For many, the term ‘Industrial’ conjures the tuneful primal scream behind Nine Inch Nails or in-your-face aggro of Ministry. For others, the moniker is forever linked with the electronic body music of Front 242. Yet, as a genre, it was initially harder to pin down than its familiar form of the mid-90s.
Monte Cazazza coined the term to describe the art-noise of bands like Throbbing Gristle, who used it for their own record label. Bleak, hopeless, dystopian, and with the faint whiff of desiccation, early industrial music could at turns sound like a symphony of printing presses or an unashamed nod to Tangerine Dream - and just about anything in between.
Industrial music in its most familiar form wouldn’t happen until the art-noise contingent began adding drum machine-derived rhythms. Ex-Throbbing Gristlers Chris and Cosey predicted the future with Trance, while Cabaret Voltaire shook Sheffield with the unlikely funk of Sensoria. Severed Heads and SPK were there, too, the former creating an unlikely dance-floor classic, the latter reaching for accessibility.
By the late 80s, many defining bands gained popularity, with the seemingly difficult Skinny Puppy setting the stage with horror movie samples, unusual beats and shock theatre.
Eventually, the guitar-driven junkie growl of Ministry and emotionalism of NiN - and booty-shaking beats of Front 242’s Headhunter re-drew the map others would follow.
Let’s take a look at how it’s done!
>Step by step
1. Banging beats and riveting rhythms
1 In this tutorial, we’ll be whipping up an old-school Industrial track in the predominately electronic style of bands like Frontline Assembly, Klinik, and A Split Second, but with modern touches. Use your preferred DAW, but, as in the previous section, we’re using Tracktion Waveform Free. You can grab that (for free!) from www.tracktion.com.
2 The best-known industrial bands leaned heavily on powerful rhythms, often from unconventional sources. We’ll start with a rhythmic sequence, courtesy of Thorn CM, which we’ll instantiate on track 1. In Waveform, this is done by dragging the grey “+” widget into the track’s Outputs panel on the right, left of Volume. Select the plugin from the menu.
3 Thorn CM is a keen synth/sequencer combo with a preset that will perfectly suit our needs. Find it in the instrument’s preset browser in the upper right. Open the Seq submenu. Find a patch called Glitch Elastic. If that sounds too modern, rest assured, industrial musicians were making glitchy sounds long before anyone thought to give it a name!