Ambient, industrial, noise, etc...
 

I've recently started listening to this kind of music, specifically Atrium Carceri, Nurse With Wound, Current 93, Throbbing Gristle, and Lustmord.

I've never listened to music like this before. I mean...I guess the real reason I've started this thread is because of two things; one, I'm curious what other bands are out there like this, and two...why in the world is this music so appealing to me? I find it so interesting. I don't know why I like it.

I listen a decent amount of this kind of stuff and also record music in a similar vein. A couple recommendations that spring to mind are Cabaret Voltaire (a contemporary of Throbbing Gristle), Main, and Final.

I started getting into this music a few months ago. I still think I'm more deeply invested in 1980s post-punk, but there's a lot of excellent industrial acts out there, many of which get swept under the rug:

Einsturzende Neubauten
23 Skiddoo
Coil
Swans
Savage Republic
Sun City Girls (more psych-folk than anything else but still crazy)
Massacre
The Legendary Pink Dots

I really recommend John Balance (Coil) and his posthumous album The Ape of Naples. Migrated significantly away from the industrial cacophony of Horse Rotorvator and most of it is ambient electronica but it's very well done at that, his best in a long long time.

EDIT: BAH! I totally forgot about Blixa Bargeld, hands-down my favorite industrial songwriter ever. Zeichnungen des Patienten O.T. is an absolute masterpiece and it's completely accessible. Definitely recommended.

Well I know and love Ambient.. but I don't know much about the other two. Are you interested in each of the genres you mentioned or a more a mixture of all three? I'd only be helpful in the Ambient department

I think he means it in the sense of latter-day industrial music. Bands like Current 93, who went through so many evolutions that they gradually migrated further and further away from industrial music, from the abrasive and atonal in Dogs Blood Rising to something more neo-folksy like Thunder Perfect Mind and eventually onto the ambience of Black Ships Ate the Sky.

There's actually quite a few bands that did this. Coil & Nurse with Wound are up there as well.

Check out Contagious Orgasm, if you can find anything. Crazy industrial ambient field recording stuff out of Japan, and he has tons of albums to get into. Also the projects with Zyrtax, Telepherique and Government Alpha are amazing!

Go ahead and post some ambient recommendations (for my benefit). I've always wanted to get into this genre but didn't know where to start!

Yeah this is basically what I'm talking about. Also, thanks for the recommendations. Is there a website where I can find this stuff? It's pretty hard to find.

I just use last.fm and allmusic, between the two I can figure out which albums to pay attention to. I'm sure there's more acts I forgot to list (Death in June is one of them), look and skim through there and try to get something together. Good to see a fellow appreciator.

I'm sure I can put a compilation up eventually for you. :)

Check out Dead Machines. It's an experience like no other.

I'm not sure I've heard of them. What are they like?

http://www.insound.com/Dead_Machines...in/p/INS26021/

I rarely listen to it but I think you would certainly appreciate them.

I used to listen to a lot of Al Jourgenson's projects (seems there's too many to mention individually), some Skinny Puppy, and of course Godflesh. It's not really my thing anymore, but still good stuff.

Thanks for all the suggestions guys, I'll be checking all this stuff out.

Also I'd just like to say that I'm listening to I Have A Special Plan for this World and for some reason it just blows my mind every time I listen to it.

Pigface are great when it comes to industrial.I think.

While I do own most of Pigface's albums, I think they're kind of shit except for a few of them. Too many cooks in the kitchen. They do what they set out to do though, no doubt about it and I respect them for it. Here are the ones I like most:

Notes From Thee Underground
Feels Like Heaven... Sounds Like Shit! (remix album for the above)
A New High in Low
Below the Belt (remix album for the above)

There's good stuff on the others (though I haven't heard anything since 98's live album) but too much of it unlistenable to me.

I'm surprised you didn't mention Gub, that's easily my favorite Pigface album. All the others are more hit-or-miss.

Gub is probably my fav to. What you think of Chris Connelys solo stuff I love it.

Honestly I always considered Gub one of the less-listenable ones. It's been years since I've played it, but the ones I posted are where it's at for me. More melodic and tuneful I suppose.

I guess I could see that since Gub certainly has a much more stripped-down sound, probably because of Steve Albini's involvement. But to me Gub is the most cohesive Pigface album and has this very unique style that sounds like nothing else, including other work by the people involved. The other Pigface albums, as much as I like them, almost feel like compilations to me where each track kind of sounds like whichever band the guest musicians come from. Hell, there are tracks on A New High In Low and Easy Listening For Difficult Fuckheads literally are songs from albums by the guest musicians.

I will need to put on some Gub one of these days. It's true that many of their albums sound like compilations and don't always flow that well, even my favorite Notes from thee Underground. But I never really thought about songs sounding like the bands of contributing members. Not saying it's not true, just never paid much attention to who contributed to what.

Well, like I said before, some of the songs are so much in the guest musician's style that they are actually literally on other albums by the guest. The song "Nutopia" from A New High In Low, for example, also appears on the Meg Lee Chin album Piece and Love. Not a different version of it mind you, the exact same recording.

