Industrial music vs. real life

[aububs]

As with anything else, Industrial is GREAT, and also SHIT. It's down to the individual to decide how they'll let it affect their "real life" and what aspects of it they'll adhere to.

Yeah... And what individual from your personal "real" life did you adopt from the "great industrial", if I may ask?

I think this has been addressed...

To embrace the darker side of things...one is able to hone a particular kind of dialectical approach to their life and politics which might otherwise be stifled by fear.

[ImpulsyStetoskopu]

In history of industrial music, I feel that process of evaluation has been one of the key elements. To present things without clear agenda, and allow people look at the beast from eye to eye without offering template how to react.

I'm afraid I didn't understand your latest whole comment, but these two sentences I liked very much. And I share this opinion completely. I think this "allow look at the beast from eye to eye" is possible only when people will accept/find they are beasts too.

[Yrjö-Koskinen]

Industrial as it was and is is bound to clash with the left. That's also why it's still an important and relative genre.

On a more general note, I think scenes like industrial and black metal are important in the sense that they are repositories for ideas and concepts completely shut out of mainstream culture. Even when these ideas are now rejected as "on the wrong side of history" or just plain insane, it is still good that they subsist somewhere, in case circumstances might warrant their resurrection. This is something the left should perhaps appreciate a wee bit more, given the current political developments in the world. European "political correctness" is mutating to amend its blacklist with such things as islamist ideology (in fact much of islamic beliefs as a whole), arguments comparing Israeli politics and nazism, "economic populism" and a number of other previously tolerated or encouraged staples of leftist sociopolitical thought. The left should worry far less about repressing its real or imagined political fringe enemies, and far more about the fact that it is about to become completely irrelevant, or perhaps even repressed itself. When that happens, they may need Unrest Productions to release their albums expressing frustrated fantasies of reestablished welfare states and open borders, since the mainstream media will be busy cheering Geert Wilders. I doubt they will understand this, though, and frankly I couldn't care less.

[Duality]

I think, on the discussion of close mindedness vs open-mindedness in industrial, I've always seen industrial as open minded as a whole, even if one project is very set in its ideology. Take Snuff, if a newcomer listened to "Male Supremacy", even in the few moments before shutting it off in disgust, they are forced to open their mind and live in a world where woman are less than men. In this way, I think that industrial is good, because it forces you to stare in the face of something that you might find abhorrent. When I listened to the new GO LP, I was forced to think about the South African guerrillas, which I hadn't given much thought to before, and it opened my mind to what was happening. This is why I think industrial is one of the most powerful music genres, because most projects are still not afraid to take on ugly topics. Whether one ends up burning down a synagogue after listening to Brethren or merely writing an angry blog post, they are still made to think about why people believe in such things.
Being relatively apolitical myself, I still enjoy political PE and noise because I have to exist in the world of the politically minded for a short time. Just some thoughts that probably don't make much sense anyway.

[ImpulsyStetoskopu]

Industrial as it was and is is bound to clash with the left. That's also why it's still an important and relative genre.

A controversial statement. Was GPO and his TG or SPK against to left circles? I don't think so. CV, NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS, ZOVIET FRANCE, TEST DEPT, LE SYNDICAT, TNB and many more were rather leftists (some of them even in radical politics views like NE or TEST DEPT). Of course there were some with right views, but are we sured it was their true statements, not artistic provocations?

Anyway, there isn't point split people involved in industrial music on left or right thinking enemies. First of all because of art is lie... We are able to find only what contents has been used in this art, not individual preferences in politics of artists. Besides, enjoy all of them (left and right contents) in the industrial music, each of them can be worth and necessary  in our life.

[GEWALTMONOPOL]

The left imagines it has the answer to everything and not least has a monopoly on the morals of our time. The left also has a choke hold on academia and culture and actively excludes those who don't belong to the club. Industrial with its ambivalent stance, even as an outsider culture/music genre, clashes by default.

The left in the days of TG was a very different left to the one we endure today. TG is a fucking museum piece now and are not relevant to industrial anymore. TNB is an alcoholic has been who uses younger people who have the talent he lost down a bottle and fucks them over for their efforts. Who cares what he stands for? Nocturnal Emissions as a champion of Who Makes The Nazis is a good example of a lefty at odds with what he was once a part of. Ex members of the industrial community are often the ones who become its biggest detractors.

[ImpulsyStetoskopu]

The left in the days of TG was a very different left to the one we endure today. TG is a fucking museum piece now and are not relevant to industrial anymore. TNB is an alcoholic has been who uses younger people who have the talent he lost down a bottle and fucks them over for their efforts. Who cares what he stands for? Nocturnal Emissions as a champion of Who Makes The Nazis is a good example of a lefty at odds with what he was once a part of. Ex members of the industrial community are often the ones who become its biggest detractors.

Yeah, of course... I have the same impressions, but then 35 years ago, they were shaping industrial music successfully.

