A Year of Music

I love me some Giorgio Moroder. “The Chase” and “I Feel Love” are two of the finest chunks of dance music ever recorded, and I say this even after the time my dad and I were having dinner in the Castro at Rave Thai (not its real name) and upstairs at The Café they played an “I Feel Love” megamix that lasted throughout our entire meal. Actually, that was pretty much awesome, and gave my dad a good feel for what the Castro was all about (as did the dude who wandered by later with the loincloth and club ensemble). I miss Rave Thai.

I also love me some Sigillum S, who are considerably less famous than Moroder and Donna Summer. They’re a completely bent Italian group who started out as a bog-standard noise-industrial group haunting the fringes of the industrial cassette scene and have gotten weirder and wilder as the years have gone by. Their most recent album, 23|20 is an unclassifiable melange of industrial cabaret, arrhythmic dance music, and random hooting. I love it.

However, the combination of the two is horrible, albeit in a funny way. Back in 1989, the bright sparks at Misty Circles put out La Mort Heureuse, a compilation of mostly obscure industrial artists rapaciously violating the corpses of pop songs. They attain varying degrees of horrifying, transcendent badness, with the in-concept-only cover of “Like A Virgin” achieving some sort of benchmark for the loosest and most vile interpretation of Madonna that doesn’t involve death metal. I could fart out something better without trying at all, which I think was the point.

Sigillum S’s version of “I Feel Love” keeps the arpeggiated bass line, but that’s about it. The vocals wander in and of the rhythm, and don’t even have a conversational relationship with the melody. It’s totally ghastly, and I love it. But mostly it just makes me want to listen to the original again. So I think I will.

Stuck in my head this morning: “Metal Dance” by SPK. Or, as the incredibly pretentious woman who sang it says, “Metahhl Dahhhhhnsz!” SPK is a perfect example of a group whose quality and credibility went straight off a cliff very early in their career (in fact, SPK neatly recapitulates the entire evolution of industrial from transgressive noise into po-faced clanky dance-industrial into Middle-Eastern tinged coldwave into Delerium-style synth cheez in one tidy package), and songs like “Metal Dance” are why. So cheesy! Yet so pretentious!

It’s hard to believe this is the same band that recorded “Slogun”, one of the noisiest, meanest songs recorded in the entire industrial era. Of course, the later songs are catchy, too, hence waking up with this stuck in my head.

One of the things that sucks about being an atheist is recognizing that there are people who are going to escape the cosmic judgment they so obviously deserve. While his crimes are minor next to the usual suspects (Hitler, Stalin, Reagan, etc), William Bennett’s bush-league ass-hattery should have earned him some kind of divine smackdown. If not for his rampant, flamboyant misogyny as the leader of Whitehouse, perhaps for his habit of gratuitously overdubbing Nazi speeches over the music he released on his various record labels (Come Organisation, Susan Lawly). I get the appeal of transgression and abjection – without which industrial music would not exist – but Bennett has made a life’s work out of crossing the line between artful, ironized misanthropy into being a boring, hateful dick.

It bugs me that Surgeon decided to adopt Whitehouse as his iconic industrial totem / spirit animal. Why not SPK? They were blatantly confrontational, even if they went downhill very quickly, and “Slogun” is arguably the original version of Surgeon’s personal form of harsh, stark techno.

One of the many fruits of my recent orgy of downloading and purchasing is that it’s put me back in touch with a lot of my favorite industrial and drone music, and among the groups who combine both those tendencies most effectively, Organum has to stand as one of the most impressive and uncompromising. They’ve built up a small pile of releases over the years, many of which are only available as part of compilations, and are not a well-known group even among fans of strange music. It’s not hard to understand why they’re marginal, as their work is fairly inaccessible even by industrial music’s esoteric standards, but every time I listen to an Organum record I find it riveting, a collection of mysterious yet concrete sounds that never overstay their welcome.

