LeonG

(text from wikipedia & other sites and special thnks to Countess)

...the term “industrial music” was first used by Monte Cazazza, an avantgarde composer based in San Francisco, but the meaning of "industrial music" was defined in Sheffield, England. Performance artists had employed abrasive, lugubrious soundtracks for their shows since the 1960s. As the technology improved, those soundtracks became more and more extreme. The marriage of avantgarde art and avantgarde music that dated from the days of Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground was revived by the new wave, especially in California, and eventually landed in Europe. Sheffield became the emblem of the industrial society. Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, the inventors of "industrial music", were familiar with the noise of a factory and decided to use that noise as a metaphor for the human condition at the end of the 20th century. They began composing lengthy suites of electronic noise that were inspired by the creaking, the hissing and the thuds of machines, by the metronomes, by the clockwork mechanisms of a factory. However, the core theme of the music played by Throbbing Gristle was not science-fiction: it was pornography and horror. Chris Carter, Peter Christopherson, Neil Megson (Genesis P-Orridge) and Christine Carol Newby (Cosey Fanni Tutti) were more interested in exploring disturbing states of the mind than painting the future of humankind. Their focus was on the traumas of ordinary souls, souls lost to the machinery of the industrial society. Their manifesto and masterpiece, Second Annual Report (1977), was subtitled "music from the death factory". Its pieces used cacophonous electronics, terrified screams, atonal guitars and found sounds, to create a ritual of therapeutic shock and cathartic liberation. They employed free-jazz improvisation and winked at the avantgarde techniques of "musique concrete" and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

The sound of the metropolis that came alive in their suites was the sound of the lives sacrificed to the machines, not the sound of the machines that used those lives. Their performances coupled this "noise" with multimedia shows that were no less provocative: Newby pioneered performance art based on bodily fluids and all sorts of erotic fetishism. Throbbing Gristle never stopped producing this kind of Freudian mayhems, as ..ed by the studio album Heathen Earth (1980), by the live Mission Of Dead Souls (1981) and by the soundtrack for In The Shadow Of The Sun (1984), all of which are structured around lengthy streams of consciousness and abstract sound-painting, but, at the same time, the band changed course with D.O.A. (1978), a collection of electronic vignettes inspired by Brian Eno's Before And After Science and Ron Geesin's Electrosound that, for the most part, focused on the mechanical landscape of factories, warehouses and assembly lines. The new protagonists were the machines: their cold steady rhythms, their screeching metallic noises, their symphony of inarticulate patterns. 20 Jazz Funk Greats (1979) added synthetic dance beats and simple melodies, thus opening the floodgates to disco-oriented industrial music, the progenitor of synth-pop. The parable of Cabaret Voltaire epitomized the entire industrial school: an abnormal number of releases (mostly pretentious and trivial), and a quick conversion to dance music. Initially, Richard Kirk, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson were inspired by early (pre-disco) Kraftwerk and early (pre-funk) Pink Floyd. Their early recordings, such as the album Mix-up (1978) and the EP Three Mantras (1980), boasted collage-like pieces of abrasive, distorted sounds and mechanical rhythms. Unlike Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire introduced an "eastern" element of trance. But they quickly rediscovered the song format with Red Mecca (1981) and then began propelling it with hyperkinetic funk rhythms on the double EP 2x45 (1982). The albums that followed were stylish electronic dance music that had nothing in common with industrial music.
The multimedia shows created by Adi Newton's Clock DVA differed from the other Sheffield horror-shock experiences because they focused on jams that bridged jazz-rock and acid-rock, as ..ed on White Souls In Black Suits (1980). The better structured and danceable ballads of Thirst (1981) introduced a visionary artist, capable of both epic and apocalyptic feats. The sound of Clock DVA continued to evolve with Advantage (1983), this time towards "noir" atmospheres and Roxy Music-like decadence. Newton's arrangements became baroque on subsequent albums, starting with Buried Dreams (1989), which showed a disproportionate attention to form rather than content. The spirit of industrial music was related to punk-rock (if nothing else for being so radical) but the means employed were quite different, as industrial combos shunned the traditional rock trio of guitar, drums and bass in favor of electronic instruments. The spirit was rebellious and outrageous, just like punk-rock, but the sound was hardly rock at all. The spirit of industrial music was certainly in sync with the American "new wave". Pere Ubu's "modern dance" and Devo's de-volution rock had just addressed the same theme: individual alienation in the industrial society. It is a theme that had been explored before by rock musicians as varied as Frank Zappa, Brian Eno, Kraftwerk and Neu. While the childish, barbaric, anarchic structure of industrial compositions seemed akin to what futurism and dadaism had preached at the beginning of the century, the sinister and melancholy tone of those compositions set them apart from anything else that writers and artists had conceived before. Only science fiction had explored the emotional realm of runaway technology, of robots that take over the world, of psychological holocausts. Industrial music viewed technology as a nightmare. It was as "negative" as punk-rock. Furthermore, the shocking nature of those soundtracks led the perpetrators to indulge in porno and horror overtones that added to the general sense of apocalypse.
