Miller time

a surprisingly faithful cover that gives the (fuck me is it really 40 years old? yes it is) song a digimax-shiny big BIG sound that's totally now

rather like the odd loping almost-breakbeat in the background, the least faithful bit of the rendition (the voice is very close to Daniel M's in its accent and phrasing)

yet for all that ultimately it is inexplicably unexciting

or should I say, explicably unexciting?

because trying to be soul-less and machinic just like in the Good Old Days is as empty and pointless a procedure as Adelle trying to be soulful and human just like in the Good Old Days...

ah this dude Fixmer is in a collaboration with the vocalist from Nitzer Ebb, who in the late Eighties already seemed decidedly behind the times with their DAF tribute act



That said, they were a very entertaining and committed live band, the Ebb - saw them rock a stage  hard at the Fridge in Brixton



What a load of Krupps, eh?



Did they secretly wish to title the album That Totalitarian Age?





"don't be lazy!"



sinewy, sweaty and shouty - a work aesthetic

aha of course of course




here's me on Mute and its story and legacy, recently, here

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

here's me on industrial dance music from 1991 but with no mention of the Ebb I don't think

here's me on Front 242 from around about the same time

it's coming back big time, the EBM / industrial-for-discos thing, apparently - and hey, this Holly Dicker piece from Resident Advisor takes the Ebb anthem "Join in the Chant" for its title!

of the other groups in this area, I was quite taken with Consolidated, because of their unusual strident Leftism, and with KMFDM, for reasons I can't remember. I'm not sure which was the album I kidded myself into thinking was worthy of a feature at Melody Maker - the one with this Carl Orff sample?



if they'd just pushed a little bit further, they could have been T99!

but the beat really is like jackboots

Skinny Puppy, we were all enamored with at MM - well, my crew anyway

But I found that you only needed one or two - perhaps just one - Skinny Puppy album in your life

Live, they were an endurance test

EBM

cool super in-depth piece by Holly Dicker for Resident Advisor on the history - and contemporary influence / resurgence - of EBM  - aka Electronic Body Music

I often used to de-abbreviate the term incorrectly as European Body Music - which i actually think is a better term, given the ancestral role of DAF, Liaisons Dangereuses, Die Krupps, etc

if I was to do Energy Flash again, one of a bunch things I'd add is more on the non-disco, non-American, Euro-industrial prehistory of rave

it's there implicitly and name-checked with the coverage of Belgium, gabba etc - but there is more to say about this other dance-oriented club culture of the Eighties that was going on at the same time as the black street sounds like electro, synth-funk, freestyle, early minimalist rap and proto-house - a scene / sound that was stompy, Euro, and descended out of industrial if veering often into a sinewy sort of fun

mind you, i never found it easy to dance to industrial -  i remember going to a place with the Stud Bros and Stubbs (champions of Front 242, Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, a; grumh, et al at Melody Maker), right in the centre of London - it might have been a particular at Gossips now I think about it - and it was dedicated to industrial and EBM - and recall finding that the beat got tiring quickly -  too hard stomping, too nail-gun regular  - there was something missing, a shimmy that house added

an old piece of mine about what I called "industrial disco" circa 1991