Great Belgian feast of upbeat art-punk (and occasional 'core) with "Out Of Vogue" style vocals/reverb. SNAPPY!!!
Zeni Geva - "Maximum Money Monster" CD 1990 FLAC (Original Master/Single Track)
"Experimental guitarist/programmer KK Null formed Zeni Geva in 1987 with guitarist Fumiyoshi Suzuki, vocalist Elle, and drummer Ikuo Taketani from the bands 'The Boredoms' and 'Hanatarashi'. After releasing a live album titled 'How To Kill', Suzuki and Nishikawa left the group, so Null and Taketani brought in new guitarist Mitsuru Tabata (also of The Boredoms) for a studio recording called 'Maximum Love And Fuck'. Taketani stepped down from drums, so Tatsuya Yoshida of 'Ruins' replaced him. They then re-released 'Maximum Love And Fuck' as 'Maximum Money Monster' in 1990, adding three additional live tracks with Yoshida."
Oral - Demo '86
2nd demo from these scandicores, like a less Discharge Anti-Cimex or a less epic Armia (younger listeners may liken them to Tragedy), delivered with the same melodic anger that put Sweden on punk's napkin-map to begin with...
Death Room - "Violate The Newborn" Demo 1993
First demo from these Turkish death-grinders/grind-deathers, and it's nowhere near as cheesy as their film industry (Lion Man, their..."adaptations"...of Star Wars/E.T. etc). Visceral passion, ZERO triggers...
Kill S.P.K. - Tape Compilation 1985
A tribute to "Ne/H/il" of S.P.K., who committed suicide the previous year. Not so much noise as "pure industrial" weirdness from Japan, with TV Cherubs, Le Syndicat, Boredoms, Agencement, Yellowhouse, 40318, Hanatarashi, Dead Neubautens, The Hum, N.B.N. & Paul Rixon, Mentalvoid & K, and the title project: Kill S.P.K.
Con-Dom - "A Prince Of Our Disorder" CD/Tape 1993 & "Subjection" Tape 1996
Interview by Phil Taylor (by post between January and May 1992)...
Con-Dom was founded August 1st 1983, after involvement with the Walsall-based Spontaneous Human Combustion/Death Magazine 52 (SHC/D Mag 52) for 12 months up to June '83. No other previous "musical" experience. Con-Dom: Live Assault 1 was executed on September 13th 1983 in Wolverhampton.
What inspired or encouraged you to adopt your extreme form of electronic music? Did you follow or participate in the power electronics scene? Was anything happening locally at the time?
Time spent in SHC/D Mag 52 was instrumental. An introduction to "industrial culture". An education in extremes of sound, vision, approach, thought, action. An awakening of personal potentials. Family Patrol Group, Smear Campaign, Anal and others were also operating locally at this time.
Con-Dom stands for Control-Domination. Do you view our society as one in which individuals lack freedom, but are manipulated by outside forces, whether that be state power or organised religion or organised anything for that matter?
Con-Dom is Control-Domination is the theme. Control, domination, manipulation, organisation...the forces of control hold sway - mass culture, mass media, mass mentalities. The individual clings to the deathbed. Self-salvation is the only hope. Freedom is attainable.
Is the principle purpose of your harsh sounding music to provoke people to think about important issues, especially religion and politics? Do you regard these two things as being central to the human condition? All your music seems to be issue generated. Is this fair to say?
Con-Dom is Control-Domination is the issue - it is all-pervasive. Religion and politics are but two facets of the issue; two contributory causes of the human sickness. The aim is not to provoke thought about religion and politics - they are in themselves unworthy of serious thought - but rather to stimulate self-analysis, in relation to these and other infections.
The nature of your music is one of extremity. Do you feel that this confrontational method can be successful in conveying a message or ideas. Or is this brutality too much for people to take, only leaving blankness?