When both the leadings bands, Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret, abandoned the harsh, gruesome overtones of their early recordings and embraced dance beats and synthetic melodies, the rest of the industrial scene followed suit. "Industrial" came to be an ambiguous term, referring both to the radical sound paintings of early Throbbing Gristle and to the danceable melodic vignettes of subsequent recordings. Industrial music benefited, like punk-rock, from the boom of the independent record industry. The "indies" allowed a generation of obscure avantgarde musicians (mostly amateurs) to start a band and cut records. The "indie" phenomenon is also responsible for the over-indulgence of these musicians, who began releasing lengthy albums of mediocre music with no regard for the artistic value. For the first time in history, the "do it yourself" spirit was applied to electronic music. It was the electronic equivalent of garage-rock: the spirit meant more than the skills. On the other hand, the sheer number of record labels allowed a plethora of sub-genres. The term "industrial" merely identified a community of avantgarde musicians. The individual members often had little in common. Some were architecting electronic symphonies of musique concrete (Nurse With Wound, Zoviet France); some were experimenting with rhythm and texture (This Heat, 23 Skidoo, Hula); some were adopting an esoteric stance (Psychic Tv, Coil); some were weaving static sheets of drones (Dome, i.e. former Wire members Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis); some were merely painting walls of white noise (Martin Bowes' Attrition, Nigel Ayers' Nocturnal Emissions, Metabolist, British Electric Foundation, i.e. former Human League members Ian Marsh and Martyn Ware, Cranioclast, Whitehouse, Konstruktivists); some were unleashing wild torrents of percussive sounds (Test Dept, David Jackman's Organum ); some were re-interpreting Brian Eno's ambient music and ethnic trance (Lustmord, Andrew Hulme's O Yuki Conjugate); some were experimenting with sound manipulation (Bryan Jones' Muslimgauze, who made more than 100 albums of tape-manipulated ethnic voices and instruments); and some were simply pursuing synth-pop (Chris & Cosey of Throbbing Gristle). Steven Stapleton's project, Nurse With Wound, harked back to the satirical and iconoclastic experiments of Dadaism and Futurism. His early, formative works, such as Homotopy To Marie (1982) and Sylvie And Babs (1985), were similar in spirit to the Fugs' Virgin Forest, to Frank Zappa's breakneck operettas and to the Residents' multiform suites. His art of the collage turned decidedly cacophonous with works such as the EPs Gyllenskold (1984) and Brained By Falling Masonry (1984), but achieved a sort of "classicism" on the album Spiral Insana (1986). Later works would veer towards a type of ambient music akin to the static, buzzing pieces of minimalist composers such as LaMonte Young and Alvin Lucier. The early collages (1982) by Zoviet France were even more savage than Nurse With Wound's, evoking a cross between "musique concrete" and tribal music. The monumental double-albums Mohnomishe (1983) and Eostre (1984) reduced the impact of their "wall of noise", but retained the two key elements that set Zoviet France apart: a trance-oriented approach and "lo-fi" electronics. The tetralogy of "Charm, Ceremony, Chance, Prophecy" ("CCCP"), begun with Misfits, Loony Tunes And Squalid Criminals (1986), marked a move towards a less hostile and more atmospheric sound, which culminated with the eastern-sounding trance/dance of Shadow Thief Of The Sun (1991). This Heat, a keyboards-bass-guitar trio, coined a unique style that borrowed from progressive-rock, jazz-rock, electronic music, industrial music and, last but not least, German avant-rock of Can, Neu and Faust. Tape loops, overdubs, sound effects and noise abound on their first album and masterpiece, This Heat (1979). The austere and erudite approach to composition, and an impressive repertory of musical tricks, amounted to little less than a manual of new harmony. Abandoning the difficult rhythms and returning to the song format, Deceit (1981) popularized the idea in the era of synth-pop. 23 Skidoo, mainly Fritz Haaman's project, extended Cabaret Voltaire's research program first with the tribal polyrythms of the EP Seven Songs (1982), that also contained an early fusion of jazz, dub and ambient elements (predating "illbient" by a decade), then with the cosmic-messianic suite of The Culling Is Coming (1983), that employed Tibetan percussions and electronic noise, and finally with the dub-funk percussive monster Urban Gamelan (1984). Psychic Tv, the new project by ex-Throbbing Gristle founding member Genesis P-Orridge (Neil Megson), found a way to bridge the old world of industrial music and the new world of "acid house". Test Dept played a hostile barrage of "found" percussions (particularly metallic objects), halfway between Neu and Einsturzende Neubaten. The pretext was used on Beating A Retreat (1984) for broader excursions in sound, and lent itself to large-scale live performances. Lustmord, i.e. veteran industrial composer Brian Williams, adopted the vocabularies of cosmic and ambient music at a deeper psychological level on albums such as Paradise Disowned (1984) and especially Heresy (1990). A second phase began with the horror concept Monstrous Soul (1992) Primordial Atom and the two lengthy suites of The Place Where The Black Stars Hang (1994), Aldebaran Of The Hyades and Metastatic Resonance. Several of these projects shared a common destiny. They began with highly individual styles that borrowed from the avantgarde. Due to the limitations of their techniques and tools, those styles sounded like an electronic update of the free-form suites that were popular among acid-rock practitioners of the 1960s. Finally, by the late 1980s, almost all of them had converted to dance music. Towards the end of the decade, "industrial" had become mainly the name of a dance. Australia and Australian expats contributed in a significant manner to the genre.