To refer to Organum by a plural pronoun is a little misleading; in every meaningful sense the name is just a handle David Jackman has attached to many of his musical activities. Organum’s music has appeared on many collaborative releases (Jackman especially appears to favor split albums), but these days, the best way to find his music is on a couple of CDs, prosaically entitled Volume One and Volume Two, on Robot Records. By “best” I mean “easiest to find”; the downside of listening to Organum on omnibus collections is that many of the original pieces originally stood alone, and stringing them together robs them of some of their power. The perfect amount of time to spend listening to Organum is about 20 minutes. Unlike some of his followers (most notably Jonathan Coleclough, whose music I absolutely adore no matter how long the works are), Jackman has recognized the power inherent in keeping compositions concise.

Jackman’s method is easy to describe, but the net effect is close to indescribable. Typically he combines some kind of mechanical drone (compression fans, electrical motors) with bowed metal (cymbals, saws). It can range from the quietly ominous (“Crux”) to the overpowering (“In Extremis”), but always with the unpredictable shrieks and whines caused by friction against sheet metal. Often there are abstract elements (wordless vocals, feedback) layered over the top. It’s a strict program, and would seem to make for predictable / boring / irritating results, but each recording has its own distinct personality. Despite the mundane origins of the sounds and the plain recording, Organum’s work feels like ritual music, and it is weird in the truest, oldest sense of the word (“suggesting something supernatural; uncanny… connected with fate”).

Much of Organum’s early output was released on Nurse With Wound’s United Dairies imprint, and careful listeners can derive insight into Organum’s methodical approach by comparing and contrasting Organum’s work with Nurse With Wound’s. Steven Stapleton is a curator, a consummate technician and a near-involuntary surrealist; each Nurse With Wound record is a product of laborious tape engineering, even if the original source material is the product of random studio improvisation. By contrast, Organum’s work is relatively static, and it seems as if Jackman sets up the initial conditions for a recording, records a take, and calls it done. You can hear the room in which the music was recorded, as opposed to NWW’s dematerialized (and often chaotic) soundstage.

Most of the Robot Records material is still in print, or at least available, so if you’re curious about Organum, I recommend picking up a copy of Volume One and listening to it as two separate halves (it compiles Tower of Silence and the Organum half of the NWW / Organum A Missing Sense / Rasa split single). From there, Ikon and Sphyx are both fine releases, if you can find them. All of Organum’s material is best when treated as abstract sound sculpture, and rewards a meditative frame of mind; it’s neither ambient wallpaper nor music in any traditional sense of the word.

The problem with drinking from a firehose is that sometimes you asplode. This just happened to me, and I’m trying to deal with it by sharing my total insanity with you, the semi-random passersby on the internet.

As I’ve mentioned several times, I recently discovered the awe-inspiring zombie amusement park that is Blogspot’s coterie of MP3 blogs. I’d never really paid them much attention before, because most of my exposure to MP3 blogs had been through dodgy Eastern European metal blogs that were dedicated to scene rips of upcoming releases, and I’m really not all that into pissing all over the people who make my favorite music, which is basically what these blogs are all about (somebody has to pay for music, somehow, if it’s going to continue to be made).

However, Mutant Sounds and its brethren opened my eyes to the vast amount of music that exists in a twilit state with respect to copyright; thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act™, most of the recordings shared via these blogs won’t be public domain until the end of this century – if ever – yet the vast majority of this material can be had neither via love, money, nor diligent browsing of GEMM. Most of the artists involved really don’t seem to care, as the bloggers are all pretty careful to avoid posting material that is readily available, and in some cases the creators send the blog owners better-quality recordings of their own material to replace inferior rips.

It didn’t help that one of the first of these blogs I discovered, dualtrack, has posted nearly every record I deeply coveted between 1989 and 1992. I sometimes forget that I got my start as a major music nerd through RE/Search’s Industrial Culture Handbook, but when I was learning about this stuff, I was also your average broke college kid and therefore could only read about these records in The Ooze’s monthly new-releases newsletter, saving up for stuff I really, really wanted, like :zoviet*france: reissues on CD or the occasional bizarre overindulgence. Now that I’m all grown up, most of those records, CDs and cassettes are beyond gone, appearing only in Amoeba’s used bins or on eBay (sometimes for plainly hurtful prices). It was with delight bordering on awe that I discovered that almost all of these records I’d been searching for for many, many years were freely available, generally with high-quality scans of the included artwork.

