The Breakdown
This latest collection from the Cherry Red Records stable features Ministry, Nitzer Ebb, Front 242, Laibach, Meat Beat Manifesto, Sisters Of Mercy, The Shamen, The Neon Judgement, Renegade Soundwave and many more across 44 tracks exploring the 1980s’ industrial-clubland crossover.
For those of you not familiar with 80s industrial dance music, it can be best described as repeatedly slamming your head in a car door, to a soundtrack of dark heavy techno, pulsating bass and hard digital breaks. All of this whilst wearing black and sporting big clompy goth boots. Characterised by hard hitting and repetitive rhythms, distorted synthesisers and guitars, pounding bass, heavy samples and lyrics exploring a side of life unavailable in mainstream music, this new thing split, morphed and mutated as the decade progressed. From the coven-disco of Alien Sex Fiend to Sisters Of Mercy’s ice cold Gothic rock-techno, The Neon Judgement’s Electronic Body Music and the mutated synth pop of Ministry. Outsiders found it both impenetrable and intimidating, terrifying and disturbing to those who weren’t living it, but everyday and real to those who were. These artists laid the foundations for NIN, Marilyn Manson and Rammstein to take the genre further in later decades.
Visits to clubland were like living in a David Lynch film in real life. Celebrated photographer Derek Ridgers captured many candid images of the protagonists of the time, in places like the Torture Garden and other S&M/fetish clubs. The music and fashions were tightly interwoven.
In the post post-punk aftermath, as electronic rhythms and synthesisers began to dominate the landscape, and with industrial godheads Throbbing Gristle now no more, artists across the UK, Europe and the US began to fuse minimal, emerging proto-house music, dark and Gothic tinged aesthetics and the noise and brutality of industrial music to create a hybrid which proved simultaneously cold, alienated and accessible. Taking its lead from the dark shadows of cold war politics, governmental control, medical gore and a brutalist futuristic vision, this industrial mutation slid comfortably onto dancefloors catering for those for whom Thatcherism, Reaganomics and Eastern Bloc ideologies provided no hope, producing the most unlikely of clubbing scenes. Some of the acts featured here will be familiar to some, as they broke free of the confines of the scene to cross pollinate the charts of the day, with varying degrees of success, like Shamen, Sisters Of Mercy and Age Of Chance. The bulk of the collection is more hardcore and menacing, with Germanic overtones and an almost classical music approach.
‘Control I’m Here’ provides a carefully curated overview of that time and place, the variety of forms this industrial machine took and the key artists who pushed this hard music into the fringes of the mainstream, giving no quarter in their full-frontal approach to both their sound and the package they presented it in. Intense, heavy and free from concession. If this doesn’t sound like music for you then it almost certainly isn’t.
Track Listing
Disc One
Renegade Soundwave – Cocaine Sex (Turbo Lust Mix)
Controlled Bleeding – The Fodder Song
Severed Heads – Twenty Deadly Diseases (Extended Mix)
Age Of Chance – Kiss
Laibach – Die Liebe
Nitzer Ebb – Control Im Here (Zero Option Mix)
Nobody Uninc – Only Human
Alien Sex Fiend – Ignore The Machine (Electrode Mix)
Hula – Give Me Money
The Dave Howard Singers – Yon Yonson
The Neon Judgement – TV Treated
The Sisters Of Mercy – Lucretia My Reflection (12″ Version)
Son Of Sam & Good Shepherds – Cuts ‘N Bruises 14 The Weathermen – Poison (12″ Version)
Disc Two
À;Grumh… – Kill
Lead Into Gold – Idiot
Nocturnal Emissions – No Separation
Front Line Assembly – Lurid Sensation
The Force Dimension – Hidden Ambush (Red Version)
Absolute Body Control – Tanzmusik
Test Dept. – New World Order
The Cassandra Complex – Beyond Belief
Front 242 – Quite Unusual (12″ Version)
SPK – Seduction
Die Krupps – Germaniac (Analogital Climix)
Section 25 – Dirty Disco
The Jackal – Underneath The Arches
Executive Slacks – I’m Coming
Disc Three
Meat Beat Manifesto – I Got The Fear (Titanium Mix)
Attrition – The Fiftieth Gate
Die Warzau – Land Of The Free (Machine Mix)
Borghesia – Naked, Uniformed, Dead Hot Trash Mix
Wmtid – Kunst
Nitzer Ebb – Control Im Here (Zero Option Mix)
Hunting Lodge – Tribal Warning Shot
Esplendor Geometrico – Comisario De La Luz Iii
Legendary Pink Dots – Maniac
Silver Chapter – Neon Queen
M.A.D. – Sunfeast
Die Form – The Beast
Ministry – My Possession
Screaming Trees – Don’t B Afraid
Son Of Sam – Starch
625 Lines – Under Construction
Disc Three
Meat Beat Manifesto – I Got The Fear (Titanium Mix)
Attrition – The Fiftieth Gate
Die Warzau – Land Of The Free (Machine Mix)
Borghesia – Naked, Uniformed, Dead Hot Trash Mix
Wmtid – Kunst
Hunting Lodge – Tribal Warning Shot
Esplendor Geometrico – Comisario De La Luz Iii
Legendary Pink Dots – Maniac
Silver Chapter – Neon Queen
M.A.D. – Sunfeast
Ministry – My Possession
Die Form – The Beast
Screaming Trees – Don’t B Afraid
Son Of Sam – Starch
625 Lines – Under Construction
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