Confrontation is the chosen method of education. Con-Dom generates brutality, pain, fear, hate (the instruments of control), so that the existence of the forces of control may be acutely felt, experienced and recognised. The aim is to provoke resentment/confusion/ambivalence, to upset and challenge conditioned expectation, to shatter preconceptions. If individual texts or ideas are lost in the process of bludgeoning, that is unfortunate - perseverence will serve to uncover them; there are other media; there will be other times. The creation of blankness may be a necessary step towards enlightenment. A blank canvas has infinite possibilities; a slate wiped clean is ready to start afresh. A completed oil, full of cluttered detail, is ripe only for slashing.
You have performed a great deal of live assaults in a whole variety of unusual venues in the UK (a church crypt, a council house etc). What motivated you to choose to perform in such unique surroundings?
Con-Dom is neither music nor art, film or theatre. It is all of these things. It is none of them. It does not sit easily in the galleries, concert halls, pubs, clubs, cinemas and playhouses (the controllers of these spaces make sure of that!) Con-Dom is Control-Domination. It addresses the institutions and mechanisms which perpetrate their dual grip. It is never more at home than as an "uninvited" guest in their seats of power, whether it be the committee room, the home or the place of worship.
Can you distinguish between how your music has been received in the UK, as opposed to Europe and the USA, for example? What sort of response have you elicited from your audience?
The "openmindedness" of the States, Japan and mainland Europe has led to a warmer reception, in terms of greater opportunities than in the UK. Here, neat categories and tunnel vision prevail - "music" = "instruments", "performance" = "fine art degree" etc. If you don't fit into a stereotype you don't get opportunities. A symptom of mass culture...or you create and therefore control your own operational environment. Actual audience response to Con-Dom is rarely apathetic (but perhaps more so in the UK). Con-Dom invariably provokes a positive (or positive negative) reaction. In both cases, misunderstanding or misinterpretation is often at the root. The rabidly Pavlovian response to the sight of a Nazi swastika is a yawningly cliched example. Swastika = "fascist", therefore Con-Dom is a fascist vehicle. The "fascists" applaud, the liberal/socialist/communist abuses. People have lost the ability to see beyond the obvious and to use all available information in forming opinions.
The live performance is an integral part of the Con-Dom experience. Most of your cassette releases are of live assaults. Why is this so? Do you then see Con-Dom as a live project essentially, given also that slide/film projections are a necessary part of the whole process? Are some things only possible in a live situation rather than in a studio?
Con-Dom is a multi-media operation. Visual and "performance" elements are key pieces of the overall Con-Dom jigsaw, alongside the sound component. The total experience is only possible in a live setting. Education Through Confrontation! Only the live medium admits direct confrontation of an audience - sound, vision, personal physical presence - and that uneasy sense of the possible unexpected; the risk element. Reliance on distribution of sound-based product through a comparatively closed, ghetto-like network will inevitably only reach a small and largely "converted" (to the sound) audience. The live medium reaches more people and a more varied cross-section of people. The release of Con-Dom Live Assault recordings serves to provide an evolving document, although necessarily flawed, of the live crusade - a taste of the Con-Dom essence; a living archive. It represents too, an opportunity to feed in more information, more pieces of the overall puzzle, through written, graphical and other materials. All manifestations, using / mixing whatever media, contribute to the Con-Dom whole.
What led to the decrease in Con-Dom's activities in the latter part of the 80s? Surprisingly you only undertook two performances in the UK, one of these being a private one.
I have already referred to the general lack of UK performance opportunities. From late '88 on, I simply gave up on the situation - tired of philistine attitudes amongst "space" controllers; unwilling to put energy into creating (usually unappreciated) purpose-built environments - and turned instead to a more accomodating climate abroad. The absence of new releases at this time reflected the painstaking development and preparation being put into the subsequent "All In Good Faith" packaging. [A cassette release packaged in hollowed out re-imbossed hymnals of a specific press and publisher. --S]
You place great weight on the way in which your product is packaged. Why is this elaborate method adopted?
Con-Dom is a multi-media operation. Each and every element of its work has the potential to make a valuable statement; to contribute to a greater understanding of the Con-Dom message. Product packaging is no exception. The housing of the All In Good Faith tape within the "Songs of Praise" hymn book signalled the beginning of a more conceptual, holistic approach to Con-Dom product. The former use of the hymn books in the chapel of a mental hospital; the desecration of the "good book"; the swathing of the tape itself in a "purifier"; and the books' title, all imbue the sound and message with new, complementary meanings. The "entropic" packaging of Enraptured Violence and the numerical symbolism of The Eighth Pillar "band artwork" are both faithful to this approach. The forthcoming Prince Of Our Disorder will develop it further.
What value do you place in the area of collaboration? In the case of The Haters, it appears that you are an occasional member.
What value do you place in the area of collaboration? In the case of The Haters, it appears that you are an occasional member.
Con-Dom has little or no time for collaborative projects, I.E.: those involving joint composition, by mail etc. Involvement has been limited to isolated projects, such as the recent Vital Sound Group 7" and live actions with The Grey Wolves. All available resources are devoted to Con-Dom.The Haters is a special case. Participation as an occasional member involved commitment only to the performances in question. This was not a collaboration in the accepted sense. Con-Dom is happy to "collaborate" with other compatible units, in joint or split releases, as considered appropriate.
Can you tell me about your relationship with the label Sound For Consciousness Rape? How did this liaison come about? Why do you regard this French label as being an appropriate outlet for your work?
The link with SFCR dates back to 1990, when the label was instrumental in organising Con-Dom's participation in the DMA2 Festival in Bordeaux. Strong personal and ideological affinities have seen this link develop into a co-operative partnership, through which the majority of new Con-Dom product is now financed and released. The label's sincere commitment, only to those works and artists it appreciates, is an important factor in the relationship.
You have released your first LP and 7" proper. Does it seem the right time now to put out Con-Dom vinyl (or CD)? Was the LP recorded in the studio and if so where?
Both the debut LP - The Eighth Pillar - and the debut 7" - Oh Ye Of Little Faith - are now available. The Eighth Pillar was always destined to be a vinyl release. The sophisticated nature of the work and, in particular, the wide and intensive utilisation of layered, found sound, demanded the use of multi-track studio facilities and a high quality reproduction. The timing is purely coincidental, although in many ways a natural development from earlier studio tape releases. The invitation to work with the Tesco Organisation on a 7" release provided an ideal opportunity to experiment with new ideas, directions and techniques, in order to further extend Con-Dom's explorations of "faith". Again, the timing is coincidental. With live digital recordings available from last year's U.S. tour, the time is however now right for Con-Dom's first CD release.
The new LP, The Eighth Pillar, is concept based. Why did you choose to devote it to one man, T.E. Lawrence?
The Eighth Pillar is the logical culmination and extension of many years' exploration of the concept of religious faith. It is a journey into the realm of the intensely personal - one man's outer struggle and inner search for an individual "faith", one man's very personal response to the human condition. Lawrence was a remarkable man - an enigmatic outsider who lived a tortured odyssey of physical and spiritual extremes in pursuit of a goal, a "way". His life, writings and example are an inspiration to all who crave real freedom. The LP, its trappings and complementary special edition of printed matter, illuminate this quest.
Finally, Con-Dom has existed for about ten years. What keeps you going? Do you think that you will always be involved in the area of harsh electronics? Is this to you then, the most significant form of music?
The Con-Dom sound continues to excite, thrill and stimulate - on a personal level. The idea of "musical sound" taken to its ultimate extreme - pure noise: the idea of an extreme, pure vehicle for "extreme", pure ideas: both are as valid today as they were 10 years ago - more so in this age of compromise and adulteration. Con-Dom will always have violent sound at its core. Con-Dom is an expression of self, a personal search. It will continue until there is no longer any need to look.
Can you tell me about your relationship with the label Sound For Consciousness Rape? How did this liaison come about? Why do you regard this French label as being an appropriate outlet for your work?
The link with SFCR dates back to 1990, when the label was instrumental in organising Con-Dom's participation in the DMA2 Festival in Bordeaux. Strong personal and ideological affinities have seen this link develop into a co-operative partnership, through which the majority of new Con-Dom product is now financed and released. The label's sincere commitment, only to those works and artists it appreciates, is an important factor in the relationship.
You have released your first LP and 7" proper. Does it seem the right time now to put out Con-Dom vinyl (or CD)? Was the LP recorded in the studio and if so where?
Both the debut LP - The Eighth Pillar - and the debut 7" - Oh Ye Of Little Faith - are now available. The Eighth Pillar was always destined to be a vinyl release. The sophisticated nature of the work and, in particular, the wide and intensive utilisation of layered, found sound, demanded the use of multi-track studio facilities and a high quality reproduction. The timing is purely coincidental, although in many ways a natural development from earlier studio tape releases. The invitation to work with the Tesco Organisation on a 7" release provided an ideal opportunity to experiment with new ideas, directions and techniques, in order to further extend Con-Dom's explorations of "faith". Again, the timing is coincidental. With live digital recordings available from last year's U.S. tour, the time is however now right for Con-Dom's first CD release.
The new LP, The Eighth Pillar, is concept based. Why did you choose to devote it to one man, T.E. Lawrence?
The Eighth Pillar is the logical culmination and extension of many years' exploration of the concept of religious faith. It is a journey into the realm of the intensely personal - one man's outer struggle and inner search for an individual "faith", one man's very personal response to the human condition. Lawrence was a remarkable man - an enigmatic outsider who lived a tortured odyssey of physical and spiritual extremes in pursuit of a goal, a "way". His life, writings and example are an inspiration to all who crave real freedom. The LP, its trappings and complementary special edition of printed matter, illuminate this quest.
Finally, Con-Dom has existed for about ten years. What keeps you going? Do you think that you will always be involved in the area of harsh electronics? Is this to you then, the most significant form of music?
The Con-Dom sound continues to excite, thrill and stimulate - on a personal level. The idea of "musical sound" taken to its ultimate extreme - pure noise: the idea of an extreme, pure vehicle for "extreme", pure ideas: both are as valid today as they were 10 years ago - more so in this age of compromise and adulteration. Con-Dom will always have violent sound at its core. Con-Dom is an expression of self, a personal search. It will continue until there is no longer any need to look.
Maldoror - Live 10-24-97
Earlier show (stroll the blog for the later) of Masami n' Mike's noise-crete decompositions...
Examples Of Cannibalism (William Bennett & Maurizio Bianchi) Tape 1981 (FLAC & 320)
One in a cluster of bootleg "collaborations" released by William Bennett of Whitehouse. Side A is Bennett's spoken word over a nameless industrial artist, while side B is unmolested material from Bianchi...
Lustmørd - Live 6-13-11 Leipzeig & 9-27-13 London (FLACs Live Bootlegs)
"Brian Williams is a Welsh industrial musician, sound designer and film score composer. He is often credited for creating the 'dark ambient' genre with albums recorded under the name 'Lustmord'. His experimental work has been described as 'not traditionally musical, with more clearly visual aspects'. He has extracted field recordings made in crypts, caves, and slaughterhouses, and combined them with ritualistic incantations and Tibetan horns."
Interview January 1992 by Brian Duguid:
Where are they now? In only a few short years the "industrial" music genre spawned dozens of bands, several labels, most of whom went on to become almost legendary amongst the fans. Evidence of obsessive behaviour or evidence of real musical innovation? Most of the most well-known names in the genre are now defunct or have moved onto to very different musical activities: Throbbing Gristle, S.P.K., Cabaret Voltaire, to name obvious examples.
Lustmørd's Brian Williams would probably hate to be called "legendary" almost as much as he'd hate to be called "industrial". Like many who came out of the scene, he's watched the music degenerate into the repetition of cliches and the word "industrial", never that useful to begin with, lose all validity through its misappropriation by ever more unlikely culprits until it's now somehow synonymous both with techo-without-a-groove and metal-without-the-solos. Lustmørd's music never had that much to do with conventional "industrialism" anyway, owing far more to the field of ritual and ritualistic music; and undoubtedly an inspiration for some of the more recent explorers of that field. An interest in the extreme, the intense, the beautiful and the power of ambience unites most of Lustmørd's recordings: an easy point of reference might be the world of the horror soundtrack, but the music is far too strong and purposeful to ever be merely subservient to the banality of most horror films.
Lustmørd's activities started at the beginning of the eighties when Brian Williams met prime movers in the "industrial" scene like Graeme Revell of S.P.K., and the members of Throbbing Gristle. Encouragement from S.P.K. and other soon led to the first album release (on Sterile, more recently reissued on CD by Dark Vinyl).
Brian: I got to know Graeme really well, and he was always telling me, you've got all these ideas, you should do this. I was going, oh no, I don't really want to do this. Graeme in particular kept saying, there's this piece of equipment we're using, why don't you get one of these. It's quite easy to do all this stuff. So I bought some basic equipment and started doing it myself. I was quite happy that this existed, and I was doing it, and that was all that mattered. I made a cassette tape of little experiments that I'd been doing, and played them to people like Graeme. He, without me knowing, told people like Nigel Ayers (of Sterile Records and Nocturnal Emissions), who then got in touch and told he wanted to hear it as well, so it was played to him. He said that this was actually worth releasing ... and it all went on from there really.
Like a lot of what was released at the time, the first Lustmørd album was more of a signpost on the way to a destination than the result of arriving there. Looking back, Brian agrees that it wasn't all it could have been.
"For years I totally disowned it, I really thought it wasn't up to scratch. And then, coming back to it again, I had the 2-track masters which could be cleaned up slightly for CD. It did sound much better than the record, but it didn't sound as good as it should have done. If you were actually there it was quite amazing. I didn't really know enough about the technology in those days in order to record it properly. It's nice to have the CD out. It is basically a document of that period, and it should be thought of as a record more in the sense of a reference than as a work of art. I thought it was quite amusing that it should exist on CD at all, so it didn't take Dark Vinyl very long to talk me into it."
Meanwhile, Brian worked with S.P.K., participating in many of their live performances, and eventually moving to London to work with them full time when they gained a proper record deal. This was to lead to Graeme Revell's Side Effects label being resurrected.
"We were sitting around drinking coffee, bemoaning the state of the indie record scene, how everything was so awful. Wasn't it a shame that there weren't any record labels releasing the kind of things we were hearing? We were getting tapes from the likes of Gerechtigkeits Liga, and thinking, this is great, they deserve to be released, and nobody would even listen to them, let alone release them. So a little light bulb went on, hey, Side Effects technically still exists, so why not start releasing things by other people? Somebody had to do it."
Side Effects first releases had been devoted to S.P.K., including albums like Information Overload Unit and Leichenschrei. The revitalised label released material by Laibach, Hunting Lodge, Gerechtigkeits Liga, Greater Than One, The Anti Group and Llwybr Llaethog, as well as Lustmørd and S.P.K., before eventually becoming dormant again in the late eighties.
"I just got really bored with it. I don't like anything. There's a few things I like, really big budget things I'd like to do, but you'd need a lot of money to publicise it. You also get sent these terrible, really bad industrial music demo tapes. Interesting for a year or two in the late seventies, but who wants to hear a seventh or eighth rehash of Throbbing Gristle? I also got really fed up of working through Rough Trade, who were a right pain in the arse. Apathy in general. No press - no radio play. I just got - not disillusioned - I just lost interest. And I don't actually like much music of that ilk. Side Effects ended up considered as some kind of industrial label. I just hate that whole idea. When I talk about industrial music I'm thinking of the Industrial Records label. I did really like what they were doing and trying to do. The genre that gets called industrial, I just hate it, we'd be much better off without it."
Lustmørd's second album, the classic Paradise Disowned, came out on Side Effects in 1986. It sees Lustmørd's trademark drones at their most effective, dark clouds of bass oscillation mixed with subterranean wailing, muffled voices, echoing bells, thunder and lightning crashing over low, resonant male voices. According to the sleeve notes: "For us, nothing is sacred any more. A law by which we live, the only sound a broken bell. Entering your shrines, eating your gods, burning your cathedrals." The ambition may seem arrogant but the music rose to match it. The opening tracks Beckoning and Utterance, for example, combine the intensity and grandeur of Christian liturgical chant with a much less holy attitude towards life. It's an awe-inspiring recording, a Satanic counterpoint to the co-option of musical passion by socially acceptable religions.
"The burning of cathedrals in particular goes back to my anti-Christian feelings. It's just my sense of humour really. A lot of the music I've always been influenced by is very intense ritual stuff, not this bloody awful Psychic TV kind of stuff, but Tibetan ritual music, I've always loved that. There's a lot of Christian music too - I like really focussed music. Generally speaking, where you have a good strong religion, it usually has a really interesting musical form, because there's so much concentration and focussing goes into it. The Christians have some really good music. On Paradise Disowned I was trying to adopt the same approach to the music, without all the Christian dogma attached. It'd be really nice to have Paradise Disowned played in a cathedral ..."
The album's sleeve notes also make explicit several locations where material was recorded, including the crypt of Chartres Cathedral, the site of Bedlam, and an abattoir. Although there's a lot of this kind of thing in the industrial scene, much of it posing, there's no doubt that it adds to the music's mystique.
"I really had gone to a lot of work to get all that done, so I did want people to know that I had done it. On Heresy, later, I wanted to be a lot more vague about it, but still to let people know about it, because it is relevant. Obviously, I do like to put some of that mystique in, it helps people listen to it in a different way. I'm trying to create an atmosphere, and to create a specific atmosphere it helps to give people a few pointers."
The next album, Heresy, appeared after a gap of four years on the American Soleilmoon label. Gone was some of the more confrontational music, the heavy drumbeats of Paradise Disowned's later tracks and the harsh, shrieking machine sounds that lent an abrasive edge, with what was left exploring the resonant drone-based side of Lustmørd in far more depth.
"Heresy was based around sounds, on creating an atmosphere, an environment with sound. It could have been much better, the sound quality really let it down. The source sounds are really important to me, I was inspired by getting these sounds, and the connotations they had were important. For example, the sound of a thighbone, which I'd had for years. I'd always liked that sound and been interested in Tibetan ritual music. I used to use it on recordings. It was fun to use it because of the connotations, but I find it a bit corny to put that on the sleeve. It's there, and I know it's there, and it doesn't really matter if other people are aware or not. I do like to use things that have some specific meaning, but it's to make it interesting for myself.
"The last track on Paradise Disowned was an attempt to do the confrontational thing once and for all, to do it as well as I could. I don't know how well it worked. I just didn't want to do it anymore at the time. There were a lot of other people doing this really negative stuff, and you didn't want to be associated with that any more, Whitehouse and so on. Well, at least Whitehouse were amusing, but all those Whitehouse-copyist bands, I've no respect or time for them whatsoever. I've still got ideas in that kind of territory, but I'm older and wiser. But there's a noisy bastard album coming out soon, with another project I'm doing, Isolrubin BK. There will hopefully be a whole series of albums, the first one based on car crashes, coming out on Soleilmoon. Then there will be an anti-Christian one. I just don't like Christians, it's time we started fighting back basically. I suppose it'll be confrontational to Christians."
The most recent album, The Monstrous Soul, released earlier this year, was Lustmørd's fullest collaboration yet. The first album had been almost entirely Brian's own work, with the addition of a few friends for additional shouting and noisemaking. Paradise Disowned contained the significant presence of John Murphy, while on Heresy, Andrew Lagowski assisted with engineering. The Monstrous Soul is a collaboration with Adi Newton (of the Anti Group and ClockDVA).
The Monstrous Soul opens with about five minutes where almost all that is heard is a single, repeated phrase: "It is the night of the demon" as winds begin to swirl around and ominous strings begin. A couple of bursts of loud noise later and we're into the 25-minute Primordial Atom, cycles of reverberating bass voice alongside enormous heavy thuds of sound, like a twenty-ton steel ball being dropped from a tall building. These are gradually smothered by the winds and foggy ambience until all that remains are low frequency oscillations and another ominously repeated phrase. Protoplasmic Reversion consists of a looped recording of a ritual chant mixed with more low frequencies and echoing noises, plus suitably subdues keyboards and more demon-inspired vocals. The Daathian Doorway bases its texture on the hum and clatter of industrial machines, while The Fourth and Final Key sets restrained ambience against more highly amplified thunderclaps, slow monastic chanting underpinning it all with a hint of spiritual menace, ending on a downbeat note with the re-entry of those beloved low-frequency drones again. It's a finely poised, and although occasionally a bit long-winded, very effective exercise in atmosphere.
"I think I'm going to be working more with Adi. So far, everyone I've worked with has gone along with my Lustmørd type of ideas, where I've planned what I'm going to do and got all the sounds together, and then got somebody else to help. I think in the future I'd like to collaborate more. You want someone who appreciates what you're doing, but will also take it a bit further. They'll take it in a different direction, and also have that important quality control factor. It also makes it much more interesting for me to listen to as well.
"We very much have the same sort of ideas. The Anti Group, which Adi does, is in very similar territory. Our interests in computers and different aspects of sound research make it very logical to get together and pool our resources. We plan to do an album exploring various concepts to do with electricity. I'm quite excited about that one - we should be starting on that whenever they've finished their tour this year.
"It's originally inspired by the work of Tesla, who I've been a big fan of for a number of years. I like the enigma of electricity. It's there, people not understanding it, it's almost magical and very dangerous, not just from the point of view of electric shock, but with things like extreme low frequencies in power lines being harmful. Your body also works using electricity, of course. I've been putting things together, collecting sounds of electricity for the last year or so, from transformers and Tesla coils, mundane things and less ordinary things. I'm going to use those as a basis for sounds. The pure electrical sounds are great by themselves, the frequencies, and also the sounds caused by electricity affecting other things. This is the interesting bit for me, doing the research and planning it all. I know what it's going to sound like in my head. The recording process might just be the boring laborious bit, the exciting stage is unlocking all these ideas."
A frequent gimmick on many so-called industrial recordings has been a reference to things like infra-sound, ultra-sound, or other frequency-related sonic extremes. Infra-sound, low frequency noise below the threshold of hearing, is believed to be capable of causing real physical harm, for example. Naturally, Brian is wary about attaching too much significance to his own use of low frequency sounds.
"I can't think of many people who actually knows what the hell they're talking about. People just think it's some kind of Holy Grail - you'll get this thing with the low frequencies, and you can kill people, and make all their hair fall out. Well, you can cause blisters, first degree burns with high frequencies. You can kill somebody, turn their insides to jelly. On paper you can. It is theoretically feasible to build the equipment, but not practical. A lot of the infrasound and low-frequency vibration has come from the military, and the American military in particular have produced all these myths and rumours. They have researched it, but people assume these things exist. As if, in some hangar there's this amazing equipment ready to be used on rioters...! With very low frequencies, less than 10 Hz, you need massive concrete speakers driven by pistons, and massive amounts of volume, 130-180 decibels, like standing next to a rocket take off. The sheer shock wave of the sound would probably kill you anyway, let alone the frequencies.
