The Survival of the Industrial Sonic in a Deindustrialized West

I've got a new column up at PopMatters on Industrial Music throughout the 90s- that is, not the music most of us in our teens encountered as "Industrial" (though that stuff gets a mention too), but the ways in which the sonic of (de)construction and manual labor survived as an aesthetic in a time when it was becoming a ghost in the Western world.


There's some discussion of this over at SR's blissblog in this post (and makes reference to my first of these columns, as last year's column on minimal synth), which is actually part of a discussion started here about how the eighties is now the endless well of referentiality that the 60s once were. Some useful links in there too, including an interview with Blackest Ever Black/FACT's Kiran Sande, a nice coinage piece by Kek-W on "Work" music, and a link to a Guardian piece on Perc as London riot soundtrack music (More on that in part 3 (hopefully of 3) in my industrial trilogy set for PM.

Catching with Retarde Mode

I've kind of lost track of this blog with busy season at work. Here's a bunch of reviews I wrote recently (and some not so recently)

Balam Acab- See Birds (always my favorite of the witch-house crew, this was reissued on CD this year and he's got a new album which seems quite nice too)

Tommy Four Seven-Primate (One of my favorite albums of the year, though it deserves the 6 rating it got. Too much dull stuff, but the good stuff is great and Emika here is much better than our self-titled debut)

Pure X- Pleasure (another album that's pretty nice, though resoundingly dull in parts. That seems to be the point in this one. Chillwave as Prozac. Served me well during my unemployment stint visiting the beaches of East Haven with Alice).

Various- Laid (More bizness from Dial. I might take this down a point or two would I rewrite it today, but I can't really get on board with the attacks on the Berghain sound. Sure, it's conservative, but it's still great music. Just as pub rock can occasionally be exactly what you know, Dial does the body good even if doesn't exactly propel us forward into the future

RIP Bert Jansch

Listomania

I reviewed Simon Reynolds's Retromania. Lots to say about this work. It's a pivotal read. Hopefully, I can post some "bonus beats" on this piece on this blog sometime soon. In the meantime, read the review...and the book. It's fascinating.

I Went For That

I wrote roughly 2500 words on Hall & Oates's "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)", a song that has no particular personal resonance with me, but which is plenty interesting. I don't think I can keep up at this rate though, I wouldn't finish the series by the time I die.

RIP Nick Ashford

Part of another songwriting duo, Ashford & Simpson, who wrote many classic soul records like this

RIP Jerry Leiber

Along with Mike Stoller, the songwriting force behind these classics:

RIP Conrad Schnitzler

Building a Society from Bodies in Transit to Death

There's a million things I'd love to write about David Cronenberg if I ever had the time. The title above alone is from notes taken while piecing together a bio for a PopMatters feature on the 100 Greatest Directors that can be read here. From his seldom-discussed early films like Shivers (mentioned in the above article, also an odd parallax to Ballard's High Rise released in the same year) and the underrated student film Stereo (a clinical study of polymorphously perverse psychics) to the finer points of masterpieces like Existenz and Videodrome, Cronenberg definitely ranks near the very top of that list for me. Just consider three films offered to Cronenberg and imagine how amazing they would have been had they ever been made; Return of the Jedi, Total Recall, Basic Instinct 2 (yes, Basic Instinct 2).

In lieu a lengthy dissertation, I'll leave you with two quotes:

“There are a lot of bad things that happen to people as they get older. When you’re young, I think you anticipate those things and (watching horror films) is almost a rehearsal for coping with those things later in life”

“The idea that you carry around the seeds of your own destruction with you always and that they can erupt at any time is a little scary because there is no escape from it”- Cronenberg, on the body.

Joy to the World! More activity over yonder

Speaking of early 1970s post-hippie rock, there's a new post at Documentary Mixtape on Three Dog Night's smash hit "Joy to the World"

RIP Dan Peek

Can't say I'm an enormous America fan, as I am under 50, but I do quite enjoy the following two song, as well as "Children" (which I can't find anywhere). Also, to name your band America is pretty bold. To put Native Americans on the cover of your debut album is even bolder. As far as Christian rock is concerned, "Lonely People" ain't half bad either.

Post-Industrial Devolution

My latest column is a reading on early Industrial music and how its shifts reflected actual shifts in the industrial labor force in late capitalism.

It focuses on the genre's troubling fascination with fascism and rock's avoidance of it, also tracking the ways in which industrial and techno overlapped (with only the latter surviving in the popular imagination).

FYI, I did not choose that image at the top of the page of Kraftwerk, who don't really figure into this story at all.

There will be a part 2 coming soon with information on where industrial sound continued in IDM, Glitch, Downwards Records, Gabber, and other modern musics.

Glory Be to the Resurrection!

A look at Virgo Four's fantastic new reissue Resurrection, which rivals their self-titled debut.

Building Upwards

A review of Moritz Von Oswald Trio's Horizontal Structures

For the historical record, here's my review of their first album.