Bands such as SPK and Severed Heads were as qualified and as pretentious as their British counterparts. On the other hand, James Thirlwell, better known as Foetus and also known as Clint Ruin, Steroid Maximus and Wiseblood, became a protagonist of both the London (1978) and the New York (1983) counterculture, and, ultimately, one of the most significant musicians of the decade, wedding the punk aesthetics to classical-music ambitions. Bard of the most reckless nihilism, quintessential prophet of "trash" as a form of art, Foetus promoted a repulsive hyper-punk persona that served well to frame his musical journey. Morbidly attracted to the most repulsive manifestations of human nature, both physical ones (vomit, excrements, sperm) and psychological ones (torture, sadism, homicide), Foetus ripped apart in a paroxysm of destruction any residual moral value. His oeuvre is an odyssey of aberrations, a catalog of hells. Foetus was an idealist of self-destruction, and global destruction was his utopia. Hole (1984) was a chaotic carousel of garage-rock, swing, hip-hop, Captain Beefheart-ian blues, world-music, industrial rhythms, doo-wop harmonies, found noises, electronic effects, heavy-metal riffs and symphonic staccatos. Nail (1985), perhaps his masterpiece, was even more powerful, and in an "evil" way. Every single sound is exaggerated, overdone, dramatized. This album's songs are poems carved with a jack-hammer into the marble of a gravestone. A touch of retro.. attitude (not too different from Frank Zappa's ventures into orchestral and jazz music) is drowned into magniloquent, sinister, gloomy, tragic, terrifying industrial "symphonies". But, ultimately, this was also a heartbreaking cry of grief that soars in a landscape of desolation and depravation. Thaw (1988) refined the idea behind these pieces for savage electronics, frantic orchestra and thundering polyrhythms, the idea of sheer aural density and power, the idea of massive, relentless, infernal atmospheres, the idea of a Wagner-ian emotional intensity with a catastrophic (not heroic) emphasis. In a sense, Foetus became the first classical composer of the punk civilization. Quilombo (1991) and Gondwanaland (1992), the first two Steroid Maximus albums, presented a less austere and less destructive musician. They were schizophrenically divided into avantgarde pieces and big-band swing parodies. Quilombo managed to be playful while flirting with serialism, minimalism and musique concrete. Gash (1995), which features the super-group of guitarist Marc Ribot, drummer Vincent Signorelli (Unsane) and bassist Tod Ashley (Cop Shoot Cop), completed the metamorphosis presenting a gargantuan essay in the sampling and manipulation of musical genres. Foetus' major compositions are sonic allegories, behind whose harmonic disorder, torrential dissonances and percussive violence one can guess unspeakable, brutal and obscene acts at both the levels of the individual psyche and the collective subconscious. Foetus' vision is one of extreme pessimism, of moral (if not physical) apocalypse: the individual is reduced to a demon-like pervert, and society is reduced to one of hell's circles. Coherently with this vision, his music is also apocalyptic, the kind of soundtrack one can expect to hear while being marched towards hell's gates after the universal judgement. The effect of Foetus' scores is often capable of evoking the end of the world.

Post-industrial is a term used to refer to a grouping of music genres related to the original usage of the term Industrial Music by Industrial Records through either influence or direct involvement, such as power noise, power electronics, technoid, types of experimental music and dark ambient. The usage of the term differs to that of alternative electronic as it also includes genres which use traditional instrumentation accompanied by experimental electronic instrumentation such as neofolk and martial music. Where industrial music was largely defined by the group Throbbing Gristle and the Industrial Records label, a considerable strain of post-industrial arguably begins with the post-Throbbing Gristle project Psychic TV in the early 1980's, and ideas hatched at that time. A number of key post-industrial music projects directly spun off early Psychic TV, or were closely connected or influenced, by PTV and/or by its associated religious network Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth.

NEW BEAT - TECHNO BEAT - ELECTRONIC BODY MUSIC (EBM) Belgium coined one of the most successful currents of industrial dance, "electronic body music", a by-product of latter-period Cabaret Voltaire, influenced by disco-music and science-fiction. Geography (1982), by Front 242, was the milestone recording. Then came Klinik (and their offshoot Dive), Neon Judgement, Vomito Negro, etc. Commercially speaking, this industrial school was even more influential than the British school. A similar style developed in Vancouver, Canada. On their early albums, such as Bites (1985), Skinny Puppy delivered a cyber-punk mixture of melodies that were hardly melodic at all, tight cadences by a platoon of drum-machines and ghostly electronics, although they would reach a more cohesive sound on the concept VIVisectVI (1988) and on the Ministry-influenced Rabies (1989). Front Line Assembly were also followers of Cabaret Voltaire and prophets of the cyber-punk generation. Their most refined recording was the technological poem State Of Mind (1988). Bill Leeb (whose real name is Wilhelm Schroeder) conducted at the same time a number of parallel projects: Cyberaktif, Noise Unit (Front Line Assembly's evil alter-ego), the progressive-house experiment Intermix, the ambient/new-age Delerium, Will and Synaesthesia. The "electronic body music" of these bands from Belgium and Canada laid the foundations for the alternative dance-music of the 1990s. In Germany, a number of projects were purveyors of noise and anarchy well beyond the proclaims of industrial music, bridging punk aesthetics and expressionism: Der Plan, whose Geri Reig (1979) was one of the earliest experimental albums of their generation; Die Krupps, who debuted with the wild cacophony of Stahlwerksymphony (1981) before converting to metal-industrial dance music; P16D4, who toyed with musique concrete and electronic improvisation on Nichts Niemand Nirgends Nie (1985); Die Haut, whose Schnelles Leben (1982) was one of the most radical works of the national school; HNAS, whose Im Schatten Der Mohre (1987) was noise at the