Industrial music appeared in the mid-1970s, and far from being a simple sound experimentation phenomenon, it quickly spawned a coherent visual culture operating at the intersection of a multitude of media (collage, mail art, installation, film, performance, sound, video) and initiated a close inspection of the legacy of modernity and the growing, pervasive influence of technology.

Originally British, the movement soon outgrew Europe, extending into the USA and Japan during the 80's. The sound experiments conducted by industrial bands - designing synthesizers, manipulating and transforming recorded sounds from audio tapes, either recycled or laid down by the artists - were backed up by a rich array of radical visual productions, deriving their sources from the modernist utopias of the first part of the 20th century. Such saturated sounds were translated into abrasive images, manipulated through the détournement of reprographic techniques (Xerox art), that investigated polemical themes: mind control, criminality, occultism, pornography, psychiatry and totalitarianism, among others.

This book introduces the visual and aesthetic elements of 70's and 80's industrial culture to a general history of contemporary art by analysing the different approaches taken and topics addressed by the primary protagonists of the movement, who perceptively anticipated the current discourse concerning the media and their collective coercive power.

Paperback, 588pp. HEAVY ITEM!

"What is now commonly referred to as ‘Early Industrial’ is usually associated with Throbbing Gristle and their contemporaries and collaborators such as Clock DVA, Cabaret Voltaire, and Test Department. However, Early Industrial was a very broad church and encompassed folk, noise, ambient electronics, and even rock and pop elements, all twisted into new shapes, and drawing heavily on Musique Concrete, Kraut Rock and Psychedelia. Acts sported confrontational sexual, political and medical themed names such as Controlled Bleeding, Vagina Dentata Organ, Nurse With Wound, Nocturnal Emissions, and SPK - which stood variously for Seppuku (a Japanese form of ritual suicide), Surgical P*nis Klinik, or Sozialistisches PatientenKollektiv (a German revolutionary political group partly comprised of psychiatric patients)...

Throughout the book, Ballet compares images in Early Industrial posters, flyers and album sleeves with the original images and art movements that inspired them, analysing their use and context. Those influences were especially evident in the early work of Nurse With Wound's Steve Stapleton - whose photomontaged images and album titles drew heavily on Surrealism, Test Department and Foetus - who were hugely influenced by Russian Constructivism and Communist political art, and Coum Transmissions / Throbbing Gristle - who formed part of a running Performance Art tradition... this is a truly impressive work" (Outside Left).