Control I'm Here: Adventures On The Industrial

In the post post-punk aftermath, as electronic rhythms and synthesisers began to dominate the landscape, and with industrial godheads Throbbing Gristle now no more, artists across the UK, Europe and the US began to fuse minimal, emerging proto-house music, dark and Gothic tinged aesthetics and the noise and brutality of industrial music to create a hybrid which proved simultaneously cold, alienated and accessible. Taking it's lead from the dark shadows of cold war politics, governmental control, medical gore and a brutalist futuristic vision, this industrial mutation slid comfortably onto dancefloors catering for those for whom Thatcherism, Reaganomics and Eastern Bloc ideologies provided no hope, producing the most unlikely of clubbing scenes. Characterised by hard hitting and repetitive rhythms, distorted synthesisers and guitars, pounding bass, heavy samples and lyrics exploring a side of life unavailable in mainstream music, this new thing split, morphed and mutated as the decade progressed. From the coven-disco of Alien Sex Fiend to Sisters Of Mercy's ice cold Gothic rock-techno, The Neon Judgement's Electronic Body Music and the mutated synth pop of Ministry to future chart toppers' The Shamen's sampling of a psychedelic endorsing MP and Renegade Soundwave's how-to guide to cocaine fuelled sex, this was music the invited outsiders inside. Terrifying and disturbing to those who weren't living it, but everyday and real to those who were. 'Control I'm Here' provides a carefully curated overview of that time and place, the variety of forms this industrial machine took and the key artists who pushed this hard music into the fringes of the mainstream, giving no quarter in their full-frontal approach to both their sound and the package they presented it in. Intense, heavy and free from concession. If this doesn't sound like music for you then it almost certainly isn't.