Why so little respect for the synthetic "instruments" we're creating?

[McLilith]

Do you guys realize how the entire Tipper Gore crusade against "harmful" music began?

Tipper's young daughter was watching the video for Tom Petty's song Don't Come Around Here No More, and became frightened when characters in the Alice in Wonderland themed video started eating Alice like she was a cake. That's what started Tipper on her crusade. Her young daughter was distraught over a relatively tame Tom Petty video.

Caution: Don't play the following video, unless you want to risk being scarred for life!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0JvF9vpqx8

[Gamma-UT]

Are you sure? I thought it was a Prince song on Purple Rain that mentioned a girl masturbating.

[vurt]

darling nikki?

[Gamma-UT]

That’s the one.

[zerocrossing]

I totally remember my sister playing Prince’s “Sister” in her room when I was probably about 14, which meant she was 10. Somehow we came out OK... she even converted to Mormonism at one point. Hm... maybe that was the catalyst?

[telecode]

crude bunch of noise makers.

I think with Skinny Puppy you need to keep them in context to what they were trying to do in the genre of alternative goth/rock music at the time ... They were pushing the boundaries of what bands like Sisters of Mercy, The Mission, Fields of Nephlim were doing and they were definitely trying to stay away from what Cure and Depeche were doing which was pretty much very pop oriented alternative music which Puppy were anything but.

[Russell Grand]

Do you guys realize how the entire Tipper Gore crusade against "harmful" music began?

Tipper's young daughter was watching the video for Tom Petty's song Don't Come Around Here No More, and became frightened when characters in the Alice in Wonderland themed video started eating Alice like she was a cake. That's what started Tipper on her crusade. Her young daughter was distraught over a relatively tame Tom Petty video.

Caution: Don't play the following video, unless you want to risk being scarred for life!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0JvF9vpqx8

You kidding me? When I was a kid that video freaked me out. I'm not saying it should've sparked a crusade against music vids, but don't laugh off the thought of that video bothering someone. I was only 5 or 6, so I didn't understand what was happening in it and it stuck with me for life. Lol.

[Benedict]

Well, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a Skinny Puppy fan. I think they're a crude bunch of noise makers. I don't even know why this song was censored.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aHukxL2mIk

You can't understand a damn word they're saying. The vocals are buried in the mix with, what sounds like, some kind of distortion.

Skinny Puppy are an acquired taste for sure. They took up what Tom of Severed Heads was doing along with what SPK & Throbbing Gristle had done and restated it - pushed it - further with new digital tools. I won't pretend it is fun but VIVISekt is amazing when you understand the musical "language" they used. The detail and balance they used is unequaled by anyone since.

[donkey tugger]

Dunno, when I was a lad 'industrial' music was properly that - people banging on bits of metal and using chainsaws etc - Einstuerzende Neubauten and Test Department etc. Then all of a sudden it seemed to become a term for some kind of sinthesiser goth malarky. All ok if you like that kind of thing, but not really very heavy if the truth be known - all angsty bluster and no bollocks. It's only when Godflesh came along that it had any kind of interest for me, although really, they're just a metel band with a drum machine if the truth be said..

[wagtunes]

Dunno, when I was a lad 'industrial' music was properly that - people banging on bits of metal and using chainsaws etc - Einstuerzende Neubauten and Test Department etc. Then all of a sudden it seemed to become a term for some kind of sinthesiser goth malarky. All ok if you like that kind of thing, but not really very heavy if the truth be known - all angsty bluster and no bollocks. It's only when Godflesh came along that it had any kind of interest for me, although really, they're just a metel band with a drum machine if the truth be said..

Well, I'm a Ministry fan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imqvLToWH7k

[Dirtgrain]

That reminds me of the Lords of the New Church:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOnm8449vWg

[telecode]

Ahh. And that is why Arcane Attic is my favorite and most used Maschine expansion.

[Forgotten]

Dunno, when I was a lad 'industrial' music was properly that - people banging on bits of metal and using chainsaws etc

Yeah, if they didn't cut a car door in half with an angle grinder or bring some oxy-acetylene gear on stage it wasn't really much of a gig...

