I have to say I don’t think I’ve heard any other Industrial band that samples and loops as well as Ministry have. What are your thoughts on some industrial bands that heavily sample?
Skinny Puppy? But, if done right, it could be very good. Older ministry did amazing things with sampling, and so did Puppy. There’s others, but I honestly can’t think of them at the moment. I’m kinda burnt out at the moment.
KMFDM dabbles with it from time to time though. Also, does Combichrist.
Velvet Acid Christ were known for heavy and somewhat innovative use of sampling, particularly on early albums. They are more EBM than Industrial but no need to get into this here.
I like sampling if done right. And not just samples from movies, speeches, etc. I like samples of anvils, etc. Like Al said in that recent interview, back in the day it was probably interesting to go around with a recorder and record stuff and then go back and see what you could do with it. Today, it’s too easy. You can search the internet and find sounds of all kinds of stuff. So, what once took time and skill can be done by a child. I think that makes it less appealing to mess with, except for the cookie cutter industrial bands who feel like they have to have samples in order to be “industrial”. I used to want, so much, to have a sampler so I could make industrial music way back when it was way out of price range. Later, when I could do it with Fruity Loops or mods or whatever, I was like “eh, no fun. I’ll get drunk instead.”
hahah that’s pretty funny because it’s how I sample now, I just get youtube clips and loop them…the old style sounded like so much fun though. plus it sounds better anyway.
Skinny Puppy
Severed Heads
FLA
Laibach
Borghesia
Meat Beat Manifesto
Greater Than One
Tackhead/Keith LeBlanc
Cabaret Voltaire
Foetus
…all as good and in many cases better.
1002
I’ve always dug the samples Clock DVA used in “Soundmirror(Reflected)” they were taken from Something Wicked This Way Comes
excellent movie btw Long Live Ray Bradbury.
Late,
grmpysmrf
PIG! I knew I was forgetting a major one. Watts is brilliant with the sampling, or at least was. You can listen to Sinsation and Wrecked and just laugh in complete awe. Him and Thirlwell are tied though. Student had to learn from teacher afterall.
If you go back far enough many of the early so called “Industrial” bands used tape loops and field recordings long before the digital sampler was made. Sometimes a desired tape loop was longer than the spools on the machines allowed for so they had to be wrapped around something else to stretch it. Severed Heads once played a show with a tape loop that went around the entire club!!!
Now Ministry had an advantage around 1985/86 with the Fairlight CMI in their arsenal, you couldn’t get better than that for the time period. Chris could probably elaborate better with his experiences playing on that beast. I love samples and the more manipulated and twisted from what the sounds were originally the better.
I have to say I don’t think I’ve heard any other Industrial band that samples and loops as well as Ministry have. What are your thoughts on some industrial bands that heavily sample?
Personally, I think most post-1990 Industrial bands suck. There just seems to be a lot of derivation within the genre, and the only ‘innovation’ has been the blending of the industrial aesthetic with other musical styles. And that simply isn’t good enough. I’d say one of the few industrial bands pushing the envelope whilst staying true to the aesthetic is Neubauten… but they don’t use samples, much.
I think the beauty of sampling is to totally reflects the Gysin/Burroughs cut up technique. Taking phrases, words, bits and pieces here and there and competely recontextualising them within a musical milieu. I think that ‘sampling’ aesthetic also applies to a lot of hip hop… hell, even some of the shitty mash-up DJ’s that seem to be the flavour of the month.
The way Ministry used samples was great. You had all this repetition with regards to the bass, guitar and drum parts, yet the songs never got boring. Why? I’d say that is greatly attributable to their use of samples. ‘Golden Dawn’, ‘Faith Collapsing’ and ‘So What’ are the best examples of this, in my opinion. They totally constructed song meanings out of a bunch of seemingly disparate samples and made them work together.
Today, it’s too easy. You can search the internet and find sounds of all kinds of stuff. So, what once took time and skill can be done by a child. I think that makes it less appealing to mess with, except for the cookie cutter industrial bands who feel like they have to have samples in order to be “industrial”.
The internet’s an interesting thing. I think… like Al was saying… the advent of technology has had the perverse effect of degrading the quality of music out there. Rather than being exploited by forward-thinkers to it’s fullest extent, technology seems like it’s been used as a crutch by a host of untalented ‘bedroom-musicians’ out there. They just click a mouse, press a button, and hey presto, a song. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like someone’s gonna be a gun at what they’re doing straight away; you take time to learn this shit. But the advent of the internet has given a lot of people the means to just plop whatever they’ve whipped up straight onto it. Back in the day… people wouldn’t have been so quick to do that, and this gave them time to ferment their ideas, refine them, and THEN show them to the world. And for that reason, I’d say it was a lot easier to sort the wheat from the chaff back then.
Too many sheep, not enough shepherds today. They all seem to walk under the umbrella of technology. I ain’t a Luddite, but I can see the advantages and disadvantages as clearly as each other.
Cabaret Voltaire
Foetus
SHIT YEAH. Especially the Cab’s 
Severed Heads once played a show with a tape loop that went around the entire club!!!
Now Ministry had an advantage around 1985/86 with the Fairlight CMI in their arsenal, you couldn’t get better than that for the time period.
SHIT YEAH. That Severed Heads thing is the coolest thing I’ve heard today.