So, armed with a not entirely flimsy rationalization, a sense of burning need, and a month’s Premium subscription to Rapidshare, I went completely bonkers. Most of the stuff on this list came from either dualtrack, The Thing on the Doorstep, No Longer Forgotten Music, Rusted Noise, Mutant Sounds, Phoenix Hairpins, Boomkat, Amoeba and Other Music Digital. (NOTE TO RECORD LABEL FOLK: My copy of Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black is on a shiny aluminized plastic platter purchased new from Amoeba Records, with the latest lame cover art you have chosen for it. The original cover art was much nicer. Thank you for your attention.) A lot of it I even bought, as I took this opportunity to fill in long-standing gaps in my collection. As you can see, it would take me a very long time to even summarize what’s here, so I’m going to leave that to other postings. Suffice it to say that just about every weird kind of music you can imagine, and some you probably can’t (the Masstishaddhu record, in particular, defies description to anyone who hasn’t already heard it).

It’s going to take me weeks to listen to all this stuff, much less comprehend it. There’s a lot of amazing, weird and profound music in here.

1. ABGS: Werkbeschallung: Live
2. Abwärts: Amok Koma
3. Gunter Adler: Minute Music
4. Gunter Adler: Polysyntetica
5. Gunter Adler: The Silver Book
6. Ain Soph: Kshatriya
7. Alpha Omega: Electronic Mind Project
8. Au Revoir Simone: The Bird of Music
9. Autonomic Computing: Mutantextures
10. Henry Badowski: Life is a Grand
11. Erykah Badu: New Amerykah, Part 1: 4th World War
12. Biochemical Dread: Bush Doctrine
13. Biota: Rackabones / Vagabones
14. Bipol: Ritual
15. Black Sun Ensemble: Black Sun Ensemble
16. Blacworld: Subduing Demons (In South Yorkshire)
17. Burning Witch: Crippled Lucifer
18. Monte Cazazza: To Mom on Mother’s Day / Candy Man
19. C-Schulz: 7. Party Disco
20. C-Schulz: 10. Hose Horn
21. Chrome: Alien Soundtracks
22. Chrome: Half Machine Lip Moves
23. Chrome: 3rd from the Sun
24. Chrystal Belle Scrodd: The Inevitable Chrystal Belle Scrodd Record
25. Coil / Zos Kia: Transparent
26. Cold Sun: Dark Shadows
27. Cosey Fanni Tutti: Time to Tell
28. Cranioclast: A Con Cristal
29. Cranioclast: Koitlaransk / Ration Skalk
30. Crash Worship: This
31. Crawling Chaos: Sex Machine / Berlin
32. Helios Creed: X-Rated Fairy Tales / Superior Catholic Finger
33. Crispy Ambulance: From the Cradle to the Grave
34. Crispy Ambulance: Live on a Hot August Night
35. Crispy Ambulance: Sexus
36. Crispy Ambulance: The Plateau Phase
37. Crispy Ambulance: Unsightly and Serene
38. Crispy Ambulance: Live at the ICA
39. Current 93 & HÖH: Crowleymass
40. Current 93 / Nurse With Wound: Mi-Mort
41. Daft Punk: Alive 2007
42. Danava: UnonoU
43. Danielle Dax: Pop-Eyes
44. Danielle Dax: Jesus Egg That Wept
45. Danielle Dax: Inky Bloaters
46. Danielle Dax: The Janice Long Session
47. Danielle Dax: Comatose Non Reaction: The Thwarted Pop Career
48. Amy Denio: No Bones
49. Dead Meadow: Old Growth
50. Dethklok: The Dethalbum
51. Die Form / Asmus Tietchens: Face to Face, Volume 1
52. Die Form: Duality
53. DF Sadist School: Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome
54. Doxa Sinistra: Via del Latte
55. Drowning Craze: Trance / I Love the Fjords
56. Frankie Dymon, Jr.: Let It Out
57. Earth: The Bee Made Honey In The Lions Skull
58. Einstürzende Neubauten: Kollaps
