Next to buying the Tindersticks ‘Ypres’ album I started this year with also buying two vinyls which were really missing in my collection of old school industrial music: the first Maschinenzimmer 412 album and the first Memorandum album… both on the legendary and now defunct Cold Meat Industry label…
What I like about old school industrial is that it is not dance music (as a lot of contemporary so called industrial music simply is )… also the production is much more minimal and lo-fi/lo-tech as nowadays… resulting in a rough, raw and thus not so clear sound… the music is loud of course but not due to pumping up the sound in the production and mastering phase…
Mostly it is more about clattering steel as loud (distorted) beats… sometimes rather (arty) punk like with Einstuerzende Neubauten, Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire and Test Dept. or more nasty, dark and grim as with Cold Meat Industry and Ant-Zen releases… sometimes the releases on these later can be ritual or military in sound… also like some SPK and Lustmord stuff was…
Anyway I am happy with these two classic Cold Meat Industry records on the turntable here… and a nice detail is that inside the sleeves there are the old inserts and mailorder flyers… and on one it says: “coming in 1990 CMI-09 In Slaughter Natives – LP”… and this never happened! CMI-09 was a Brighter Death Now LP (BDN is of course the project by CMI label boss) and until this day there has been no vinyl album by In Slaughter Natives… which is too bad as I like that project a lot too!
Tobias Bernstrup… of course a familiar name for those who know my label… his next album is called ‘
Also I ordered the Tindersticks album ‘Ypres’ from last year… one of those records I forgot to order when it came out… this is an album the band did for the World War I museum in Ypres in Belgium. What you get served is beautiful soundscapes… a bit of modern classical music… rather moody (of course I would like to add)… this could also serve as soundtrack to a WOI film for sure… it has the tension and mood fitting perfectly… although military sounds pop up in the background from time to time the music is all about an atmospheric music experience and not at feeding you with explicit military sounds and music as is often done in WOI (and II) inspired “pop music”… but as said… this is more modern classical music as pop music anyway…