This essay will examine the context and history of the genre named 'industrial music', identifying the social and historical factors present at the time when the genre was created, and highlighting the morals and values that industrial musicians seek to depict. I will also examine how this genre is marketed and promoted.

Industrial music has very definite beginnings in the performance art that emerged just after the turn of the century, and keeps a lot of their musical characteristics and moral convictions. Both Dadaism and Futurism are difficult movements to define, and are loath to have themselves labelled; but this is in itself a feature and one that is continued in industrial music. Tristan Tzara, a prominent Dada artist, wrote, "The true Dadas are against Dada," but, according to the stereotype, they were a movement of radical cultural revolt. A revolt against art by artists themselves, who denounced the conception of reality which assumed that the world was organised according to humanly intelligible laws.

Similarly, Futurism saw art as a reflection of nature, and sought to draw to the attention of the masses that industry had become the new nature, and this was a sad state of affairs. They saw new industrial developments, such as the telephone and the automobile, as having profound effects on the psyches of those who used them, of which these consumers were unaware.

Eventually, performance art branched out into music, as Luigi Russolo said in 1913 in his manifesto of the Art of Noise, "Western culture to date had accepted only a narrow segment of those infinite possibilities of sound that make music. It is necessary to break this restricted circle of pure sounds and conquer the infinite variety of 'noise sounds'" Following this is a list of the types of noises Russolo felt should be used as music, including roars, thunders, hisses, buzzes, yells and laughs. He subsequently constructed his own instruments that were to produce sounds unheard of using conventional instruments, and called them 'noise intoners'.

With the continuing development of new technology ultimately came the first electronic music studio. This was made in 1948 in Paris, and was built by Pierre Schaeffer, a French radio broadcaster. In this studio, using microphones, phonographs, variable speed tape recorders and sound effect records he created a new art form, musique concrete. This style was so named because it used sounds that were found in the industrial scenes within major cities, and 'cut and paste' them together to make structured musical pieces. The music created sounded very spacey, eerie and very futuristic and there was very little sense of a rhythm; the music just seemed to flow and evolve.

One celebrated composer in this style is John Cage (1912 - 1992), who mainly wrote in a minimalist, abstract style, but did use musique concrete to achieve this. He also kept some of the experimentalist opinions of the performance artists, stating, "Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise... Whether the sound of a truck at 50mph, rain, or static between radio stations, we find noise fascinating...[I intend] to capture and control these sounds, to use them, not as sound effects, but as musical instruments.." 2. Other composers to use this experimental genre, who came under the stamp of modernist or minimalist are Philip Glass, Arnold Shoenberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen and, slightly preceding the birth of the music studio, Eric Satie . These 'classical' composers sought to push the boundaries of the harmony and structure of classical music, using either electronic sounds, or techniques such as serialism - a method, devised by Shoenberg, of choosing notes and rhythms randomly.

The development of new musical technology indeed plays an important part in the industrial genre, and the use of electricity to produce sound can be traced back as far as 1837, when Dr. C G Page reported his accidental discovery of what he called 'galvanic music'. This initially involved the generation of a ringing tone using horseshoe-shaped magnets and a spiral of copper wire. However, the first electronic musical instrument came much later, in 1874, with Elisha Gray's 'musical telegraph', a 2 octave polyphonic electric organ. Later on, around the 1920s, instruments such as the Theramin and others were developed, thanks to Lee De Forest's invention of the thermionic valve. These were embraced by adventurous composers, such as those mentioned above, and also including Oliver Messian and Edgard Varese.

Industrial music is sometimes said to have immediately followed the demise of punk. In a lot of ways industrial music can be seen as an appendage to punk, sharing it's rejection of everything mainstream, and it's anger at corporate and governmental control. But although the basic urge to boycott the system was universal to these two genres, their approach was entirely different, and thus industrial could be described as the maturation of this irate and reckless style, choosing to portray their values in a more thought out and cunning way than the empty rebellion of punk, so as to avoid the eventual painfully ironic commercialisation and regulation that punk quickly saw. It chose to look at the demise of culture in a more long term view than punk, and, like punk unsuccessfully attempted to do, had an extremely estranged relationship with the music industry mainstream, going out of it's way to distance themselves from commercialisation. This was a common theme among the immediate post-punk bands, but formed a essential part of what industrial music believed in.

Industrial music was influenced as well by the surroundings in which the artists found themselves. Following the successful rebuilding of Britain after the second world war, the environment - visually - was seen as a mass of reinforced concrete and uniform, practical, and cheaply made buildings. And while the economy re-established itself, the use of new technological advances began to situate themselves among the everyday lives of people in Britain, around the late 60s and early 70s, such as use of the telephone, automobiles and television. Also, the impact of international travel and new means of communication meant the population was looking towards the future. Industrial music embraced this, choosing to reflect the emerging unvaried and standardised way of living by proclaiming the harmony of the post war culture as a sham, and seeking to make existence authentic and fully lived by highlighting the gruesome twists in everyday life, effectively throwing civilisation back in the faces of the civilised.

