When I was Official Shitworker on Lemon, we christened the review round “dogshit patrol,” after the regular Arlo cleanup. I promise I’ll stop before I start thinking of it that way here.
Category: Industrial
As the head of Emily Kaye lay upon the coals, the dead eyes opened.
Elektroklänge: Mechanische Tänze Nos. 1-4 EP (2016).
The entire point of Elektroklänge is wanting to be Kraftwerk when they grow up. Not an uncommon aspiration, but not a bad one if you can pull it off, and they do okay.
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How to cook squid ink calamari risotto the Blixa Bargeld way.
From ’80s German TV show Alfredissimo. The other dude is Alfred Biolek. You can tell how old it is by them quoting prices in
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If you’re gonna do martial industrial music, at least make it really gay. Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft.
DAF were a Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave) band, covering the time from when NDW meant hideous post-punk noise to when it meant cheesy pop. Funnily enough covering a similar arc themselves.
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Industrial estate.
I am doing the musical thing at last, despite literally being unable to sing or play (‘cos that observably never stopped anyone else). Two
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Metroland: Triadic Ballet (2015).
Metroland is a Belgian electronic duo. Their publicity says “Kraftwerk” a whole lot, though my first thought was “the Kraftwerky end of Severed Heads”.
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A new year of links!
There’s a new Rowland S. Howard career collection, Six Strings That Drew Blood. Here’s an excellent review and history from the Quietus. I didn’t
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Skinny Puppy: Weapon (2013).
As perhaps the most important industrial band of the 1980s, Skinny Puppy developed a loyal following with their harsh instrumentation, samples, and politically blunt
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Archive: Axiom (2014)
Archive are a pretty superb combination of electronica, trip-hop, with progressive elements, something like a fusion of 65daysofstatic and Portishead. To say that they’ve
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Industrial Soundtrack for the Urban Decay: documentary film later this year.
Now this is an interesting thing. Amélie Ravalec and Travis Collins (the one from RTR) track down the conceptual origins of 1970s and 1980s
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Daniel Miller from Mute’s top five German prog rock albums.
Miller is not quite comfortable with the term “Krautrock”, and neither am I. But this is a delight for any decent record nerd, and
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Fans just want to wear your skin.
Oldies but goodies from Tom Ellard of Severed Heads, on the trouble with fan spaces (I was on the email list version for a
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Gary Numan and Severed Heads, Forum, Melbourne, May 14, 2011
The Forum is one of Melbourne’s many stylish venues. Built in the 1920s it has a baroque level of art nouveau features with a
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Even in the futurepop, nothing works.
In the early 1990s, I tried very hard to become a serious Anthony Burgess fan. A Clockwork Orange is absolutely first-class and probably my favourite novel of all time.
However, all his other novels suck. All of them.
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Headcleaner.
This is the complete 103MB pile of stuff the industrial hideous noise band Whitehouse (founded in 1980 and, amazingly, still extant) put up on
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Now that’s industrial.
Is Joy Division goth or post-punk? When played by hitting bits of metal, you may wonder. Best cover of “Transmission” ever, by steel band
Read MoreThe thing on the doorstep.
Old-school industrial MP3s — obscure tapes and tiny pressings you’ve only ever heard of. Before drum machines ruined everything. I particularly recommend Rising From
Read MoreTankt – Heresy, Melbourne, Sat 26 Oct 2002
Now, it’s no secret that I’m neither an expert on nor a great fan of electronic music. In fact, I have been known to bitch long and hard about the dominance of electro music in the goth scene and the lack of opportunity for those of us that aren’t especially fond of it to have a night out without a playlist disproportionately dominated by doof.
Basically, as Homer Simpson would put it, I don’t understand it because I don’t like it. So, anything I have to say about Tankt should be taken with that in mind.
Because, quite frankly, Tankt fucking rocked!
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Review: Severed Heads – Dendy Cinema, Sydney, Wed 19th June 2002
I’ve seen a lot of the stuff before over the years but It’s All Good, and Tom Ellard (and I presume Stephen Jones) did a sterling effort transcribing it all to VCD for the big cinema screen. I think the coarse resolution of the old stuff just makes it look more organic and gritty, and suits the nature of the thing. Others disagreed, but some geeks just won’t be told.
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New Darkwave/EBM/Synthpop quickies
It seems that maybe the muse has been getting around in EBM and Darkwave circles of late, or maybe just the right drugs are being taken … whatever it is, there is some fantastic new music on its way, and here are some short reviews of some of the current and future releases …
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Icon Of Coil ‘The Soul Is In The Software’
Scandinavian act Icon of Coil have been plying their brand of boppy EBM for a number of years now, wowing European audiences with their reputedly spirited live shows and dancefloors everywhere (including Australia) with club-friendly tracks like “Shallow Nation”, “Former Self”, “Floorkiller” and “Situations Like These.” Ironically, it’s often been their less dancefloor-oriented tracks that have stuck out more, and, thankfully, new album The Soul is in the Software (due out later this month) has quite a few of these, as well as toying with new vocal styles and rhythms more often employed by other stalwarts of the EBM scene, Covenant and VNV Nation.
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