59. Einstürzende Neubauten: Zeichnungen des Patienten OT
60. Elohim: A L’Aube Du Verseau
61. Erste Weibliche Fleischergesellin Nach 1945: Ferien Auf Dem Lande
62. Étant Donnés: Aurore
63. Étant Donnés: L’eclipse
64. Étant Donnés: Re-Up
65. Etat Brut: Mutations et Protheses
66. Exterminator: Anna Blume
67. Factrix: Empire of Passion
68. Factrix: Scheintot
69. Fanzine: 1980
70. Fanzine: 1981
71. Fanzine: 1982
72. File Under Pop: Heathrow
73. Brigitte Fontaine & Areski: L’incendie
74. Brigitte Fontaine & Art Ensemble of Chicago: Comme à la Radio
75. Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle: Telinehmende Beobachtung
76. The Fugs: First Album
77. The Fugs: Second Album
78. BC Gilbert & G Lewis: Ends With the Sea
79. The Gothic Archies: The Tragic Treasury: Songs from “A Series of Unfortunate Events”
80. Bruce Haack: Electric Lucifer: Book 2
81. Bruce Haack: The Electric Lucifer
82. Hanadensha: Acoustic Mothership
83. Hanadensha: Astral Pigmy Wave
84. Hanadensha: Doobie Shining Love
85. Hip Hop Pantsula: YBA 2 NW
86. Lars Hollmer: Fran Natt Idag
87. Lars Hollmer: Vill Du Höra Mer
88. Lars Hollmer: XII Sibirska Cyklar
89. Hoola Bandoola Band: Fri Information
90. Hoola Bandoola Band: Garanterate Individuell
91. Hoola Bandoola Band: På Väg
92. Hoola Bandoola Band: Vem Kan Man Lita På?
93. The Horrorist: Attack Decay
94. The Human League: Being Boiled
95. The Human League: The Dignity of Labour
96. Hunting Lodge: Tribal Warning Shot
97. In the Woods…: Three by Seven on a Pilgrimage
98. Islaja: Meritie
99. Kallabris: Considération sur / sous lé café
100. Richard H Kirk: Darkness at Noon
101. Richard H Kirk: Disposable Half-Truths
102. Kotazo: Papy Mbavu / Papa Komanda
103. Korpiklaani: Korven Kuningas
104. Korpiklaani: Spirit of the Forest
105. Korpiklaani: Voice of Wilderness
106. Lava: Tears Are Goin’ Home
107. Thomas Leer & Robert Rental: The Bridge
108. Lemon Kittens: Spoonfed and Writhing
109. Lemon Kittens: The Big Dentist
110. Lemon Kittens: We Buy a Hammer for Daddy
111. Lesbian: Power Hor
112. Liquid Sound Company: Exploring the Psychedelic
113. Machinic Indices: Untitled Kompositions
114. Malombra: Malombra
115. Masstishaddhu: Shekinah
116. Men/Eject: Men/Eject
117. Metabolist: Drömm
118. Metabolist: Hansten Klork
119. Metabolist: Identify
120. The Metronomes: Regular Guys
121. Mimir: Mimir
122. Mimir: Mimyriad
123. Mnemonists: Biota
124. Mnemonists: Horde
125. Moctan: Suspect
126. Morphogenesis: Prochronisms
127. Mysticum: In the Streams of Inferno
128. nEGAPADRÉS.3.3: nEGAPADRÉS.3.3
129. Joanna Newsom: Walnut Whales
130. Joanna Newsom: Yarn and Glue
131. Nocturnal Emissions: Spiritflesh
132. Non: Mode of Infection / Knife Ladder
133. Nurse With Wound / Spasm: Creakiness / Firemoon
134. Nurse With Wound / Termite Queen: Nurse With Wound / Termite Queen
135. Nurse With Wound / Organum: A Missing Sense / Rasa
136. Nurse With Wound: A Sucked Orange
137. Nurse With Wound: Brained by Falling Masonry
138. Nurse With Wound: Crocodile Krazy Glue
139. Nurse With Wound: The Musty Odour of Pierced Rectums
140. Opal: Early Recordings 2
141. Orchestra Terrestrial: Here and Elsewhere
142. Organum: Horii
143. Organum: Ikon
144. Organum: Sphyx
145. Organum: Tower of Silence
146. Michael O’Shea: Michael O’Shea
147. La Otracina: Fauna & Animated Floral Arrangements
148. P16.D4: Distruct
149. P16.D4: Kühe in 1/2 Trauer
150. Penumbra: Skandinavien
