Tag Archives: industrial

by | September 11, 2024 · 6:00 am

Front 242’s electronic body music

The Belgian band Front 242 was formed in 1981 by programmers Patrick Codenys and Dirk Bergen. The lineup expanded a year later with the addition of Daniel Bressanutti (Daniel B. Prothese) and vocalist Jean-Luc De Meyer. Drawing initial inspiration from Kraftwerk and Throbbing Gristle, their music is known for its hard-hitting rhythms and pure electronic sounds, making it instantly danceable. This innovative approach led to the creation of a new musical genre: electronic body music (EBM). Front 242’s groundbreaking albums have significantly influenced a host of subsequent bands.

In 1982, Front 242 released their debut single and album, Geography. By 1984, with the release of the EP No Comment, the band’s sound took a harder edge, setting them apart from the burgeoning synthpop scene and establishing their distinctive sonic landscapes. By 1987, Front 242 had gained a record contract in the U.S. through Chicago’s Wax Trax! Records, which featured a diverse roster of mostly European aggressive synthesizer acts later lumped together under the term “industrial rock”. The U.S. market, at this point, appeared ready for Front 242’s brand of innovative electronic music. The following year, they released their third LP, Front by Front.

The band quickly attracted the attention of major labels and signed with Sony/Epic Records. Their single Tragedy for you received immediate promotion on MTV, but some fans of their earlier work did not take to their new major label sound. By 1991, Front 242, along with Ministry and Skinny Puppy, became key figures in a global industrial music movement. During this period, they released two albums that marked a significant departure from their earlier style, leading to a split with some longtime fans. In 1995, Jean-Luc De Meyer left the band to focus on his solo project, Cobalt 60, but Front 242 reunited the following year and embarked on a world tour. In describing advice he would give to other electronic musicians, Patrick Codenys says,

“Use your human abilities and your senses; think about what you want to achieve and construct before you are taken by the technology. Electronic music can be very mental, even conceptual. Each album needs a philosophy. Research how to program because it is also a big part of how you will use the creative tools like synths and production to serve your artistic ideas.”

This according to Das Gothic- und Dark Wave-Lexikon: Das Lexikon der schwarzen Szene (2003). Find it in RILM Music Encyclopedias.

Now in their fourth decade of existence, Front 242 are on their final tour performing in Mexico, the United States, and Europe beginning in March 2024 and ending in their hometown of Brussels, Belgium in January 2025. Below is their video for Tragedy for you, a song that some say signaled the end of the 1980s EBM era.

Read a related Bibliolore post:

Skinny Puppy’s last rights

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by | August 2, 2024 · 6:00 am

DAF’s electro-brutalism

As pioneers of electropunk and techno, Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (DAF, which means German-American Friendship) are regarded as one of the more innovative bands in new German music. Their song lyrics were provocative and minimal, featuring unusual synthesizer sounds set to cool drum beats and rejecting common song structures. The duo was founded in Düsseldorf in 1978 by Robert Görl and the Spanish-born Gabi Delgado-Lopez. The two had met a year earlier through the local punk scene. Together with three other musicians, they released their first LP Ein produkt der DAF in 1979. The album featured the sound that DAF became known for: electronic minimalism, which led the group to be associated with contemporary acts like the U.K.’s Throbbing Gristle and New York City’s Suicide.

DAF’s music became even more rhythmic on their second album Die kleinen und die bösen (1980). This was followed by the provocative single Der Mussolini (probably DAF’s best-known work to date) featuring lyrics that emphasized confrontation and minimalist beats that reduced the stiff marching style and thundering speech of reviled fascist dictators to a novelty dancefloor craze. Visually, their homoerotic leather outfits fit in well with the early synthpop duos of the day (OMD, Soft Cell, Blancmange, Cabaret Voltaire, Wham!) even though they never belonged to that scene. Overall, DAF’s style proved to immensely popular and made them one of the five biggest-selling acts in Germany in 1981.

By 1982, the group was finished. DAF’s final album Für immer was released after they disbanded–although today both Delgado-Lopez and Görl claim they never formally disbanded. The reason for ending the group was musical, explained Gabi-Delgado in an interview, and in his estimation the minimalist concept for the band had run its course. In the mid-1980s, however, the electronic music scene came to be dominated by DAF epigones. Their influence outlived their existence and inspired entire electronic (sub)genres like Detroit techno, Chicago house, German techno, industrial, and electronic body music (EBM).

This according to Das ist DAF: Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft: Die autorisierte biografie by Miriam Spies and Rüdiger Esch (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 2017; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2017-46785). Also find the entry on Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft in Das Gothic- und Dark Wave-Lexikon: Das Lexikon der schwarzen Szene (2003) in RILM Music Encyclopedias.

Listen to a compilation of DAF songs below.

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by | August 11, 2023 · 6:00 am

Skinny Puppy’s last rights

Skinny Puppy has long been considered a classic band in the electro-industrial genre. Formed in Vancouver, Canada in 1983 by cEVIN Key (Kevin Crompton) and Nivek Ogre (Kevin Ogilvie), Skinny Puppy was influenced early on by Kraftwerk, Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, and Suicide. The band soon created an innovative “hard electronic” sound that combined audio samples of films with heavy metal guitar aesthetics. When asked about the 1980s industrial scene, Ogre stated, “The original idea for industrial music was just a category for abstract ideas and abstract music. . . It didn’t matter what you used. Glass in your cupboard or a rat running across your floor.”

On their first tour, shortly after the release of the Remission EP, Wilhelm Schroeder (Billy Leeb) joined the band as a keyboardist in live performances. In 1986, he left the band to start Frontline Assembly and was replaced by Dwayne Goettel of Psyche. The first LP on which Goettel was involved, Cleanse, Fold and Manipulate, was Skinny Puppy’s worldwide breakthrough. Through this and the following albums and tours, the band garnered fans and gained a strong reputation globally.

In a 2020 interview, cEVIN Key described their songwriting process as having remained fairly consistent over the years. According to Key, “I still luckily own all the original equipment, so I can use that formula if I wish or can improvise with using elements of that formula. We were using a computer to sequence our [early albums] so in this case it’s quite the same even though technology has advanced greatly. . . Luckily, I was trained well by being in a band with five other guys who each had their own world. It’s in this training that I received writing albums, recording, and touring that I was able to grasp the experience to come and produce my own ideas. . . At the time Skinny Puppy was formed, the scene in Vancouver was so vibrant that our first goal literally was to have a song played at the local disco. So, I think, we all started with small goals, and they grew exponentially.”

Part of Skinny Puppy’s success has been that their music, politics, and song lyrics have engaged with the contemporary social issues that have driven them since the band’s foundation, especially animal rights—which inspired their name and albums such as VIVIsectVI. The band also famously billed the U.S. government $666,000 in 2014 for its use of their music played at intolerably high levels in the interrogation of accused terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. As one of the industrial genre’s most influential bands, Skinny Puppy have laid the groundwork for the mainstream success of acts such as Nine Inch Nails. Now celebrating 40 years together, the band has embarked on their farewell tour in 2023.

Read about Skinny Puppy and many other industrial and electronic artists in Das Gothic- und Dark Wave-Lexikon: Das Lexikon der schwarzen Szene (The gothic and dark wave lexicon: The lexicon of the black scene).  Find it in RILM Music Encyclopedias.

Below is a classic video of Skinny Puppy performing Assimilate. Enjoy!

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