The same rebuilding had also happened in Germany, and faced with a very similar economically stable yet culturally destitute situation as Britain, it's musician's were influenced in an equal way. The stylised German genre named Krautrock was a huge influence on the industrial style, and was a mixture of experimentalism and a rock n roll attitude, with hints of progressive and psychedelic characteristics, and also displaying the beginnings of techno music and a punk attitude. Incorporating bands such as Faust, Can and Neu!, Krautrock influenced a multitude of styles still present today, often to the ignorance of the artists involved. Like industrial, the genre kept itself underground, but, in contrast, actively labelled itself as Krautrock, by titling albums things like "Mr Kraut's Jinx" and "Rastakrautpasta" and kept it's characteristics constant and definable.

Almost unanimously, the first industrial record is identified as Throbbing Gristle's first release in 1977. However, it was not hailed immediately as the emergence of an important new genre, in fact it was released independently and was largely unknown until the technological advances in music in the 80s and 90s brought electronica to the people's attention. It was only retrospectively that this record was realised for what it was, and today is a rare collectors item selling for £70 a time. Throbbing Gristle were originally a performance art group, named Coum Transmissions, and it was only when TG began to release solely music on the 'Industrial Records' label in a slightly more consumable style that the genre got it's name. The label was given that name as a take on music and culture as an industry.

This independent label slowly recruited artists with similar values, such as Monte Cazazza, Leather Nun and SPK. However, they occasionally enlisted some typical pop acts, or other wildly different genres to their label, in order to confuse anyone who thought they had figured out the label's house style.

Throbbing Gristle, Monte Cazazza and the scary-even-for-industrial Whitehouse were mainly performance art based, and it was only slightly later bands, particularly Cabaret Voltaire, that were more studious and musical in their approach to the genre, bringing the strict beats of drum machines into the mix and forming industrial into a genre that could be danced to. Most industrial artists, such as 23 Skidoo and Non (Boyd Rice), find a happy medium.

Industrial music's attempts to appear undefinable are almost successful, however it is still possible to identify some universal traits and musical characteristics that the style shows. One commentator on the industrial genre defined it as such, "Industrial music is a type of popular music characterised by heavy percussion, synthesised or electronic melodies, distorted and/or manipulated vocals, and cut-and-paste construction." The style is also characterised by it's portrayal almost solely by angry white males. Indeed, this is what most industrial music contains, but it is the end product of a much more varied and abstract background. Perhaps industrial music can be seen as what the performance artists were trying to achieve - to regulate and contain noise sounds in a musical structure. However, the genre still remains healthily abstract, in order to avoid the pitfalls of commercialisation such as punk saw. Industrial musicians are not mere pranksters, but have a definite social agenda to prove. It is a continuing intermittent self-denial that keeps the industrial genre credible and loyal to it's values.

Along with it's criticism and idealism, industrial music also contained a lot of black humour. Throbbing Gristle jokingly referred to their fanbase as 'Psychic Youth Rallies' comparing them to military lines, and subsequently military fashion became popular for industrial music fans. This also reflected their distaste for the uniformity of the surrounding architecture and post war culture in general.

Fundamentally, their mission was to break the rose coloured glasses with which society and the individuals therein shielded themselves from the harsher realities of life and, by shocking as they entertained (or shocking instead of entertaining), to de-condition people who had come to accept televised glamorised violence and horror. In essence, putting the pain back into suffering.

Industrial artists are very careful about how their music is marketed. Because of their anger at the increasing corporisation of society, especially in the music business, they went out of their way to remain 'underground'. Always staying on independent labels, and by relying on word of mouth and fanzines. Fanzines are in general produced by one person, or a group of friends, working from their homes, and consist of a series of black and white xeroxed sheet stapled together incorporating hand drawn graphics. They provide a credible alternative to the published media and are usually focussed totally on one particular artist or group, or sometimes on a particular genre or area of the world. for publicity, the artists managed this quite successfully.

Producers and writers of fanzines do not need to work to deadlines, or worry about censorship or copyright, and this made them the perfect form of publicity for industrial music, as it was in keeping with the style's morals. The most influential industrial fanzines included Re/Search, Stabmetal, Vox, Flowmotion and Search and Destroy.

Also, industrial gigs were not played at the usual venues. In order to rely on word of mouth as advertising, bands such as Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire were more likely to be found performing in small schools, cinemas, little known clubs and some underground anarchist hang-outs.

To accompany their quest to remain unidentifiable using constant hypocrisy, industrial artists frequently bootlegged themselves, taping live concerts and selling them on to fans themselves. This also reinforced their chosen medium of word of mouth, and eliminated any offending corporate control over the distribution of their music.

Their aim from using these types of marketing was also to turn the passive consumer into an active creator, and indeed these mediums were probably chosen because of their cheap and easily distributable nature. By helping with the distribution of the bootlegged cassettes in the underground network of tapes that stretched across Britain, and by producing and distributing the fanzines, fans of industrial music were turned into busy supporters of the genre's values.

The industrial style is a hard genre to define, as the artists make a point of constant self-contradiction, and go out of their way to make their music difficult for the masses to get hold of. Nevertheless, the music can be characterised by excessive use of technology and using 'noise' as music; incorporating feelings of anger, and attempting to provoke disgust in it's listeners. Also, it is quite easy to distinguish where the genre originated, and it still retains it's original objectives. This style of music is still present in hybrids of the genre today, such as 'industrial rock' and 'industrial techno', and certainly the use of technology in music is on a constant increase. However, as Boyd Rice stated at the height of his career, "How can noise progress… you can only get it less noisier and more musical or more structured."