Yesterday I spent a lot of time listening to the clang 'n' clatter of industrial Germany - which is not to say I paid a visit to a factory in Berlin, although at times it sounded like it - a factory where albums were pressed onto sheet metal with a lathe - East German heavy machinery filtered through old synths and much metal-bashing by muscular men in oil-stained, sweat soaked dungarees with rolled up sleeves - what a glorious racket:
Hypnotischer Existenzialismus - & I'm tempted to say that anyone who calls an album 'Hypnotic Existentialism' is alright by me, except that's not true, obviously, and what the goggled-eyed Left Bank philosophy guru JPS has to do with this noise I don't know - all I know is that it's a brilliant record, and has caused me to reconsider so-called Industrial Music to the point of actually investigating further, although I fear I'll find more that I don't like rather than do, but that's a prejudiced starting point, I know, because I ignored it all when it was fresh in the early-80s, being too busy listening to it's polar opposite, namely the Modern Jazz Quartet, although Milt Jackson's instrument, the vibraphone, did begin with bars made of steel, but to say that by striking them he made 'industrial music' would be absurd - as I 'speak', 'Volkermord Part 2' is ending with simply the bashing of something and a distant babbling/wailing voice; ending quite perfectly, I might say, after 7mins of mechano-tribalism - yes - much like 23 Skidoo, with whom Gerechtigkeits Liga shared the territory, even to the point of moving to London where they hooked up with Graeme Revell of SPK, apparently - but I've never heard anything by them - told you I was ignorant - but I am keen to be fashionable & IM circa 198 - is incredibly hip today, or was it yesterday? & if I made that up, I'm telling you it will be tomorrow & more importantly, only the good stuff, ie, not men shouting through megaphones or lame post-Electro Pop that gets passed off as 'hip', especially when it's made by Italians, or Ukrainians, but proper rusty proto-Techno like this, which Carl Craig and the crew were probably listening to whilst Detroit crumbled all around them - just a guess - & as drum machines rattle, samples babble, & synths groan to create voodoo ritualistic noise, I think: yes, this is what the future must have sounded like in the mid-80s, the messed up future of Terminators & tortured humans being ripped apart by grungy machines...
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