Mr. Michael Holloway. (Let's ignore for the moment the fact that he recently did a cassette only release of covers, sigh).

Stendeck
I don't have any particular evidence that Stendeck will be putting out any releases in 2014, but I really, really hope he does. Stendeck for me is now up there with Totakeke as one of the most exciting IDM / electronic artists around. I completely loved his last two albums (Scintilla and Sonnambula, both released on Tympanik Audio), I love his sound, and I can't rave enough about how good he is. Get on board goddammit if you haven't already!

Youth Code

Youth Code are a seriously hyped-up band at the moment. They’re a new two-piece from the US doing really raw minimal 80s style EBM and a lot of people like them. To further cement their “cult” and/or “underground” crediblities, they have released their debut album only on vinyl (le sigh). I’m not exactly a vinyl nut: I don’t even own a record player. But from what I’ve heard on bandcamp, they are actually pretty good and worthy of (at least some of) the hype. It remains to be seen if they will get swallowed up by hype and over-expectations, or if they will actually deliver... some people seem to treat them as the final divine salvation of EBM as a genre, but me? I’m actually more excited about the prospect of a new Seabound album coming out soon, as unfashionable as that might be in certain circles. Speaking of which...

Seabound
Seabound are great. I thought they were finished. But they have a new album coming out really soon. You should get it. That's all that needs to be said there really!

Nao
Nao are a French industrial band. They play crazy intense instrumental industrial music with drums and guitars, and they release albums on the Ant-Zen label. And they are really, really good. They have a new album, coming out on Ant-Zen, really, really soon. I am really, really excited about this. You really, really should go and check them out. They have their own unique sound and it is a Good Sound.
(update: since I started writing this post, it has actually been released, and from what I've heard on bandcamp, it is, as expected, really really good).

Minimal Industrial mix and commentary

I recently recorded and published a mix of Minimal Industrial on my Mixcloud account. This was a mix I did when I supported a Sydney show of one-time Neubauten member Gudrun Gut, on her Australian tour. Here is some commentary on the tracks I chose.

Kirlian Camera: The Unreachable One. This is a band which can be very hit and miss, but when they hit, you know about it. This is the first track off their 2000 album Still Air (which I paid a ridiculous amount of money for at Ripoff I mean Redeye Records). I’ve only heard a small part of their large discography but from what I know, it’s their best track or close to it.

Calva y Nada: Was Ist. I love this band with a burning passion, and put this track’s album (Monologue Eines Baumes) at #2 on my 10 most underrated industrial albums ever. Unique, creepy and completely awesome in every way.

Haus Arafna: Mein Leben. Nicolas Chevreux, manager of the prolific and respected label Ad Noiseam, once called Haus Arafna “the meanest band on the planet”. This track is fairly tame compared to the other brutal material on their first two albums, and actually more resembles their quirky and cool side project Novemeber Noevelet (coming up shortly). Apparently this duo (who run Haus Arafna’s cult record label Galakthorro) are still putting out strong material… I need to catch up! A great minimal track from a great respected band.

November Noevelet: The less prolific project from Mr and Mrs Arafna (that is actually what they refer to themselves as). I was quite excited to dust off my copy of From Heaven on Earth and play a track from it, as it doesn’t get heard anywhere very often. Mrs Arafna does most of the vocals on this project (while Mr Arafna does them on their main project).

F/A/V: Rentnerbunker. F/A/V (aka Feinde Auf Valium, aka Enemies on Valium) put out a few really good and largely overlooked albums around the turn of the century, on Mental Ulcer Forges (yes, the label run by Rudy Ratzinger aka Wumpscut…but we won’t hold that against F/A/V, right?). What I like about F/A/V is that he can do some really good fast tracks, and then pull the tempo way back and do a really good slow one, like this. Probably the best track of his self-titled album or any of his albums, really.

Anaesth: !NnoWwarMmix!. Anaesth are an obscure flash-in-the-pan act that should have got a mention on my “Whatever happened to...?” post. This French solo act did one album also on Mental Ulcer Forges, then promptly disappeared in a cloud of smoke. The album doesn’t hold up well from beginning to end (due to some very long weaker tracks), but this opening track is immensely powerful. Watch for the great transition around halfway through the track (about 24:50) where the tempo jumps up. I figured this transition would serve well as a launch point for the faster electro tracks in the second half of the mix.

