Industrial Power Trivia Quiz

Answer: An abrasive fusion of rock and electronic music

The above definition of industrial music (IM) was taken from an article published by the music site "Allmusic". The piece was entitled "Industrial" and was issued May 5, 2017. The author's name was not given. More fully, it goes on to describe the genre as "the most abrasive and aggressive fusion of rock and electronic music, industrial was initially a blend of avant garde electronics experiments (tape music, musique concrète, white noise, synthesizers, sequencers, etc.) and punk provocation".

The foundations of IM have similar footings to its predecessor, punk rock, in that its followers (youths) turned against the idealistic societal mythology that was being peddled by mass media in industrialized nations such Britain, a number of areas in Europe and, also, the United States of America. However, industrial musicians, artists and songwriters did not believe that punk illustrated this distancing from the mainstream aggressively enough and, to this end, their sound incorporated selections of white noise, sequencers and electronics to produce mind-numbing beats with the ultimate aim being to produce a sound that possessed little in the way of humanizing qualities. The mechanical sounds were also repetitive to heighten the listener's sense of alienation.

Of the other answer options above, the use of sound imperfections as an aesthetic choice is a definition of the lo-fi sound, music played in rooms where people gather is better known as elevator music or muzak, and four-on-the-floor rhythms with breakbeats is a description of breakbeat hardcore, a genre that arose from the UK rave scene.

Answer: William S. Burroughs

The general basics of Burroughs' "cut-up" technique is the employing of an existing piece of written material, cutting it up and re-assembling it as a new creation. Burroughs used this extensively in putting together the novels "The Soft Machine" (1961), "The Ticket That Exploded" (1962) and "Nova Express" (1964). This was Burroughs' way of freeing himself from control. This feature appealed to the ideology of industrial music artists, who were looking for ways to subvert control, and it became evident in their own creations through the use of sampling, tape splitting, shouted vocals and the adoption of other media in their works such as white noise and feedback.

Burroughs saw merit in the approach of the industrial musicians and ventured into collaborations with them. The most notable of these was the 1981 recording with UK band Throbbing Gristle "Nothing Here Now But The Recordings".

Answer: True

In 1983 RE/Search Publications launched the "Industrial Culture Handbook" (edited by V. Vale and A Juno), which contained a series of interviews with a number of pioneering artists in the industrial music genre. These included members of Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire and Australian band SPK.

These interviews revealed that these artists were drawn to the works of Baudrillard and also Michael Foucault, their commentary on knowledge, power and communication and the subversion of control. The other items that are evident in the interviews is how well read these musicians were and, as part of the process, many put forth lists of recommended reading for followers and potential industrial musicians. Among these were the likes of Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, Marquis de Sade, Pierre Proudhon, Andy Warhol and Aleister Crowley.

Answer: Dadaism

To understand this comparison is to understand a little of Dadaism. This is a movement that began amongst the avant-garde of Switzerland around the turn of the twentieth century where artists rebelled against the promoted or so-called beauty of modern society and presented their own version of it through the use of cut up pictures and collages, creating, in the process, a sort of "Frankenstein" effect. The early creators of industrial music (IM) took similar paths producing walls of sound that incorporated a variety of electronic beeps, bells, whistles and other noises generally discarded by musicians due to their jarring qualities.

One can add to this that among the early influences on industrial music were the cut-up techniques of authors like William S. Burroughs, who were also seen as Dadaist in nature.

Answer: Anti-music

The creation of the style of Anti-music was driven by industrial music's (IM) disappointment in punk rock's perceived failure to push the boundaries (to the limit) in their challenge of the mainstream. The foundations of their (IM's) ideology can be identified in Jacques Attali's 1977 book "Noise: The Political Economy of Music" where he suggests that if there is no noise, nothing is happening. "Death, alone, is silent". He expands by saying that noise is the soundtrack of life and our interactions with it, in many cases, become forms of musical transactions. In this way, noise is a part of music and if music is a reflection of life then it stands to reason that we should incorporate both harmony and disharmony into the equation.

Here's an experiment that you can conduct: Find a room where you can (supposedly) shut yourself off from the world, relax and close your eyes. Now listen. You will find that there is no "true" silence. There will be noise of some description, be it human, beast, natural or mechanical. We may pursue peace and quiet, but we cannot escape the presence of noise. In some respects, it surrounds us like a security blanket.

Answer: The Second Industrial Revolution

The Second Industrial Revolution, which is also known as the "Technological Revolution", emerged in the 1860s. It brought with it new machinery, new methods of production (most notably the assembly line) and new modes of marketing and delivering products to the consumer. In its wake came a wave of new professions, which can best be classified as sub-genre occupations (I'll explain below). It, essentially, signaled the dawn of the death of the artisan.

Consider this; before this revolution you had the master craftsman, let's use the cabinetmaker as an example. He controlled every process within his trade; from the design, the selection of the timber, the measuring, the cutting, the shaping, the assembly, the polishing and, ultimately, the delivery to the consumer. In the new age those roles would be divided among various departments and, in some cases, machines. In one fell swoop the range of specialization in an occupation had been reduced and distributed to a range of workers. Acknowledge that this increased efficiencies and production numbers to enable the servicing of greater demand and also increasing profitability, but it reduced the job that was the specialist in nature to one that was the mundane.

Answer: Futurism

Futurism is an art movement that rose at the start of the twentieth century and it worked towards capturing the dynamism of the modern world. Needless to say, it was vehement in its criticism of clinging to the past.

As well as being a futurist artist, Luigi Russolo was a composer and one of the first to experiment with "noise music". He also created a series of new musical instruments and noise devices that he called Intonarumori which, sadly were all lost or destroyed. There is movement now to try and resurrect these pieces or create replicas of them. Russolo went to the lengths of creating his own noise orchestra which, it needs to be said, was not well received.

Is there a link between the noise music of Russolo and that of the industrialists of the 1970s? In respect to the noise music he created, most scholars would say no or that it is tenuous at best. However, where he does come in line with the industrialists is in his ideology and this is where it is agreed he may have generated some influence. In his 1913 book, "The Art of Noises", Russolo indicates that the Industrial Revolution was a boon to the ear of the modern man because of the wide range of noises it created. He further intones that modern music only embraces a limited level of these sounds and, as a result, it struggles. "We must break out of this limited circle of sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds".

Answer: True

This is hardly a surprise. Most musical scholars agree that industrial music originated from the British band Throbbing Gristle. The band arose from the performance art collective known as COUM Transmissions. This group operated between the years 1969 to 1976 and most of their art and performances were a cause for outrage, so much so that Tory MP Nicholas Fairbairn labelled them the "wreckers of Western civilization". Four members of COUM, notably its founders Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti, along with Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson and Chris Carter would split from them and form Throbbing Gristle.

As their music was not in the mainstream, many industrial musicians would use shock tactics as a means of getting noticed, not necessarily to sell records. For example, Monte Cazazza was known for producing images that were extremely obscene and anti-social. Boyd Rice, who performed under the name NON, would turn the amplitude levels up in his performances so that they hovered at the human pain threshold.

British music journalist Jon Savage, when interviewed for the "Industrial Culture Handbook" (1983) explained that shock tactics were one of the five elements that were the embodiment of industrial music culture. He explains that it was designed so that the artist could "achieve a higher level of communication with the receiver, one must shatter the automatization barrier formed by living in a world filled with modern media".

Answer: Kraftwerk

It is important to note that Kraftwerk were not just an influence on industrial music but, since the early part of the 1970s, they influenced a wide range of popular music. The band began as a duo made up of Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider in Dusseldorf in 1969. Wolfgang Flur joined the band in 1974 and Karl Bartos would make them a quartet in 1975.

They arrived on the German music scene at a point when the country was enjoying an explosion of great experimentation in the medium. Their (Kraftwerk's) use of electronic equipment such as synthesizers, drum machines, and vocoders was seen as pioneering and a great link between the German avant-garde and popular music. Pascal Bussy, in his 2005 book "Kraftwerk: Man, Machine and Music", was highly complimentary of them when he declared "without them there would have been no hip-hop, no house, no ambient music, no electro and even Michael Jackson". With their sparse arrangements and their repetitive rhythms, their music was soon labelled "robot music", and this dehumanization of the music was the very thing that appealed to early industrialists.

There is argument from some scholars that their music is part of the industrial music genre (which is fair enough) and some that would argue that they were the founders of it. The generally accepted view of the latter is that they were influencers of, rather than developers of, the genre.

Answer: Throbbing Gristle

Most scholars agree that the birth of industrial music occurred in London in the year 1976 and its parents were Throbbing Gristle. The original members were Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson and Chris Carter who'd separated themselves from the extreme performance art movement COUM Transmission. Their intent was "to explore the psychological, visual and aural territory suggested by the term 'industrial'". To this end they formed their own label, Industrial Records", and released their debut album, "The Second Annual Report" the following year, 1977. The album did not meet with favourable reviews, Uncut magazine famously describing it as "a dystopian churn of smoke and asbestos dust". However, it is notable for the slogan it carried "Industrial Music for Industrial People" and the birth of a new genre.

Whilst it is difficult to segment the history of a genre when only a short period of time has elapsed, it is generally seen that the "first wave" of industrial music is represented by the period between 1976 and 1982. This time frame acknowledges underground music and musicians with the industrial mindset that were either directly linked to Industrial Records or influenced by the label.

Answer: Cabaret Voltaire

Chris Watson was inspired by the musical gadgetry of Brian Eno and was moved toward experimenting with electronic devices, tape loops and sound collages. His band, Cabaret Voltaire, was formed when he teamed up with like minded musician Richard Kirk, also an Eno devotee, and Kirk's friend Stephen Mallinder. It's fair to say that their early experiments were not well met. At one of their first shows they were attacked by the audience who were demanding rock and roll. Despite this they managed to refine their work and, whilst it has been labelled "old school" it soon became the most recognized version of the industrial genre. The future directions in sound and style for industrial music would find their genesis in the work of Cabaret Voltaire.

