This was taken from a blog, and though it doesn’t have deal with Ministry directly, it does hit upon them; one might even say that it echoes some of Jourgensen’s expressed views. In any regard, thought I would thorw this up towards all of you as some food for thought.
Attack Of The Clones
MARCH MARCH MARCH
Can you hear that?
MARCH MARCH MARCH
It’s the sound of marching clones.
Industrial, a genre, that if one were to ask some of members of the genre’s (arguably) founding group (Throbbing Gristle) began and died with Throbbing Gristle. But as with most labels, things tend to stick around as long as critics want to claim something exist, and so perhaps this is why there has been this element called “indsutrial” ever still, and for whatever reason, it has been within this beast called “industrial” that the most interesting of musical genres has been found (at least for me).
The largest reasons behind this would lie in the amount of diversity found within the genre and working perhaps in tandem with this, the amount of innovation that sprouted from the genre.
(for example, take Consilidated, Sheep On Drugs, Dead Voices On Air, Skinny Puppy, Ministry, and VNV Nation, and you have 6 really independently sounding things)
Much like other musical genres of the “now” however, this once innovative juggernaut seems to have slowed it’s pace. I believe this to be espically evident within the area often reffered to as “EBM” (Electronic Body Music).
As stands, I look at much of industrial now, and it reminds me of just about every other musical genre out there…that is in that I can’t really tell the difference between one band to the next. Assemblage 23 might as well be VNV Nation as far as I’m concerned. That is, musically, you’re basically dealing with things that are very formulaic. You can typically rest assured that you’ll be greeted with one song after the next that is propelled by a 4/4 beat structure and timing, that you will be greeted with an entourage of analouge synth type bass lines and leads, that these bass lines and leads will be much along the lines that one may have experienced during the hey day of new wavish synth-pop and/or what is to be found in “progressive” house/trance. You can sit and rest assured that you’ll have “depressive” lyrical topics full of goth poetic vigor. And on and on it goes…
This is perhaps a bit stranger than what one may find when dealing with what currently lies on the billboard top 40 in that well, if not the artist themselves, at least the bulk of the people that comprise the listening audience of this genre tend to be people that lay great claim to their “independent thinking”, their embrace of “themselves” as opposed to their “conformic” embrace of a group. And yet, like the other more “mainstream” masses out there, you can still find that they tend dress in a similar attire (uniform), and propell the use of “tried and true” music formulas over the idea of musical exploration.
So from drum n bass to industrial to “alternative” to metal
MARCH MARCH MARCH
THE CLONES MARCH ON.
Many a record exec currently bashes on the problems (supposedly) caused by downloading music. I would liken this "supposed’ problem to be nothing but an illusion however, as the fact of the matter is we’ve been dealing with essientially various forms of downloading for years. Today it’s downloading, yesterday it was dubbing tapes for friends, and on and on it goes. Closer to point of fact, I would liken any kind of musical depression not so much to downloading, but to the fact that music as a whole has become rather boring.
The “mainstream” has always stuck with a more conservative approach to music. That is to say, rather than propell new forms, it caters to forms that have already shown themselves capable of being commercially successful.
So it’s normally been within the more “underground” circuits that one would have to turn in order to actually find what was new and even to catch glimpses of what the mainstream would later be like.
To a large degree, this is still how things work, what’s interesting about todays “underground” however (specifically, within the United States) is that it’s innovative efforts seem to have come to a crawl.
Rather than issuing forth a barrage of artist that seem to carry an “arts for arts sake” approach, an approach that purposely attempts to go for raw emotional expressivness and/or artistic creation over emulation, like the “mainstream”, it’s been pumping out a rather large amount of artist who’s main goal seems to be retintion of the “good ol days” through emulation of the “underground” artist that comprised the good ol days. I can not say that I understand why this is occurring. (i.e. take a look at the “Orlando” breaks area to see a darn fine example of this in action)
I remember when I began learning guitar, I purposely strayed from even attempting to learn covers. Favorite artist of mine or not, I had no interest in learning how to play YOUR song. The philosophy was simple, my interest did not lie in being able to re-create what some one else had already created, but rather to see birth to my own creations.
Don’t get me wrong, everything has it’s place. At times it takes an innovator to come up with an idea, to lay down the ground work for a new area(s) that may be covered. It then often takes emulators, people that decide to work within a forlayed framework, to begin seeing where this new framework may go. In deed, often times innovators quickly become emulators! That is to say, innovators of a style, rather than immediately seeking to push past what they just created, stay within the realm they have established/helped established and begin to see how far exactly they can push that realm.
I’ll give Skinny Puppy as an example…a group that helped innovate a musical form starting back in 84 and then remained steadfast within that realm until arguably 1994! As far as I’m concerned, it was not until Last Rights (Puppy’s 92 album) or arguably The Eyes Of Stanley Pain (a Download album that hit in the mid 90s) that those that comprised Skinny Puppy finally began to work in an area other than that which they had helped coin back in 84 with their original Back & Forth release. OVER 20 YEARS WITHIN THE SAME FRAMEWORK!
Simarlarly, Ministry hit up Land of Rape in Honey circa 87-88, with the first 3 tracks of the album really coming to lay the foundation down (arguably) for industrial-metal. They continued to work within that framework all the way up to the current day! (Though I’ll note since '92, they really haven’t pushed the genre that much farther).
And to that end, we have peopel like Front Line Assembly, who took the Puppy model, and then took the time to see where they could push that model to.
And on and on it goes.
So it is not that I am saying emulation is TOTALLY bad, but more so, that when in over abundance (which I currently think it is) it is. It’s a lot like the value of the dollar in regard to economics, over flood the market with money, and you’re going to have inflation; that is to say, a decrease in the value of the dollar. Over flood the music market with to much of the same thing, and you’ll have a similar effect, things become stale and people won’t appreciate it as much.
So to those oh so scared about how downloading is taking away from the music industry, I say
“FEAR NOT!”
It’s not the downloading where in your big problem lies, but the fact that you’re attempting to sale stale and over produced product. You’re dealing with depreciated value, not theft.
Now, it’s normally been the artist dedicated to art for arts sake that alleviate us of this problem. But, as formentioned, the numbers comprising such people seem to be dwindling…in there place, a rise of people all concerned with how well they can present a pre-existant formula. So we have a barrage of electro-clash artist, essientially re-doing what was done by new wave(synth-pop) in the early to mid 80s, jungle/drum n bass streamlining it’s rhythmic presentation, sounds of bass, and even presentation (how many rewinds can you predict at a dnb event nowadays?), and on and on it goes.
There’s still artist propelling things forward, and actually, in pretty decent number (when one starts looking outside the U.S.)…but that’s besides the point…
'cmon people…who gives a fuck if it’s not going to get you popularity…I mean, it’s supposed to be about “art” isn’t it?
93 93/93
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