border between industrial, psychedelic and progressive rock. ELECTRO INDUSTRIAL (Electro - Dark Electro - Techno Industrial) In the early 1980s artists like Front 242 or Nitzer Ebb (both influenced by acts such as Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft, Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle) started to combine German electropunk with elements of the british industrial music. The result of this mixture was a straight dancable sound that was called EBM back in 1984. EBM became popular in the underground club scene, particularly in Europe. In this period the most important labels were the Belgian PIAS, Antler-Subway and KK Records, the German Techno Drome International, Animalized and Zoth Ommog, the North American Wax Trax! and the Swedish Front Music Production and Energy (later Energy Rekords). Other artists besides Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb were Die Krupps, Bigod 20, Vomito Negro, Signal Aout 42, Force Dimension, Electro Assassin, Insekt, Skinny Pyppy and Front Line Assembly. A few other groups were A Split Second (a Belgian electro-rock/new beat act), AAAK, The Weathermen, The Klinik, Borghesia, The Neon Judgement, Attrition or Ministry. These acts produced some genre-typical songs, although they were not EBM groups. Some EBM artists also had an influence on many New beat and Goa trance artists (e.g. Juno Reactor, Astral Projection, Eon Project). Between the early and the mid 1990s, many EBM artists split up or changed their musical style and began to borrow more distorted industrial elements or elements of rock music or metal. The album "Tyranny for you" and following albums from the pioneers Front 242 initiated the end of the EBM epoch of the 1980s. Nitzer Ebb, one of the most important artists, became a simply electronic rock band. Without the strength of its figureheads, electronic body music finally faded by the mid-1990s. New groups, e.g. Leather Strip, Wumpscut or Plastic Noise Experience, combining harsh distorted beats with synthesizer-driven melodies. This evolution of the dying EBM genre has been termed by the music press and labels as hardcore electro or electro-industrial or especially in Germany and South America as elektro for short (not to be confused with the hip-hop subgenre electro). Other notable artists of this era include Allied Vision, Psychopomps, Controlled Fusion, early Decoded Feedback or NVMPH. A second developed genre at this time was dark electro.

Dark electro combined sinister electronic soundscapes with grunts or croaking vocals with a special attention to despair. Important artists were yelworC, Mortal Constraint, Trial or Tri-state. An outgrowth of these genres that developed in the mid-/late-1990s and resurfaced more recently is aggrotech, which combines the basics of electro-industrial and dark electro with harsher song structures, aggressive lyrics and straight techno-influenced beats, usually distorted, of a militant, pessimistic or explicit nature. Some acts are Funker Vogt, Hocico, newer Suicide Commando and Velvet Acid Christ. Dark Electro was a term used mainly in central Europe to describe the sinister sounds of electronic music groups like Mortal Constraint, Arcana Obscura, Trial or Placebo Effect. These bands were mainly inspired by electronic/industrial acts like The Klinik and Skinny Puppy. The compositions were mostly complex arranged and mingled with horror soundscapes, and grunts or distorted vocals. A notable artist was YelworC, a group from Munich, formed in 1988. They laid the foundations of the Dark Electro movement in the early '90s and represented the first act on the well-known german label Celtic Circle Productions. Notable Artists, Evils Toy (early years…), AmGod, Placebo Effect etc.
Industrial techno is a cross between power noise, traditional industrial, and techno . It quite frequently includes trance elements and often resembles rave music while keeping the harsh sounds, noises, and fast pacing of industrial. Sampled and processed guitars are common, as are lyrics often built with a verse-chorus-verse song structure. Artists within the Industrial Techno hybrid-genre exhibit traits of dance music, pop music, and industrial music combined. Artists Funker Vogt, Numb, God Module, Birmingham 6, Insest Twins, Pow[d]er Pussy, Punch Inc., Mimetic, Tarmvred, Epsilon Minus, Sam Scumaci, Ultraviolence.

AGGRO INDUSTRIAL A seminal achievement of the latter part of the decade was the merger of industrial music with hard-rock and heavy metal, pioneered in Switzerland by the Young Gods, whose L'Eau Rouge (1989) made music by sampling heavy-metal guitars and symphonic sounds. In France, Treponem Pal used real guitars. In Canada, Numb performed brutal surgery on techno beats. Formed in Germany by keyboardist Sasha Konietzko, guitarist Nick "En" Esch and English vocalist Raymond Watts, KMFDM debuted with the tentative What Do You Know Deutschland (1986) in a derivative robotic style, but found their true voice with Naive (1992), an album that was both explosive and robotic, welding blues, dub, gospel, hip-hop and heavy-metal in a substance that was both guitar-driven and keyboards-driven. The idea was refined on Angst (1993) by incorporating the steady beats of disco-music and techno, while the guitar riffs were pushed to the fore to compete with Ministry and Nine Inch Nails, and Nihil (1995) found a closure of sort, replacing the angst with a nihilistic (but not desperate) acceptance of a grotesque futurism. However, the fusion of industrial music and heavy-metal was completed mainly by the Chicago bands. Criminal vocals, jack-hammer rhythms, and piercing guitars took over the gothic/atmospheric noise of early industrial music. Al Jourgensen's Ministry, and their Belgian offshoot, Luc Van Acker's Revolting Cocks, led the charge. Ministry's first tour de force of machine music, Twitch (1986), was still in the vein of Cabaret Voltaire but already displayed the violent fits that eventually took over The Land Of Rape And Honey (1988): guitar riffs and distortions, hammering drums, sound effects and demonic vocals gave new meaning to the word "industrial". It was heavy-metal disguised as avantgarde. The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste (1989), that featured the classic line-up of vocalist Chris Connelly, bassist Paul Barker and drummer William Rieflin, increased the dose of rhythm and guitars: Al Jourgensen was basically heading a power-trio and playing a psychotic variation on speed-metal.