Nullgrad: Buran. Nullgrad are a recent discovery (and the most recently released track in this mix, having only come out a few years ago), and have released some nice albums on German power noise label Hands Productions. It’s nicely reminiscent of 80s space exploration videos. The album (The Shepherds Satellite) also has a great longer remix of this track, and is worth checking out.

Nitzer Ebb: Join in the Chant. All that needs to be said here is that this is still one of the best EBM tracks ever recorded by one of the best EBM bands in history. That bassline... unbelievable. That Total Age (which made my top 10 EBM albums list) sounds just as powerful 25 years on as the day it was released.

The Horrorist: 13 Dobermans. I’ll be totally honest: I don’t really love the style and schtick of the Horrorist. I see what he’s doing, and that’s he’s pretty good at it, but a lot of his music doesn’t do much for me (it reminds me too much of crappy late 90s electroclash). But for some reason, I love this track. Something about the combination of the music and the lyrics really works. Putting this Horrorist track right after Nitzer Ebb makes it really clear how influential the latter were…

Front Line Assembly: Mutate. Have I mentioned how much I love early Front Line Assembly? In case I havent’t: I love early Front Line Assembly (I love a lot of their later stuff too, for what it’s worth). Grim, minimal, instrumental EBM by the masters. This is the first track off the Corroded Disorder release, which I thought was just an aggregate of the tracks off the very early Corrosion and Disorder albums, though according to Discogs this track wasn’t on either of those albums. Weird… but oh well, who cares, it rocks! I particularly love the snare drum sound in this track: it is pure 80s EBM.

Whatever happened to... ?

Here are some examples of industrial artists that have sadly vanished without much of a trace, when it seemed like they had so much more to offer the world.

RAAN

To this day RAAN has put out one and only one release, of any kind, in any format, and it is an absolute doozy. RAAN’s album "TheNacrasti” was released 13 years ago in 2001 and is still easily one of the top dark ambient albums ever made by anyone. It came in at #7 in my top 10, and on some other day I could rank it higher. I still listen to it regularly and it has lost exactly 0% of its potence. Why not more material, RAAN? As you can see by their discogs page, there is literally nothing else. The only glimpse we have that we may ever see anything more is a track on a Malignant Records free online compilation, Malignant Antibodies, released in 2012. Thirteen years is certainly an extremely long time between drinks, but dare I to dream? I think I should not, lest I get my hopes up and they get cruelly dashed!

Tarmvred

After some singles and EPs, Tarmvred stormed onto the power noise scene with his powerful album Subfusc (released on the respected AdNoiseam label, still going strong to this day) in 2001. This was not only a high quality album but an exciting one because Tarmvred managed to forge his own unique sound, particularly refreshing in an era of Hypnoskull clones plugging boring drum loops through a distortion pedal and expecting adulation. This was followed up by a split with Needle Sharing and Panacea (I hate both those bands so I won’t talk about that release), and a co-headlining tour with the now legendary Iszoloscope (resulting in the excellent Tarmvred and Iszoloscope Do America EP). Tarmvred seemed to be on an unstoppable climb to the top of the power noise hill. Then came a kind of cute chip-tune EP in 2003, which was ok but not too impressive, and an even less impressive EP in 2005. And that’s the last anybody has heard of Tarmvred. Maybe he realised that he’d lost his mojo and stopped putting out releases… that could be a good thing, instead of going into a terminal decline . But I still wish I got to hear a second Tarmvred album (that split totally doesn’t count, I don’t care what anyone says).

NCC

This whole category is exemplified by the baffling case of NCC, a name that will forever go down in the annals of industrial folklore. This was a band that nobody had heard of, consisting of two youngsters from New York (who were apparently 19 when they wrote and recorded their debut), who put out one of the most mind-bendingly brilliant albums you’ll ever hear: Seven Steps of Nervousness. While it doesn’t have the best production quality in the world, the songwriting on that album is operating on levels that a lot of bands cannot even perceive, let alone understand or approximate. And Seven Steps is the only thing they ever put out. There is literally no trace of them after that. The only thing I ever heard were some rumors that one of them had decided to dedicate his life to lying in front of Israeli bulldozers in the Occupied Territories. While I feel that insanely talented people don’t have a moral responsibility to do something productive with their abilities and share them with the world, that story makes me angry. I wish I had 1% of the talent those guys had, and they gave the world one album and then disappeared? Screw you, NCC. I hate you. To see what I mean, go listen to this and pick your jaw up off the floor: