Various Artists – Control I’m Here: Adventures On The Industrial Dance Floor 1983-1990
Various Artists – Control I’m Here: Adventures On The Industrial Dance Floor 1983-1990
Cherry Red Records
Release Date: 19/01/24
Running Time: Disc 1: 71:01, Disc 2: 70:33, Disc 3: 66:48
Review by Dark Juan
Score: 10/10
I am Dark Juan and I just forgot how to drink while taking a large swig of tea. I have upset both Smellhounds and Mrs Dark Juan as well as fountaining tea out of my nose and having a coughing fit like I am dying of fucking tuberculosis. My eyes are streaming, and my lungs feel like someone has taken them out and run over them with a main battle tank. However, that will not stop me bringing you sage wisdom about music in many forms. There’s more to life than Metal, although it is the one true path, even the most devout follower of the Faith will sometimes wish to deviate from the norm and listen to something else equally visceral, which is what has led Dark Juan to request this three-CD compilation from the magnificent gentlefolk of Cherry Red Records, which details the growth of Industrial music, Electronica, EBM and Power Electronics with added Proto-Techno from the corpse of Throbbing Gristle and their Industrial Records blueprint.
The Eighties were a time of flux for music – not many people were bothered about pure Punk anymore. The ones that were left either aped the old model and sounded like Crass or The Anti-Nowhere League or The Clash and refused to move with the times, being just as staid and purist as the music and traditions they had vowed to destroy in their mohawked heyday. New Wave was only just beginning to gestate and there was this strange, frequently disturbing movement who took the building blocks of Extreme music and did unspeakable things with them – using flat 4/4 beats and Rock arrangements, but then they got hold of cheap Synths, even cheaper drum machines, tape decks and all the usual instruments and proceeded to rip music’s guts out, beat it to death with the wet end and cram them all back in in unusual and interesting new shapes and release the malformed beast back out into the wild. This caused some worry among the more conservative people in music, as young, angry men and women chopped up sounds and vocals, twisted them up beyond all recognition, recorded them backwards and spat them into the collective faces of the unsuspecting world of music.
This expertly curated selection of music showcases the best and weirdest of the musical anarchy that ensued from letting people who were too young to be Punk out-Punking the Punks with their hellbent desire to destroy music and commercialism from the inside out. The music on this three-CD set runs the full gamut of music from the tongue-in-cheek silliness of Age Of Chance butchering ‘Kiss’ with heavy as fuck bass and guitar, through the almost unlistenable faux-militarism of Slovenia and Yugoslavia’s Laibach, to the ice-cold Gothic magnificence of the God that is Andrew Eldritch’s Sisters Of Mercy and the bizarre Disco/ Industrial hybrid of Renegade Soundwave’s how-to instructions on ‘Cocaine Sex’.
This compilation represents the finest that this very underground scene had to offer. A bewildering array of talent (some of it exceedingly long-lived indeed in the forms of Nitzer Ebb, Alien Sex Fiend and the Sisters among many others) turned music inside out and laid the foundations for everything from Synth Pop (Ministry, back when Al was a clean-cut, handsome young chap instead of the gnarly Industrial Metal Elder he is today) through to the birth of Acid House as Genesis P-Orridge discovered love and Ecstasy at the disco and tore that music apart with Nobody UnInc.
This is not music for the uninitiated, however. A newcomer to the world of Extremity might find this record too challenging as it forms the basis, the bedrock for the more polished, increasingly sophisticated music that sprung from it. This retrospective is raw, dangerous, and unpredictable – New York’s Controlled Bleeding laying the groundwork for Power Electronics along with Whitehouse. Saxophones frequently vie for attention alongside machinelike percussion and the kind of noises that only come out of abattoirs and torture chambers.
There’s frequent screaming.
Drumbeats are rudimentary as the limited processing power of early drum machines is tested to the limit, synths are overdriven until burnout and guitars morph into ever more abstruse and painful sounds and as you listen to all the bands on this set it makes you realise just how fucking VITAL Suicide were as a band. And Throbbing Gristle. And Psychic TV. Without the people on this compilation, there would be no Industrial music, or EBM, or Synthwave, or Futurepop today. Imagine a world without Gunship or Combichrist or Nine Inch Nails or Marilyn Manson or Static-X or Seething Akira and tell me that that doesn’t make your heart sink. For that is what the music in this collection represents. It is the building blocks of modernity recorded on dodgy 8-track tape players with gabbling and squawking and shrieking madness recorded, cut, spliced, and reversed or shoved through square-wave processors and shoehorned back into music that was already groaning under the weight of its own uniqueness and pig-headed stubbornness and refusal to conform. It’s the post Post-Punk, but it is Punk as fuck. It is musical Brutalism. It is the very finest in early Maschinenklang and sturm-und-drang.
There’s no point trying to point out highlights on this three CD set as every song on here represents a unique and different take on a zeitgeist that was never mainstream, but the expert compilers at Cherry Red Records have done a fucking magnificent job of capturing this most important of eras for Industrial music and modern Electronic extremity. However, Dark Juan has frequently told you all of the sheer perfection of the Sisters Of Mercy and was delighted to hear the likes of Meat Beat Manifesto, SPK and Front Line Assembly again after too many years of listening to music to write about instead of for pleasure. Many of the artists on this retrospective are in the personal record collection of Dark Juan (lots of Front 242 and Die Krupps in there) already and to hear them in a compilation where you can test and contrast the music you love with contemporary for the time sounds that are not so familiar is a rare treat indeed and Mrs Dark Juan is now sick to death at the excited intakes of breath that are emanating from Dark Juan every time he hears something that he had forgotten about like Executive Slacks and WMTID (Well Martin This Is Different, in case you didn’t know) and Esplendor Geometrico.
Absolutely fucking insanely good if you are an aficionado. Probably really irritating if you don’t like bumps and squelches and buzzing and the smell of electrical insulation burning out. The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System does though and awards the compilers and the selection of music on here a full 10/10 for superb curation of a very niche scene indeed.
Sheer electronic alchemy.
TRACKLISTING:
DISC ONE
01. RENEGADE SOUNDWAVE – COCAINE SEX (TURBO LUST MIX)
02. CONTROLLED BLEEDING – THE FODDER SONG
03. SEVERED HEADS – TWENTY DEADLY DISEASES (EXTENDED MIX)
04. AGE OF CHANCE – KISS
05. LAIBACH – DIE LIEBE
06. NITZER EBB – CONTROL I’M HERE (ZERO OPTION MIX)
07. NOBODY UNINC – ONLY HUMAN
08. ALIEN SEX FIEND – IGNORE THE MACHINE (ELECTRODE MIX)
09. HULA – GIVE ME MONEY
10. THE DAVE HOWARD SINGERS – YON YONSON
11. THE NEON JUDGEMENT – TV TREATED
12. THE SISTERS OF MERCY – LUCRETIA MY REFLECTION (12″ VERSION)
13. SON OF SAM & GOOD SHEPHERDS – CUTS ‘N BRUISES
14. THE WEATHERMEN – POISON (12″ VERSION)
DISC TWO
01. THE SHAMEN – CHRISTOPHER MAYHEW SAYS (7″ VERSION)
02. À;GRUMH… – KILL
03. LEAD INTO GOLD – IDIOT
04. NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS – NO SEPARATION
05. FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY – LURID SENSATION
06. THE FORCE DIMENSION – HIDDEN AMBUSH (RED VERSION)
07. ABSOLUTE BODY CONTROL – TANZMUSIK
08. TEST DEPT. – NEW WORLD ORDER
09. THE CASSANDRA COMPLEX – BEYOND BELIEF
10. FRONT 242 – QUITE UNUSUAL (12″ VERSION)
11. SPK – SEDUCTION
12. DIE KRUPPS – GERMANIAC (ANALOGITAL CLIMIX)
13. SECTION 25 – DIRTY DISCO II
14. THE JACKAL – UNDERNEATH THE ARCHES
15. EXECUTIVE SLACKS – I’M COMING
DISC THREE
01. MEAT BEAT MANIFESTO – I GOT THE FEAR (TITANIUM MIX)
02. ATTRITION – THE FIFTIETH GATE
03. DIE WARZAU – LAND OF THE FREE (MACHINE MIX)
04. BORGHESIA – NAKED, UNIFORMED, DEAD HOT TRASH MIX
05. WMTID – KUNST
06. HUNTING LODGE – TRIBAL WARNING SHOT
07. ESPLENDOR GEOMETRICO – COMISARIO DE LA LUZ III
08. LEGENDARY PINK DOTS – MANIAC
09. SILVER CHAPTER – NEON QUEEN
10. M.A.D. – SUNFEAST
11. MINISTRY – MY POSSESSION
12. DIE FORM – THE BEAST
13. SCREAMING TREES – DON’T BE AFRAID
14. SON OF SAM – STARCH
15. 625 LINES – UNDER CONSTRUCTION
LINE-UP:
We are not doing this because you’ll be here all day and Mrs Dark Juan wants some attention as well.
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