Monday, May 27, 2019

and, just for the record: i have never at any point in my life ever listened to anything labelled 'ebm'.

i liked the punk rock component of industrial music, but was interested largely in the politics, not in the sexuality of it. industrial music was initially an outgrowth of the radical leftism in the punk movement. what you call 'ebm' was largely the undoing of this. all of a sudden, industrial music was about leather and black makeup, instead of radical leftist organizing - and if you're more interested in black lipstick than noam chomsky, or you don't even know what the fuck i'm even talking about, then we're simply not coming at this from the same perspective. i have absolutely no interest in that subculture at all.

it is true that genesis p'orridge was an important person in the early rave scene, but he was an old situationist, and he was just looking for a bunch of kids to radicalize. but, nonetheless, i would consider the outgrowth of actual techno to be more "industrial" than ebm is. i'll repeat that: techno music is a better evolution of the ideals underlying industrial music than ebm is.

but, in the 90s, when people used the term ebm, it was contrasted against something else: idm. you had what was called "electronic body music" that existed for the purposes of exploring hedonism and bohemianism through sex, drugs and empty commercialism. this was a very american means of expression, but i hated it to it's core. on the other hand, you had what was called "intelligent dance music" that existed for the purposes of exploring electronic sound design as an art form. this was a more european form, and actually primarily british during this stage, rather than german. my tastes in electronic music were defined by what was called "idm", and included an interest in artists like autechre, aphex twin and squarepusher.

so, if you thought i'd show up at an ebm show, you don't know me very well; if you knew me at all, you'd have known i would have stated a pretty vehement disinterest in the form.

the kind of industrial music i like is essentially a combination of techno and punk rock, in the sense that it combines the anarchist social values of punk rock with the music of techno. it has not really existed since skinny puppy's first break up in 1994.