INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - THE INDUSTRIAL RECORDS STORY

1984 was the year that I became deeply infatuated with all things Throbbing Gristle. Thanks to a few all night "altered states" listening sessions, my perception of their music and how it was created was completely reconfigured. With this neural rewiring in place, I was able to appreciate aspects of their sound and techniques I was never able to perceive before. But TG were more than just a band, they were the architects of a movement and used their independently operated corporate identity, Industrial Records, to help give other artists exposure and a leg up on getting their products out in the market as well. I wasn't really aware of the full extent of this aspect of their activities until Illuminated Records issued the retrospective compilation album, The Industrial Records Story, in 1984.

The album collected together several singles and a selection of album tracks from the various artists who had been released by Industrial Records in the last few years of its initial phase of activity, ending in 1981. As well as a couple of TG singles, the LP featured Monte Cazazza, The Leather Nun, Robert Rental & Thomas Leer, SPK, Cabaret Voltaire, Elisabeth Welch, Clock DVA, Dorothy & William S. Burroughs. With the exception of Cabaret Voltaire, this album was my initial exposure to pretty much everyone else present. And it was much more than just a collection of "industrial" noise. There was an astonishing variety of music and sound on the album, demonstrating quite clearly the range of interests within the label and the people behind it.

Though the LP kicks off with TG at their most abrasive, blaring forth with the infamous, We Hate You (Little Girls) and then serves up a nightmarish junkie fever dream for Mother's Day from Monte Cazazza, things start to diversify with the dirge of burn victim post-punk from The Leather Nun. Next up is the synth-pop dreaminess of Rental & Leer, but the biggest shifts are saved for the arrival of Elisabeth Welch and her heartbreaking version of Stormy Weather. The single was released because it was used by experimental film maker, Derek Jarman, in his film, The Tempest. Recorded in 1933, the song is a stark contrast to the rest of the album, yet still manages to work in context with its mood of gloom and loss.

The album concludes with a section from William S. Burroughs' album, Nothing Here Now but the Recordings. On its own, this track became my introduction to his works and represented a sample of something which had never been given serious consideration before. It was a concrete example of the "cut-up" theory in its earliest incarnation. The story behind the manifestation of this album is worth an entire book on its own as Genesis P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson were the first to be given access to this material by Burroughs, who considered the experiments of no real consequence until he was convinced otherwise by Gen & Sleazy. It was a critical introduction to a vital and expansive technique, easily adaptable to nearly any medium.

The album has never been reissued since its initial release, though all the material contained on it has been reissued separately.

INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - LUSTMORD, HERESY

On February 18, 1980, about 20 people tucked into a compact basement studio in the the Hackney borough of London to spend an hour watching Throbbing Gristle invent an album.  One of those lucky few was a fellow by the name of Brian Williams.  After this event, he went on to work with SPK for a bit and then created Lustmord.  The first LP he did under this moniker in 1981 was decent enough industrial noise, but Brian had something more insidious brewing in the depths.  It wasn't until his appearance on The Fight Is On compilation in 1985 that this new direction would start to reveal itself, followed up and more fully fleshed out on his 1986 sophomore release, Paradise Disowned.  But it was his third album in 1990, Heresy, which would put into practice the potential he'd been building towards.

The fundamentals of ambient music had been lingering in the alternative music scene for nearly two decades with the likes of Eno and some of the German bands of the 1970s.  The KLF brought it into the "rave" scene's emerging "chill rooms" with their 1990 Chill Out album.  Lustmord took this moody, spacious aesthetic someplace else, however.  He took it into the netherworld, someplace dark and deep and resonating with subsonic looming and dooming frequencies that could conjure the most ancient Mephistophelian deities. 

Heresy wasn't so much released as it emerged from the darkness and the deep.  It barely contains anything even identifiable as "musical".  It's mostly a sensation of moving air and vibrations so low and deep, they're almost imperceptible while making you feel like the ground is swelling beneath you.  You can feel the hot, slow breath of Satan himself exhaling from these depths.  This is a soundtrack for lost souls, forever doomed to wander the catacombs of eternity.  In other words, it's fucking HEAVY shit, but it doesn't need distortion or thundering drums to pull you down into itself.  You can just let go and fall into the infinite abyss. 

Heresy set the pace for pretty much every Lustmord album that came after it.  Brian would go on to refine his approach to give it even greater breadth and scope in releases like my personal favorite, The Place Where the Black Stars Hang.  But it was Heresy that staked out that territory first and deserves the credit for inspiring so many of us to grab a torch and go spelunking into these caverns of sounds for ourselves.