Psalm 69 (1992) was not innovative at all, but contained the blasphemous anthem Jesus Built My Hot Rod (1991), with Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers on vocals, Ministry's masterpiece and a masterpiece for all of rock'n'roll. Towards the end of the decade, Chicago became the epicenter of the new industrial genre (Ministry's, not Throbbing Gristle's), thanks to a plethora of bands (My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, Die Warzau) and to the numerous projects launched in Chicago by former Killing Joke drummer Martin Atkins, notably Pigface, whose Fook (1992) was typical of his method of recycling 15 years of industrial music. From this fertile soil Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails was born, and the fate of industrial music changed dramatically. Reznor created a persona that was a cross of Dostoevsky's "demons", Goethe's Werther, Nietzsche's "ueber-mensch", and De Sade's perverts. Technically, Reznor took elements from Throbbing Gristle, Pere Ubu, Foetus and Ministry and filtered them through the new computer technology. Reznor thus changed the very meaning of "rock band": the band was him, singer and arranger. Brutal music, nihilistic lyrics and claustrophobic atmospheres turned Pretty Hate Machine (1989) into the manifesto/diary of an entire generation. Few albums better summarize the spirit of the 1990s than The Downward Spiral (1994). Each song is both a battlefield for the highest possible density of truculent sound effects and a largely-autobiographical ode-psychodrama. The thundering polyrhythms, the chaotic and cacophonous orgies, the grotesque "danse macabres", the chamber blues pieces, the harsh counterpoints, the mournful melodies were carefully assembled to deliver the sense of a man without a past or a present or a future, a man who was a pure abstraction in search of meaning, pure form in search of content. Reznor retreated towards a simpler format, albeit using the same tools (psychotic screaming, killer synths, metallic percussions, brutal distortions), on the double album Fragile (1999). Reznor showed that he was not interested in angst for the sake of angst, and cared more for meditation on his own angst; that he was not indulging in insanity but merely puzzled by it. Texas' Angkor Wat, led by guitarists Adam Grossman and Danny Lohner, coined the futuristic grindcore of When Obscenity Becomes The Norm (1989) that was both epic, hysterical and apocalyptic, while Corpus Christi (1990) was a more psychological work of morbid atmospheres.
Straddling the line between Nico, In The Nursery and medieval/exotic music, film music and industrial music, the expressionistic School of Slovenia became the first relevant experience in Eastern Europe: Autopsia, whose mid-life Kristallnacht (1994) was a gothic neo-classical symphony, Laibach, whose Nova Akropola (1985) was a collection of gloomy post-industrial ballads, and Borghesia led the pack. They had a tendency to focus on depicting horror and violence.

NOISE INDUSTRIAL (Noise - Power Noise Industrial) Noise is a sub-genre of experimental music constructed from noise as opposed to recognisable sound or pitches. "Noise" music is regarded by some as a contradiction in terms, because "noise" is generally defined as unwanted and undesigned or unintentional sound and music as the opposite (see Definition of music). However, "noise" in a more general sense refers to any extremely loud or discordant sound, and that these sounds are often the basis of noise music. Secondly, as famous noise musician Masami Akita said, "If by noise you mean uncomfortable sound, then pop music is noise to me." Noise music is not necessarily "noise" to the listeners, although it is certainly "noisy" in the more general sense of the term. Practitioners themselves do not generally refer to it as "Noise Music"; they just call it "Noise", tacking the term "music" on the end is an explanatory device only necessary among outsiders. Noise music is loosely related to industrial music, sharing its DIY ethos, independence and ethic of using "non-musical" sources. Often described as "punishing and abrasive" by those with a flair for the dramatic, Noise music can be very loud and dissonant, ranging from the free-form extreme electronic music of Merzbow and Masonna to the more sculptured sounds of Boyd Rice and Black Leather Jesus, to the cold haiku sound-scapes of Ryoji Ikeda and Sachiko M. Luigi Russolo, a Futurist painter of the very early 20th century, was perhaps the first Noise artist. His 1913 manifesto L'Arte de Rumori (The Art of Noises) stated that the industrial revolution had given modern men a greater capacity to appreciate more complex sounds. Russolo found traditional melodic music confining and envisioned Noise Music as its future replacement. He designed and constructed a number of noise-generating devices called Intonarumori and assembled a noise orchestra to perform with them.