(Footnote) The influence of Dada - The Cabaret Voltaire is a famous Zurich nightclub that was founded in 1916 and was a pivotal centre for the dada movement.

Answer: False

In fact they guarded their independence fiercely. They separated themselves from mainstream music and were totally responsible for their own distribution. Throbbing Gristle formed their own label, Industrial Records, and most industrial artists followed suit. Jon Savage in the "Industrial Cultural Handbook" (1983) would identify this independence as one of the five cultural elements of the genre.

Some feel that this independence stemmed from lessons learned by the explosion of punk rock in the mid 1970s. There was disillusionment among industrialists in respect to punk rock about its failure to fully reject the mainstream. Added to this is that with punk's popularity, record labels were quickly looking to exploit the craze by cherry-picking elements of punk and marrying it with pop to (hopefully) form a new hybrid that would appeal to a wider market. In the eyes of the industrial music fraternity this was akin to "selling out".

Answer: Lesley Gore

In creating this quiz, one of the first problems I encountered was that I had little idea what industrial music was. Hence, a lot of research was need and listening to a fair deal of "noise" on YouTube was also in the equation. The next issue I had was that one of the limitations of a music quiz is that it is difficult to put forward a visual representation of something that is audible. This is the best that I could come with (more later).

Boyd Rice was one of the early pioneers of industrial music and he performed under the name of NON. The keys to his work were his experiments which were highly innovative and stretched the imagination. He created a roto-guitar which, basically, was an electric guitar with a fan attached to it. This created a sound that was a drone full of distorted noise that sounded like a turboprop engine. He released LPs with off-centre holes so the discs could be played at alternate speeds. However, the one that caught my eye was the Lesley Gore recording. Some sources indicate that this was a public release but, in what appears to be an interview transcript Boyd confirms the creation but denies its release.

Lesley Gore's debut single was "It's My Party (and I'll Cry If I Want to)" and it was a huge success. To build on that success of the single her label thought that it was a good idea for her to record an album built around the word "cry", hence, on the LP, there were songs like "Cry Me a River", "Cry and You Cry Alone", "Judy's Turn to Cry"... Boyd placed his tape recorder near his phonograph and pressed record every time that Lesley sang the word "cry" and then placed this into a loop. This, I feel, is a perfect illustration of one of the "cut and paste" techniques employed by industrial musicians. Did the public get to hear it? It appears not. In Boyd's own words "it's probably still on my Wikipedia page, I mean people are still talking about it. It's like one weird thing I did 33 years ago and it was never even released."

Answer: Electronic Body Music

Staying out of the mainstream did two things for industrial music. First, it gave it a sense of ambiguity, which meant that its applications as a soundscape were significantly broader and second, it didn't install boundaries for creativeness. Then, when industrial music became linked with the dance genres of the 1980 its versatility and uses exploded with the dance craze. In an article published by Kembrew McLeod in the "Journal of Popular Music Studies" (2001) he indicates that new sub-genres were being invented on a monthly basis, if not sooner. This was a significant shift for industrial music. Whereas the focus of the first wave was to get a political message across, the new wave was starting to re-interpret these sounds and begin to make meaningful (read that as 'saleable') music.

At the forefront of this dance boom was Belgian group Front 242 who employed a range of machine-like samples and shouted vocals into beats that were bursting with energy to create their sound. It was Front 242 who concocted the phrase "EBM" and used it as a means to describe, not just their style of music, but to bring under its banner a whole range of dance orientated music such as synth-pop, Belgian new-beat, acid house and trance, among others. Front 242 became one of the faces of the "Rivethead" culture. By the mid 1980s their live shows were becoming progressively aggressive, which led to them influencing fashions and hairstyles. Commando boots, flak jackets, eyeliner, cyber dreads and partial cuts became the order of the day and new trends.

Answer: Ministry

Ministry began life in 1981 as a synth-pop outfit but, towards the end of the 1980s began adding metal guitar riffs to their sound, which drew them to the wider alternative-rock audience. After struggling with their first two albums, "With Sympathy" (1983) and "Twitch" (1986) they struck gold with their new approach and the album "The Land of Rape and Honey" (1988). These were followed by the abovenamed albums with the latter, "Psalm 69", achieving platinum status in the United States.

Nine Inch Nails followed them down this path by changing the focus of the lyrics from being politically motivated to becoming more personal in nature and also following traditional song structures.

The new found popularity of Ministry, Nine Inch Nails and, to a lesser extent, German band KMFDM presented industrial music with an interesting conundrum. In much the same way that IM pointed the finger at punk rock in the 1970s for "selling out" it now found itself in a similar spot where the label "industrial" is being worn as a badge of honor. For example, Korn, after their success with their debut (self-titled) album in 1994 were asked what type of music they played, they responded by saying "we sound industrial". Tower Records, in their review of the band's 1998 album "Follow the Leader", remarked "combines streamlined metal with ominous industrial touches". Yes they're small observations, and yes, the genre may be evolving into something different but one wonders if this is true of the vision the early pioneers had. If not, is a good thing or not?