I know it probably sounds like I'm putting down these other Pigface albums, but I'm not. I really do like all of them a lot. More than anything I'm just saying you should give Gub another chance sometime. :)

Wow, that does surprise me about some exact songs being on both albums. I remember the song Nutopia pretty well too, but I've never heard Meg Lee Chin's albums so I guess that's why I didn't know.

I will rip Gub to my computer tonight!

The album it's on is actually really good IMO. Imagine if Ani DiFranco hung with the Wax Trax crowd instead of hanging out in coffee shops and that will give you some sense of Meg Lee Chin's style.

That's the spirit! :)

I just finished listening to Gub.

I still find most of it boring and hard to listen to. I like the Ogre tracks best, big surprise there. ;) The Reznor and Connelly tracks are next, and the Yow ones I don't really dig much, nor the En-Esch ones. I'd say Tapeworm, Bushmaster, the remixes for each, Little Sisters, and Suck of course are the best tracks. Really if you take out the Yow and En-Esch tracks I'd like it a lot more. I could stand to listen to this, as it is, once every few years but that's about it really. It is industrial, it's not meant to be melodic and tuneful, and I get that. Which is why it's fine in small doses.

This is funny, from rateyourmusic.com:

Wouldn't that make this the original and the NIN one a cover? :p: Even if Reznor was involved in both.

I'm getting really into Bong-Ra.

Not ambient, industrial or noise but I do agree he's really good.

I'm kind of amazed you'd describe it as boring. While I agree that the En Esch song is awful, I think it's the only bad thing about the album. "Tapeworm", "The Bushmaster", "Suck", "The Greenhouse", "Little Sisters", "Tailor Made", "Blood and Sand" and "Weightless" are all amazing tracks IMHO, and that's the bulk of the album right there. Ah well, to each his own.

One thing I don't get though, you say you dislike the two Yow tracks but then you list one of them ("The Bushmaster") as a favorite from the album. I'm confused.

Maybe I'm the one that's confused. :D I might have mistaken it for another track. Or, maybe I liked the music enough that it made up for the vocals.

It could be that this album needs more time than I've given it. I mean I've probably played it 4 times in the ~17 years I've owned it, maybe it's just hard to digest and hasn't sunk in. And I was "working" while playing it, so I didn't give it my full attention either.

One thing I was wondering too is if your perception of the album is somewhat brought down by all the pointless bonus tracks they tacked on to the end of the CD. My original copy of the album was on cassette so I still tend to perceive "Weightless" as the last song and just disregard the remaining five tracks as not really part of the album. With the exception of the "Little Sisters" remix, those songs really are pretty pointless.

You know, I thought about that too before I listened. So I checked RYM to see what the original track listing was and the default listing showed 16 tracks. And it's actually the only listing, which is surprising because the site is usually pretty accurate with tape, vinyl, CD, import and whatever listings with track lists. Had I seen the shorter original track list, I would have done what you did and just played 1-12. That could definitely be a factor. I should have checked discogs.com.

Damn CD bonus tracks. I wish they'd at least always identify them as bonus tracks. I didn't find out until last year some time that early Skinny Puppy albums and Aphex Twin's RDJ Album were loaded with bonus tracks on the CDs. I always thought SP's Bites and Remission were long albums when in reality, Bites had 9 tracks (17 on the CD) and Remission was a 6-track EP (11 on the CD). The original UK release of RDJ Album was 10 tracks and the original US release was 15 tracks. I've ranted about this elsewhere on the forum before. :D

Fuck bonus tracks...just put them on an EP or something.

Hm, sounds like industrial to me.

Really? I can't say I see any similarity at all between him and, say, Throbbing Gristle. He sounds more like breakcore to me.

some ambient stuff i dig:

Stars of the Lid
Aphex Twin's Ambient stuff
Loscil
William Basinski
Brian Eno
The Dead Texan
Isotope 217

Orka is more than interesting.
I posted a topic (without success) about their stuff some month ago.

ORKA on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads

Oo! I like this Orka!

"humans and objects built by humans would rot alike, the ripe meatiness of 'Hamburger Lady' vying with the failings of tape machines"

Right now the only industrial I listen to with some regularity is KMFDM and Ministry (both of which I've been ignoring quite a bit recently) and I'd like to expand my horizons a bit. The first few pages had some good info...any more?

SPK is not mentioned, a great industrial band formed in late 70's.



Also, Chrome from the same period.
Laibach, especially early phase. Rekapitulacija 1980-1984 is a very good compilation of songs from that period.
Bands that started when Throbbing Gristle ended, besides Coil, there's Psychic Tv and Chris & Cosey, more in the ambient and body music (as in dance) vein respectively.
Foetus cannot be missed. It's essentially one-man band, of J. G. Thirlwell. The band had different names every once in a while like Foetus Under Glass, You've Got Foetus On Your Breath and Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel




And, since Current 93 and Death in June are mentioned, I especially like Cranes. They started as a kind of industrial, dark wave band from the middle of the 80's, but developed towards more ambient, ethereal music.

Hi dankrsta. Did you know Foetus has just released a new album?