RIP Dannie Flesher

Dannie Flesher, seen here next to long-time partner Jim Nash (who also died in 1995), was a pivotal figure in my musical development. Wax Trax! was my original record label ideal, before Factory, Warp, Suction, Kranky, Ghost Box, Type, et al. As a BMG and Columbia House subscriber several times over, I ordered just about every CD labelled "industrial". Unfortunately for me, much of it was pure crap, including much of the stuff from Wax Trax at the time. The label may have been on the decline, but it was also becoming an essential repository as a distributor for Warp and other UK techno, the likes of which I'd discover a few years post Wax Trax phase. Yet, I've been returning to much industrial/EBM (both on and off Wax Trax!) during its golden period. During the mid-1980s when almost everything turned to shit, Wax Trax style industrial was some of the only interesting music being made, and also a much-neglected link to acid house. Before I heard the news today about Flesher, I was listening to LFO's Frequencies on the way to work and couldn't help but notice how the rubbery bass and artificial-trash-can percussion resembled nothing less than Wax Trax-style industrial dance (and they certainly exploited that link too at the time through projects like Al Jourgenson's Acid Horse, though no one seems to have noticed).