The project
All infos will be available on the facebook group https://www.facebook.com/IndustrialSoundtrackForTheUrbanDecay
For more details, contact me at amelie.ravalec@gmail.com
Industrial Soundtrack For The Urban Decay will be my second documentary focusing on industrial and experimental music.
Framed in the post industrial revolution society, industrial music stands out by its use of anti-music, noise and electronic elements, shock factor performances, provocative themes and unique design, as well as its independence from the major labels, mass media and culture: Industrial music has a culture of its own.
This film will explore the history of industrial music interviewing some of the genre's most influential bands and artists as well as meeting the people behind the labels or the fanzines and confront the promoters, journalists and individuals that were significant in the creation of this groundbreaking music.
What is Industrial Music?
Coined in the mid-70s, Industrial music is an experimental music genre encompassing machine-inspired sounds, extreme noise, improvisation, performance art, provocative and taboo themes. Still interested? Read on. This music isn’t just “noise”. It’s also the soundtrack of a challenging time in history.
Inspired by the fall of the industrial revolution, this music reflects a plethora of sounds, ideologies and interests embracing everything from anarchism, body experimentation, Burrough's cut up techniques, Dada & Marcel Duchamp, Fluxus, J.G. Ballard, Kraftwerk, left wings politics, Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, Kabbalah, gender questions, Italian Futurism & Luigi Russolo’s manifesto The Art of Noises, minor strikes, psychiatry, pornography, ritual and religious themes, Situationism and underground mail art scene.
The post industrial Revolution society
This music’s cold, brutal aesthetic was anchored in the post industrial revolution’s society: highrise living and unemployment were now the norm of the decaying environment.
Lewis Mumford, The city in history, 1961
“Between 1820 and 1900 the destruction and disorder within great cities is like that of a battlefield, proportionate to the very extent of their equipment and the strength of the forces employed. In the new provinces of city building, one must now keep one's eyes on the bankers, industrialists, and the mechanical inventors. (...) In their own image, they created a new type of city: that which Dickens, in Hard Times, called Coketown. In a greater or lesser degree, every city in the Western World was stamped with the archetypal characteristics of Coketown. Industrialism, the main creative force of the nineteenth century, produced the most degraded urban environment the world had yet seen; for even the quarters of the ruling classes were befouled and overcrowded.”
Yes, Industrial music is inspired by the sound of factories but the irony stands in that it’s not music for the production line - as in the music industry, mass media and major labels. It remains against the model of forced commercialization in the music industry, as well as the mass consumption and capitalist society. These records are neither mass produced, nor target a mass market. With hardly any money at first, they managed to release tons of records and cassettes over the years, either self-released or with the help of independent labels such as Rough Trade, Mute, Industrial Records, Some Bizarre, Sordide Sentimental..
Following the ashes of punk by pushing its boundaries further, industrial and experimental music exists outside the traditional music theory. Its creators started with little to no background in playing or performing instruments; they privileged a lot of experimenting with noise and spoken word, using mostly electronic instruments like synthesizers, tape loops, samplers, drum machines, effects racks of reverbs, delays, filters, etc.
Chris Carter (TG, Chris&Cosey) in his studio
Featured interviews :
Cabaret Voltaire (Stephen Mallinder)
Chris & Cosey (Chris Carter and Cosey Fanny Tutti from Throbbing Gristle)
Clock DVA (Adi Newton)
Duboys, Eric (writer of Industrial Music for Industrial People)
Hula (Mark Albrow, Alan Fish and Ron Wright)
In the Nursery (Klive and Nigel Humberstone)
NON (Boyd Rice)
Orphx (Richard Oddie and Christina Sealey)
SPK (Graeme Revell)
Test Dept (Paul Jamrozy & Graham Cunnington)
Turmel, Jean Pierre (Sordide Sentimental records)
V Vale (Writer and publisher of Re/Search: Industrial Culture Handbook)
Wießmann, Udo (Hands Production, Winterkaelte)
Z'EV
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