A performance of his Gran Concerto Futuristico (1917) was met with strong disapproval and violence from the audience, as Russolo himself had predicted. None of his intoning devices have survived, though recently some have been reconstructed and used in performances. Although Russolo's works bear little resemblance to modern Noise Music, his pioneering creations cannot be overlooked as an essential stage in the evolution of this genre, and many artists are now familiar with his manifesto. Russolo was a little-known fringe character, however; mainstream composer Arnold Schoenberg's proclaimed "Emancipation of the dissonance" (the idea that music could just as well be based upon dissonance as consonance) in the early 20th century was probably the origin of noise music. By the 1920s, composers (in particular Edgard Varese and George Antheil) began to use early mechanical musical instruments--such as the player piano and the siren--to create music that referenced the noise of the modern world. In the 1930s, under the influence of Henry Cowell in San Francisco, Lou Harrison and John Cage began composing music for "junk" percussion ensembles — scouring junkyards and Chinatown antique shops for appropriately tuned brake drums, flower pots, gongs, and more. Cage started his Imaginary Landscape series in 1939, which combined elements like recorded sound, percussion, and (in the case of Imaginary Landscape #4) twelve radios. After the second world war, other composers (including G.M. Koenig, Iannis Xenakis, and Karlheinz Stockhausen) started to experiment with early synthesizers, tape machines and radio equipment to produce electronic music, often with very noisy sounds and incomprehensible structures. Much of this music has proven influential on the creators of noise music. With the advent of the radio, Pierre Schaeffer coined the term musique concrete to refer to the peculiar nature of sounds on tape, separated from the source that generated them initially. His ideas about non-referential sounds take their most extreme form in noise music, which often blurs or obscures the actions which produced the sounds while also suggesting the physicality of sound itself. The sudden affordability of home recording technology in the 1970s with the simultaneous influence of punk rock established a new aesthetic and instigated what is commonly referred to as noise music today. When anyone could produce noise, and anyone could record and distribute it, then noise music provided a way for any person (artist or non-artist) to experiment with sound as a painter might with visual material.
Power noise (also known as powernoise, rhythmic noise, noize and occasionally as distorted beat music) is a subgenre of industrial music that takes its inspiration from some of the more structured and distorted early industrial acts, such as Esplendor Geometrico. There are also influences from hardcore techno, noise and technoid. The term "power noise" was originally coined by Raoul Roucka of Noisex in 1997, with the track "United (Power Noise Movement)". Typically, power noise is based upon a distorted kick drum from a drum machine such as a Roland TR-909, uses militaristic 4/4 beats, and is usually instrumental. Sometimes a melodic component is added, but this is usually secondary to the rhythm. Power noise tracks are typically structured and danceable, but are known to be occasionally abstract. This genre is showcased at the annual Maschinenfest festival in Krefeld, Germany, as well as at Infest in Bradford, UK. Bands such as Combichrist and Dulce Liquido partially belong to the Aggrotech genre as well, depending on albums and/or tracks. The term "power noise" should not be confused with the term "power electronics", which is a subgenre of noise. Artists: Sonar, Noisuf-X, S.K.E.T. etc.

AGGROTECH Aggrotech, also referred to more recently as Terror EBM, and sometimes as Hellektro (a corruption/portmanteau of 'hell' and 'elektro') or more rarely Endzeit Elektro, is a genre that surfaced in the late 1990s. Initially used in 1993 for advertising of the Technoclub event "Spirit of Electro" in Frankfurt/Main and referring to an american concert tour with bands such as Kevorkian Death Cycle in 1996, the term grew apart from its original meaning. By the end of the 1990s, it had begun to describe an evolution of electro-industrial and dark electro typified by somewhat harsh song structures, aggressive and generally uptempo beats with a strong influence of techno music, and lyrics of a militant, pessimistic or explicit nature. Typically, the vocals are distorted to sound hoarse, harsh and without tone. Artists also frequently use atonal melodic structures. Artists: Examples of artists that could be considered aggrotech include Suicide Commando, Psyclon Nine, Feindflug, X-Fusion, Xotox, Amduscia, Virtual Embrace, Tactical Sekt, Agonoize etc etc. Older acts such as Aghast View and Wumpscut have more recently restructured their format into a mellower, less edgy style of music, while new acts like Psyclon Nine, Agonoize and Virtual Embrace have revitalized the genre to an extent. ELECTRONICA Electronica is a term that covers a wide range of electronic or electronic-influenced music. The term has been defined by some to mean modern electronic music that is not necessarily designed for the dance floor, but rather for home listening. The origins of the term are murky, although it appears to have been coined by British music paper Melody Maker in the mid-1990s, originally to describe the electronic rock band Republica. The term subsequently gained a life of its own, and became popular in the United States as a means of referring to the then-novel mainstream success of post-rave global electronic dance music. Prior to the adoption of "electronica" as a blanket term for more experimental dance music, terms such as electronic listening music, braindance and Intelligent Dance Music (IDM) were common. In the mid-1990s electronica began to be used by MTV and major record labels to describe mainstream electronic dance music made by such artists as The Chemical Brothers (who had previously been described as big beat or chemical breaks) and The Prodigy, although even at this stage it was not a particularly incisive term. It is currently used to describe a wide variety of musical acts and styles, linked by a penchant for overtly electronic production; a range which includes more popular acts such as Goldfrapp and glitchy experimental artists such as Autechre, Aphex Twin, and Boards of Canada to dub-oriented downtempo, downbeat, and trip-hop. With the explosive growth of sequencing, sampling and synthesis technology in the late 1980s, it became possible for a wider number of musicians to produce electronic music. With the advent of computer sequencers, relatively cheap computer-based recording systems and software synthesis in the late 1990s, it became possible for any home computer user to become a musician, and hence the rise in the number of "bedroom techno" acts, often consisting of a single person. A classic example of the one man electronic composer is Bill Holt's Dreamies (an early analog pioneer of electronic pop) cited by the All Music Guide as one of the finest examples of experimental pop from the era. Despite the mainstream popularity of the word "Electronica" today, it is often shunned or met with disgust by electronic musicians or former ravers. Many of the people who were actually part of the electronic and rave movements firmly believe that the word was invented by the music industry, and is just a press-word for electronic music. This is understandable, because a major part of the rave and electronic movement was an outcry against the "media machine", and many ravers and musicians did not wish for the music industry to have a large part in their lives.

