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.