151. Permutative Distorsion: Brückenkopf im Niemandsland
152. Pitch Black Afro: Split Endz
153. Eddie Prévost / Organum: Flayed / Crux
154. Problemist: 9 Times Sanity
155. Project 197: IP001
156. Pseudo Code: Europa
157. Psychic TV: Allegory & Self
158. Psychic TV: Dreams Less Sweet
159. Psychic TV: Force Thee Hand ov Chance / Blinded Eye in Thee Pyramid
160. Psychic TV: Mouth of the Night
161. Psychic TV: NY Scum
162. Punch Inc.: Fightclub
163. The Raveonettes: Lust Lust Lust
164. Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians
165. Steve Reich: Tehellim & The Desert Music
166. Steve Reich: Triple Quartet
167. Steve Reich: You Are (Variations) / Cello Counterpoint
168. Robert Rental: On Location / Double Heart
169. The Residents: (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
170. The Residents: Commercial Single
171. Graeme Revell: The Insect Musicians
172. The Revolving Paint Dream: Flowers in the Sky: The Enigma of the Revolving Paint Dream
173. Boyd Rice and Friends: Music, Martinis & Misanthropy
174. Salon Music: La Paloma Show
175. Sandoz: In Dub: Chapter Two / Extra Time (Under the Stones)
176. Shock Headed Peters: I, Bloodbrother Be
177. Shock Headed Peters: The Kissing of Gods
178. Sielwolf: IV
179. Sielwolf: Nachtstrom
180. Sielwolf: V - Remixes
181. Sigillum S: 23|20
182. Sigillum S: Bardo Thos-Grol
183. Sigillum S: Studs and Divinity
184. Sixth Comm: Grey Years
185. Smegma: 33 1/3
186. SPK: Slogun / Meccano
187. SPK: Live At Garibaldi’s, 1979
188. SPK: Information Overload Unit
189. SPK: Auto Da Fe
190. SPK: Leichenschrei
191. SPK: Angst Pop: Live
192. SPK: From Science to Ritual
193. SPK: Human Post Mortem (Despair OST)
194. SPK: Live at Pandora’s Music Box
195. SPK: Live at the Crypt
196. SPK: No More
197. SPK: Off the Deep End
198. SPK: See-Saw / Chamber Musik
199. SPK: The Last Attempt at Paradise: Live in Lawrence, Kansas
200. SPK: Wars of Islam: Live in Rome
201. SPK: Machine Age Voodoo
202. SPK: Metal Dance / Will to Power
203. SPK: In Flagrante Delicto
204. SPK: Zamia Lehmanni
205. SPK: Gold & Poison
206. SPK: Compilation Tracks (2nd version)
207. Snakefinger: Manual of Errors
208. Snakefinger: Chewing Hides the Sound
209. Snakefinger: Greener Posters
210. Sol Invictus: Lex Talionis
211. Somatic Responses: Digital Darkness
212. Spektr: Mescalyne
213. Sun Ra: HelioCentric Worlds, Volumes 1 & 2
214. Sweet Exorcist: Spirit Guide to Low Tech
215. Symphonique Elegance: Act One
216. Syrup Girls vs Sick Girls: Shotgun Wedding, Volume 8
217. Teenage Jesus & The Jerks: Orphans / Less of Me
218. Thick Pigeon: Thick Pigeon
219. Throbbing Gristle: AR-TT-010
220. Throbbing Gristle: United
221. Throbbing Gristle: DOA: The Third and Final Report
222. Throbbing Gristle: Adrenaline
223. Throbbing Gristle: 20 Jazz Funk Greats
224. Throbbing Gristle: Nothing Short of a Total War
225. Throbbing Gristle: Rafters
226. Throbbing Gristle: CD1
227. Tools You Can Trust: Again Again Again
228. Tools You Can Trust: Say It Low
229. Tools You Can Trust: Sharpen the Tools
230. Trop Tard: Ils etaient 9 dans L’obscurite
231. Tuxedomoon: Dark Companion / 59 To 1 Remix
232. Tuxedomoon: Desire / No Tears
233. Tuxedomoon: What Use? / Crash
234. Tuxedomoon: Joe Boy The Electric Ghost / Pinheads on the Move
235. Tuxedomoon: Une Nuit au Fond de la Frayére / Egypt
236. Tuxedomoon: Scream with a View
237. Tuxedomoon: Half-Mute / Scream With a View