This part of the electronic movement has similarities to the punk movement, in that it was not meant to be mainstream. Artists that would later become commercially successfully under the "electronic" banner such as Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers, The Crystal Method, Moby, and Underworld began to record in this early 1990s period. Underworld with its 1994 dubnobasswithmyheadman released arguably one of the defining records of the early electronica period with a blend of club beats, wedded to song writing and subtle vocals and guitar work. A focus on "songs", a fusion of styles and a combination of traditional and electronic instruments often sets apart musicians working in electronic-styles over more straight-ahead styles of house, techno and trance. This genre is also noted for far higher production values than others, featuring more layers, more original samples and fewer "presets", and more complex rhythm programming. The more abstract Autechre and Aphex Twin around this time were releasing early records in the "intelligent techno" or so-called intelligent dance music (IDM) style, while other Bristol-based musicians such as Tricky, Leftfield, Massive Attack and Portishead were experimenting with the fusion of electronic textures with hip-hop, R&B rhythms to form what became known as trip-hop. Later extensions to the trip hop aesthetic around 1997 came from the highly influential Vienna-based duo of Kruder & Dorfmeister, whose blunted, dubbed-out, slowed beats became the blueprint for the new style of downtempo. Roni Size commanded attention in the UK as exemplars of the drum n bass genre. Around the mid-1990s with the success of the big beat-sound exemplified by The Chemical Brothers in the United States, music of this period began to be produced with a much higher budget, production values, and with more layers than most dance music before or after (since it was backed by major record labels and MTV as the "next big thing"). By the late 1990s artists like Moby were pop stars in their own right, releasing albums and performing regularly (sometimes in stadium-sized arenas, such had the popularity of electronic dance music grown). In fact, the status as the next big thing turned out to be shortlived, and some argued that this period exemplifies the notion of record labels and MTV attempting to force a trend upon an audience. During this period, MTV aired shows about the rave lifestyle, started purely electronic music shows such as AMP, and featured many electronica artists. However, the popularity of electronica was never sustained in the United States. In the United States and other countries like Australia, electronic (and the other attendant dance music genres) remains popular, although largely underground, while in Europe it has arguably become the dominant form of popular music. Musicians of other styles were also quick to pick up on the trends in electronic music, although much of this cross-influence long predated the use of the term "electronica", which only began in the 1990s. With newly prominent pop music styles such as reggaeton, electroclash, and favela funk, electronic music styles in the current decade are seen to permeate nearly all genres of the mainstream and indie landscape such that a distinct "electronica" genre of pop music is rarely noted. However, the word continues to be more common in the US music industry for synthesized, techno-inspired pop music, as specific genres such as drum n bass and IDM never achieved mainstream attention.

IDM Intelligent dance music (commonly IDM) is a genre of electronic music derived from dance music of the 1980s and early 1990s which puts an emphasis on novel processing and sequencing. IDM's roots in electronic dance are responsible for the term "Dance" in the genre name, which was originally applied to musicians like Aphex Twin and those on the Warp Records label. Music referred to as IDM is generally abstract, and may range from soft ambient textures to more abrasive noise. In 1992, Warp Records released Artificial Intelligence, the first album in the Artificial Intelligence series. The record was a collection of tracks from artists such as Autechre, B12, The Black Dog, Aphex Twin, and The Orb, under various aliases. These artists, among others, would eventually become the main topics of conversation in the IDM List, an electronic mailing list founded in August 1993. The term caught on with the formation of the mailing list. Artists that appeared in discussions on the list included Autechre, Atom Heart, LFO, Aphex Twin and others on Rephlex Records, dub artists such as The Orb, Richard H. Kirk, and Future Sound of London, and even artists like System 7, William Orbit, Sabres of Paradise, Orbital and Plastikman. Warp's second Artificial Intelligence compilation was released in 1994, featuring posts from the mailing list in the sleeve notes. During this period the experimental electronic music produced by Warp Records artists such as Polygon Window (an alias of Richard D. James), Autechre, LFO, B12, Seefeel, and The Black Dog, gained popularity among electronic music fans, who were beginning to call the music IDM. Lesser-known artists on the Likemind label and Kirk Degiorgio's A.R.T. and Op-Art labels, including Degiorgio himself under various names (As One, Future/Past, Esoterik). Steve Pickton (Stasis), and Nurmad Jusat (Nuron) were also branded IDM, along with artists like Bjork and Future Sound of London. The majority of the IDM during this era was produced in Britain, with a few exceptions, such as Sun Electric from Berlin, coming from other parts of Europe. In the late 1990s record labels from around the globe began to notice IDM artists pushing electronic "listening music" in new directions. Notable artists from this period include Boards of Canada and others on the Skam Records label, many of which were beginning to use software synthesis, a technology that had recently become possible to use on ordinary personal computers. During this period, In addition to the growing influence of Warp Records, IDM production greatly increased in the United States. In Miami, Florida, labels like Schematic, AiRecords, Merck Records, Nophi Recordings, and The Beta Bodega Coalition released material by artists such as Phoenecia, Dino Felipe, Machinedrum, and Proem. Another burgeoning scene was the Chicago/Milwaukee area, with labels such as Addict, Chocolate Industries, Hefty, and Zod supporting artists like Doormouse, Trs-80 and Emotional Joystick. In the new century, the growing popularity of cheap music production software and software piracy allowed many Internet-based artists to publish their own work. The recent surge of software piracy has enabled amateur IDM musicians to use the same high-end programs that professionals use.