[ImpulsyStetoskopu]

Ex members of the industrial community are often the ones who become its biggest detractors.

And this is sad. But there are artists from the "right" side (or consciously used controversial right-wing iconography) who are mockery of industrial music now. For example Boyd Rice, Blackhouse, Blutharsh, William Bennett, DIJ or LAIBACH.  The defective elements are people here, not ideology.

[GEWALTMONOPOL]

Those too are clowns and as irrelevant as the others mentioned. Museum pieces and/or cynicals milking their legacy to make a buck while keeping the nice lifestyle going. Don't forget to include Consumer Electronics with their current "oh how awful it is with violent men" threnodies. The Wire probably loves it but enough of us see it for the opportune bullshit it is. Latin beat added for extra weakness.

So a few individuals have lost their way but Industrial still remains on collision course with the left and because of the nature of the modern left more so than before. Also, the left, but this goes for any ideology that eventually grows too powerful, doesn't deal with individuals or people, it deals with ideology and those who don't fit are to be silenced.

[GEWALTMONOPOL]

If there is such a word, outsidership. That's the drug of industrial. It can be very intoxicating and I've seen some lose themselves to it in both tragic and pathetic ways. Those of us who know how to indulge it in a responsible and adult way find it a very useful tool and fuel indeed.

[ImpulsyStetoskopu]

I can't place a specific drug to it. Body modification? Perhaps, but even industrial was relatively late to the game with that, and I certainly don't see it applied to the noise scene. Are spray paint fumes and PayPal our drugs?

I think the "industrial music" has never been a standard genre and subculture (though I know some people who say this music was dead when it was considered as standard type of music). I suppose that it wasn't any of that, and maybe this was one of reasons that (young) people weren't able to identication with that through drugs, fashion or lifestyle.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

The left also has a choke hold on academia and culture and actively excludes those who don't belong to the club. Industrial with its ambivalent stance, even as an outsider culture/music genre, clashes by default.

I would agree on this. I doubt many would claim there is something overtly extreme right in industrial music in general. It is enough that there is something what appears confusing enough, and it is not apologized or explained.

I would guess most people in association of genre, barely fit into traditional political directions. It can be hard to really judge whether their political stance is actually merely sarcasm, even (or especially!) if they explain it.

it felt like the prior rules of what a music culture should have had been torn up. That's also why I don't feel any particularly strong affinity to the "scene" and reject most notions or concepts placed upon it. It's a true anti-art. Rejecting it only strengthens its power.

I'd assume it's question what is scene? If it would be tightly connected club, it would called as such. Scene to me merely indicates what you see out there. You look phenomena of industrial music, and it's somewhat active participants doing what they do. That's the scene. It's hardly important if the individuals feel like being part of something.

Original opening question was how industrial changed our reality, art, culture and people. It could be also thought that perhaps question was needed to be simple enough without any need to remind that industrial isn't merely something that is given, but one often actively shapes it by involvement. It's been said by several people, how dull it is that industrial people look the same, listen the same, read same books, watch same movies, are interested in same fringe cultures, etc. I don't think it is actually true, but looked from distance - that's what it looks like.

I don't know ANYONE in Finland, who say they feel like belonging to "scene". Or lets say, one or two. Still this element must be one of strongest common thing. Everybody is outsider, everybody rejects everything, everybody has different stance on matters, yet...

If one would ask me, Theotherjohn seems like prototype of UK industrial scene guy, heh. No offense at all. Just looking from this perspective. It seems like in quoted message he clearly replied the mentioned original question how industrial changed our reality, our art and our people. 

[Grübelschlinge]

Everybody is outsider, everybody rejects everything, everybody has different stance on matters, yet...

To me this is the most important point and its reason. I would also say that the whole discussion about left vs. right is pointless, because old prototypes of left and right have no meaning and no relevance anymore.  It is more like predator and prey and I rather stick to survival.

[Duncan]

Agree with most of what has been said here.  Think the championing of Industrial music fandom as a site of relative free thinking, marginalism and individuality as opposed to this general idea of 'the left' is a bit faulty though and that is without really having any disagreement with what it is we're attributing to this 'left'. 

theotherjohn as typical UK industrial guy had me smiling though! I get Mikko's point entirely about it only being appearance and impression but I'm glad to know better in person, heh. 

[GEWALTMONOPOL]

I never said anything about industrial as a beacon of free thinking and individualism. I merely pointed out that industrial for its inherent traits is on a natural collision course with the left as it is today. The repressive dominant left that holds the media, academia and culture in a vice.

Theotherjohn strikes me as a typical once UK industrial fan. A bit jaded, decidedly left wing and now considers it all a bit beneath him. Not quite as bad a HongKongGoolamong though who's just a condescending prick. Maybe I'm wrong.

Not that it matters that much. I have what I have, I like what I like and more pressing I have a studio to build. Quarrel on gentlemen!