238. Tuxedomoon: Ship of Fools
239. Tuxedomoon: The Ghost Sonata
240. Týr: Ragnarok
241. Ultravox: Slow Motion
242. Vas Deferens Organization: Zyzzybaloubah
243. Verhören: Death is Safe
244. Vidna Obmana: Noise / Drone Anthology 1984-1989
245. Virgin Prunes: Heresie
246. Von Zamla: No Make Up!
247. Vox Populi! / HNAS: Face to Face, Volume 2
248. Amy Winehouse: Back to Black
249. Xasthur: A Gate Through Bloodstained Mirrors
250. Damien Youth: Festival of Death
251. Damien Youth: Fluttering Briar
252. Damien Youth: The Man Who Invented God
253. Z’ev: Elemental Music
254. Z’ev: Salts of Heavy Metals
255. Stefan Weisser: Poextensions
256. Zahgurim: Moral Rearmament
257. Zero Kama: The Secret Eye of L.A.Y.L.A.H.
258. Zos Kia Meets Sugardog: That’s Heavy Baby
259. v/a: 2005 Hands
260. v/a: 4 in 1
261. v/a: Ach Hanover
262. v/a: Angst in My Pants
263. Alban Berg / Anton Webern / Arnold Schoenberg / James Levine / Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra: Orchestral Pieces
264. v/a: Can You Hear Me? Music from The Deaf Club
265. v/a: Colorado
266. v/a: Dada > Antidada > Merz
267. v/a: Devastate to Liberate
268. v/a: Dokument: Ten Highlights in the History Of Popular Music, 1982-1983
269. v/a: Earthly Delights
270. v/a: The Elephant Table Album
271. v/a: Er Ist Tief Und Dein Wasser Ist Dunkel
272. v/a: Feature Mist
273. v/a: Fluxus Anthology
274. v/a: Für Ilse Koch
275. v/a: A Gnomean Haigonaimean: A Compilation of Fantasies Intoxication Concepts
276. v/a: Gut Level One
277. v/a: Hare / Hunter / Field
278. v/a: Harmony of the Spheres
279. v/a: Hate’s Our Belief
280. v/a: Iberico
281. v/a: Internationalism
282. v/a: The Last Supper
283. v/a: Machines
284. v/a: Masse Mensch
285. v/a: Palatine: The Factory Story
286. v/a: Passage du Trou Marin
287. v/a: Perpetual State of Oracular Dream
288. v/a: Riposte
289. v/a: A Selection
290. v/a: Short Circuit: Live at the Electric Circus
291. v/a: The Virus Has Been Spread: A D-Trash Records Tribute To Atari Teenage Riot

Dark White didn’t make much of a mark; they (or he, as only one guy is pictured on the sleeve) made 500 copies of an EP in 1985 and disappeared. There’s nothing that original about The Grey Area, either. If you’ve heard WaxTrax!-era Ministry or Visage or a;GRUMH you’ve heard the various pieces of their sound. Sometimes the vocals are out of tune, or not delivered with much confidence. The recording is clean but unremarkable. The songs have the bouncing-octave minor-key synth lines you’ve heard in a million industrial / electro / electroclash / New Wave songs.

Of course, I like old dance-industrial a lot (as long as it’s not the turgid, tuneless churning of Antler-Subway bands like Noise Unit), and the way Dark White put everything together is actually charming. “Charming” may seem like an odd word to describe death-obsessed darkwave, but the band that made these tracks was young, and as such all the moodiness comes across as direct and earnest, and the whole package is so utterly and obviously a product of its time and place. The total Americanness of it all appeals to me. Over at Mutant Sounds, the commenters compare some of the sounds on the record to Big Black, and I don’t really hear that, but I do agree that the vocal delivery is pretty damn Midwestern.

Apparently this record trades for hundreds of dollars on eBay, so grab it from Mutant Sounds while you can.