Developed out of the IDM community during this time was a filesharing program called Soulseek, which underground artists used to share their music and make contacts. The artists Khonnor, Diagram of Suburban Chaos and Venetian Snares went on from Soulseek to earn public acclaim[citation needed]. Soulseek is still associated strongly with the IDM scene through Soulseek Records, which specializes in IDM. Tempo in IDM varies from quite slow in downtempo IDM to very fast in breakcore-derived styles, with most pieces lying between 100 and 140 beats per minute. Drum sequences tend to be complex, with some artists incorporating disorienting rhythmic figures such as obscured downbeats. Allmusic Guide describes the following moods on Warp's first Artificial Intelligence compilation: eerie, cold, circular, restrained, cerebral, nocturnal, detached, etheral, hypnotic, wintry, and clinical. A 2001 monthly editorial in Audiogalaxy stated that IDM producers use "squelched beats, jagged synth lines, static washes, electrical shorts" and other odd sounds, and that IDM "defies rhythmic convention," introducing sudden changes in rhythm. Besides these musical features, the editorial points out that IDM is typically difficult to dance to. IDM is sometimes made using advanced sequencing and synthesis software such as Ableton Live, Cubase, Reason, Reaktor, FL Studio, Renoise, Logic Pro and Max/MSP. Venetian Snares, for example, uses Med Sound Studio, a free tracking software package, while Proem uses Fruityloops in his studio setup. The wide availability of VST instruments and effects in software packages and online has led to certain sounds becoming common in IDM production. Some of the more common types of effects include bit reduction, or decreasing the sample rate and bit depth of the signal, resampling, where the signal is sampled and replayed, and granular synthesis, where the signal is chopped up and reconstructed at a new tempo or pitch.
Live IDM performances are commonly played entirely on laptop computers with MIDI controllers, using software like Ableton Live or programming languages like Max. "Groove boxes" such as the Roland MC-909 are used as well. The amount of pre-sequenced and pre-recorded material versus real-time production generally varies from one performance to the next. In many cases, live performance is a combination of the two. Software and hardware is constantly being developed to make reaching this balance more seamless. Some IDM artists attempt to liven their performances by maximizing the amount of live effect manipulation, incorporating on-stage or off-stage props and visual effects, and using live instruments. Michael Manning and Squarepusher both perform live instruments on stage, Aphex Twin has used giant bunny props in his performances, and Plaid has used visual effects on stage. In November 1991, the phrase "intelligent techno" appeared on Usenet in reference to Coil's "The Snow" EP. Another instance of the phrase appeared on Usenet in April 1993 in reference to The Black Dog's album Bytes.Wider public use of such terms on the Internet did not come until August 1993, when "intelligent dance music" and its initials were adopted in the name and charter of the IDM electronic mailing list: "IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) is a forum for the discussion of what has been termed 'intelligent' music – that is, music that moves the mind, not just the body. There is no specific definition of intelligence in music, however, artists that I see as appropriate are FSOL, Orb, Orbital, Richard James (aka Aphex Twin), Black Dog, B12, and various others from Warp's Artificial Intelligence series. Of course, the list is open to all interpretations of intelligent dance music." Among listmembers, debates over whether or not a particular artist, label, or piece of music being discussed was IDM, or whether the term was a legitimate and useful descriptor of a genre, were increasingly prevalent as the forum matured. Allmusic Guide describes the IDM name as "A loaded term meant to distinguish electronic music of the '90s and later that's equally comfortable on the dancefloor as in the living room, IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) eventually acquired a good deal of negative publicity, not least among the legion of dance producers and fans whose exclusion from the community prompted the question of whether they produced stupid dance music." In a September 1997 interview, Aphex Twin commented on the 'Intelligent Dance Music' label: "I just think it's really funny to have terms like that. It's basically saying 'this is intelligent and everything else is stupid.' It's really nasty to everyone else's music. (laughs) It makes me laugh, things like that. I don't use names. I just say that I like something or I don't."Other alternatives that have been used to describe the music include "electronic listening music," "armchair techno," "intelligent techno," "intelli-tech," "listening techno," "art techno," and "experimental techno." Rephlex records prefers the term "Braindance", of which Dave Segal of Stylus Magazine asked whether it was a "snide dig at IDM’s mockworthy Intelligent Dance Music tag?". Journalist and Electrical Audio recording engineer Steve Albini says of IDM "As the idiom developed, the music became more and more about the novelty of certain sounds and treatments, ridiculously trivial aspects like tempo and choice of samples, and the public personae of the makers. It became a race to novelty. I find that kind of evolution beneath triviality. It is a decorative, not substantive, evolution." Kid 606 has said "I hate IDM and its elitist champions. It makes the music sound so much more than it actually is. It's a label invented by PR companies who need catchphrases. I like sounds, but hate what people attach to sounds".