"When you're recording music, there's not that much you can do, only the very simple, common sense things to do with psycho-acoustics, to do with spatial relationships, with depth, with trying to create a space. On the new album (The Monstrous Soul) we've tried it, but I don't think we've succeeded that much, because it's very difficult to do. It's the same with low frequencies. You can use frequencies like 20 Hz and sound bloody good, there's 20 Hz on The Monstrous Soul. But you have to keep it moving because if you have that on a CD, about 80% of your audience is going to miss out because their speakers won't go down to that level, they'll only go down to about 30 or 40 Hz. Some of the tones I contributed to the Anti Group's Teste Tones album use 40 Hz tones, because people will be able to hear them through their speakers, and they sound just as good as far as creating a "feel" goes. You can create very simple environments which will encourage a certain emotion though, using the well-known stress frequencies like that of babies or animals crying, or a woman shrieking. Leichenschrei, the SPK album, used those kinds of sound really well. You can set up your equipment to produce that kind of thing, and people listening to it find it really panicky, scary music. On that level it's quite simple."
Paradise Disowned had been divided into two sides: "latent" and "manifest", of which only the intense atmospheres of the "latent" side survived into later albums. The more physical aspect, fuelled by a heavy beat has survived in the form of Terror Against Terror, a joint project with Andrew Lagowski that fused Lustmørd-like noise and power with (now) electronic rhythms. Their album, Psychological Warfare Technology Systems, was completed in 1989, but not released until this year, following label problems (although one track appeared earlier on a Third Mind sampler album).
"It's really old stuff now. For years I'd been saying to people, look at all this noise stuff, someone will put a beat to it and it will go down a storm in the clubs. If you've got a really good rhythm you can put anything over it and all this grungy noise will work well in the clubs. I reckon I was right because that's what's happening at the moment. The album's too old now - two years ago it would have been interesting. It's not as valid as it was then but I still think it's good that it has come out. A lot of people have done similar things since then. The whole point of doing it in 1989 was to get it out and then move on. Now it sounds like I'm copying people from 1991.
"Originally the plan was to do three Terror Against Terror albums. I was disappointed by a lot of other club stuff, where people would become more and more commercial. I always wanted to do it the other way round. The second album was to be heavier than the first, and the last one would be incredibly heavy, probably no rhythms and just noise. I'm not so sure if I'll do it now...there's so much of that stuff out there. There are a lot of labels now all looking for this heavy techno, rave kind of stuff, and I want to go heavier than that so I'm not sure people would really want to release it. It's the kind of thing I'd like to hear in a club, and I don't think the people who actually go out and buy club records could really dance to it...I could bloody dance to it. I've always wanted to have really terrifying noises there in a club, rather than just these squeaky clean sampling sounds. You'd have these really big slabs of noise, aeroplanes, incredible explosions."
As well as helping The Grey Area with their reissue programme, compiling a Monte Cazazza compilation and working on SPK rereleases and live Throbbing Gristle material, Brian has plenty of other activities lined up for the future.
"There will be an album with Chris Carter. Somebody told me the other day that I'm doing an "Industrial New Age" album with Chris Carter, which I thought was very amusing. It certainly won't be that, but those two names are both so awful, I really hate them both, that it could be quite amusing to really call it that. There's another Lustmørd album that I'll be doing soon, there should be two actually, the electrical one and another one."
Future Side Effects releases are likely to include a live Monte Cazazza CD in a limited edition release ("I know you really hate limited editions. I agree with you actually. The thing is, most of them aren't limited editions, they repress them like mad. They make more money that way", he tells me), as well as a new Monte Cazazza album, The Cynic. Also lined up are albums from In Slaughter Natives, The Anti Group (soundtracks to their film Burning Water) and Psychophysicist, a collaboration between Andrew MacKenzie (of the Hafler Trio) and Adi Newton (ClockDVA / Anti Group).
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