[BONES]

There is more to threat and menace in music than ODing on distortion and a bit of shouting to saturate the mic/preamp. Skinny Puppy quickly evolved to leave any sense of subtlety behind and just piled on the schlock - it's like Bad Taste when you really want something more like The Exorcist to be effective.

That's just krap. You're focussing on Ogre's vocals, I am talking about the music and the production. Listen to something like Smothered Hope or Glass Houses, the production is huge compared to anything Severed Heads or Cabaret Voltaire ever did. It takes it to a whole new level. It works with or without Ogre's caterwauling, which is mostly mixed well back anyway.

Consider what Genesis P was able to get across with little more than a sparse drum machine rhythm and an LFO.

Nothing that ever did anything for me. I find his stuff, from TG on, mind-numbingly boring. Same with that whole crew, I've never heard anything interesting from any of 'em, despite my best efforts to listen to a lot of it.

I've got to wonder whether you've listened to anything earlier than Crackdown or Micro-Phonies.

Wonder no more, The Crackdown was the 3rd CV album I bought, when it was released. I already had Red Mecca, 2x45 and a handful of singles, like Nag Nag Nag. Again, the earlier stuff didn't do much for me, I was much more into things like Test Dept's The Unacceptable Face Of Freedom, which is bursting with a visceral anger that no-one else has ever bettered. The Dream Ticket was the first CV thing I really liked, then The Crackdown.

With respect to the actual thread topic, when you consider the number of things they tried pre-Crackdown overall, which were done with more emphasis on acoustic treatments than synths, their later stuff seems much more buttoned-down - and may be one of the reasons why synthetic instruments don't get "respect".

To me it is just more musical and enjoyable because of that. The problem with experimenting all the time is that you rarely hit the mark. CV had three good albums in my book, as they passed through the zone of stuff that interests me. Their early stuff is too chaotic, their later stuff too slick.

Similarly, Severed Heads got a lot more done with tape and musique-concrete techniques compared to what happened when sampling and synths became much more accessible and therefore used more heavily.

I used to see them now and then in their earlier days, along with bands like Wildlife Documentaries, The Makers of The Dead Travel Fast, Scattered Order and other M Squared artists. It made for a very different night out but wasn't something I could do too regularly. How any of them did what they did never really interested me, it was the result that mattered, as it does today.

I look back at early CV, Test Dept, SPK, Die Krupps, etc. and think that they sounded so bad early on because that was the best they could manage at the time but, once technology caught up and they got better at what they were doing, they eventually started making the music they had wanted to make from the start. Those who came later, like Skinny Puppy and Front 242, had everything they needed to get it right from the get-go and that's what they generally did.

[BONES]

(e.g., Depeche Mode is often considered "Electronic Rock").

Probably because Martin Gore mostly writes their songs on guitar.

Guitars fill up a good amount of the spectrum so that is understandable. But it's also markedly different from the electronic artists that wield a sequencer.

It can be but it doesn't have to be. As I said, NOVAkILL is a rock band, even though we do everything ITB and have never even contemplated using real guitars, electric bass or drums in our music. The vast majority of our songs have that classic rock structure - intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-break-(chorus)-verse-(2x) chorus-outro - because more linear songs, as you get in most dance genres, are boring to us.

hawkwind

I'm not sure I've ever heard a Hawkwind song. Seen their albums plenty but was never tempted to buy one.

Dunno, when I was a lad 'industrial' music was properly that - people banging on bits of metal and using chainsaws etc - Einstuerzende Neubauten and Test Department etc. Then all of a sudden it seemed to become a term for some kind of sinthesiser goth malarky.

But that's where a lot of those bands went themselves, so they dragged the genre along with them. Cabaret Voltaire, Test Dept, Die Krupps and SPK all ended up doing electronic dance music of one kind or another. Einsturzende Neubauten were about the only ones who stayed true to the original Industrial sound.