Have you heard the story about the Fairlight? The Australian inventor of it wanted to meet Al and friends, to see how his pride and joy was going in the hands of these fine, upstanding young men.
He turned up to their rehearsal room to find Jah Wobble had thrown up on it, there was beer poured on it, and it was covered in graffiti. He apparently stood there going ‘what the hell have you done, my fucking baby, you’ve fucking killed it!!!’.
Ah, they don’t make things like they used to… after all that ‘trauma’, it still stood up, apparently… [laugh]
Did Al still use his fairlight(or a verison of it)later in Ministry’s career at all?
Did Al still use his fairlight(or a verison of it)later in Ministry’s career at all?
You can see the Fairlight onstage during the In Case… vhs, and Revco’s YGDSOAB vhs recognizable of course by the computer monitor attached beside the keyboard. If I remember correctly Ministry had sold it by the time Filth Pig had rolled around so perhaps the last release it was used on was Linger Fickin Good.
@ dildo, yes!!! I remember hearing that story, and how horrified the guy was at seeing what Al and company had done to it. Very punk rawk!!
Speaking of computers and musical software this is the single best thing I have ever seen on youtube [laugh][laugh][laugh]
“DANCE MOTHERFUCKER!”
When it comes to sampling/loop surgery Ministry gets the job done.
If you want a real laugh check out the countless ebm bands on Metropolis Records, all they sample is zombie and vampire movies, its sad what industrial/ebm has become.
Ministry’s got some fucking awesome samples and they use them very well. I don’t think they’ve ever done samples that are quite as brilliant and defining as what Cabaret Voltaire did with “Yashar” and “Sensoria”. There was a dirty tape splicing feel to those tracks that simply send a chill through my spine. The actual samples in “Don’t Argue” are freakin’ amazing as well, though the song doesn’t quite live up to the samples.
This is probably better off going into the interesting CV/Kirk thread, but I advise everyone to check out one of the Cabs’ final albums, Plasticity. It samples the SHIT out of the Outer Limits episode “Demon with a Glass Hand” (which was always one of my fave OL episodes anyway) in 2 of the tracks on that album. This builds on, of course, the “There’s 70 billion people of Earth-- where are they hiding?” sample used years earlier in Yashar. They also had a sample from that episode on Stay Out of It.
Alongside CV, I really have to give credit for the most interesting and original sample use to Ministry and Puppy, without a doubt.
[reply]Did Al still use his fairlight(or a verison of it)later in Ministry’s career at all?
You can see the Fairlight onstage during the In Case… vhs, and Revco’s YGDSOAB vhs recognizable of course by the computer monitor attached beside the keyboard. If I remember correctly Ministry had sold it by the time Filth Pig had rolled around so perhaps the last release it was used on was Linger Fickin Good.
@ dildo, yes!!! I remember hearing that story, and how horrified the guy was at seeing what Al and company had done to it. Very punk rawk!!
Speaking of computers and musical software this is the single best thing I have ever seen on youtube [laugh][laugh][laugh]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDC5jso9RUQ[/reply] That video is rare I take it? took me awhile to find it…
I think I’m going to upload it to youtube.
Yeah “Plasticity” is brilliant! I’d agree with others upthread and add Foetus to the list of amazing sampling artists. Severed Heads “Dead Eyes Open” was quite brilliant too though I’m not as big a fan of their other work as I used to be. Meat Beat Manifesto’s got a good ear for samples too!
Totally different genre but I’ve always enjoyed The Crystal Method’s use of sampling on “Vegas”. I think it’s their ear for samples that makes me dig them a little more than many of their contemporaries. Beck’s had some great noise/sample/collage folk music too. “Mellow Gold” has a lot of great sampling as does the newer album “The Information” (which also is full of great CV style electro).
What other non-industrial artists slay on the sampling front? I’m guessing Public Enemy and Disposable Heroes will get mentioned.
I’ll list some hiphop material, starting with the obvious:
Beastie Boys. Paul’s Boutique is arguably the greatest album in hip-hop history, no doubt due to all of its fantastic, oddball samples. They’ve really fallen off ever since they went “mainstream” with Ill Communication in '94 but on the other hand, it’s a lot harder & costlier (if not outright impossible) to do that kind of sampling than it was 20-odd years ago. Wu-Tang and their affiliated solo artists have some cool but predictable samples from poorly-dubbed old martial arts films. Kool Keith’s Dr. Octagonecologyst album (produced by The Automator) is another landmark.
A lot of the earlier Death Row material produced by Dre (The Chronic, Doggystyle) had loads of classic P-Funk sample, most of which had been sampled previously by other rappers but not with as much public recognition.
The first 3 De La Soul albums (especially De La Soul is Dead and Buhloone Mindstate) are fantastic. Basically, anything affiliated with Prince Paul (including the Gravediggaz project) can be counted on for some nice samples. 2 Live Crew also has some surprisingly good stuff, especially on As Nasty As They Wanna Be (notably, sampling Kraftwerk’s Man Machine for Dick Almighty).
But yeah, between De La’s 3Ft High lawsuit from the Turtles and Biz Markie getting sued by someone else, that basically kicked off the whole shitty situation of 90s sample clearance litigation and artists being terrified to dig deep for new sample sources.
[reply]Did Al still use his fairlight(or a verison of it)later in Ministry’s career at all?
You can see the Fairlight onstage during the In Case… vhs, and Revco’s YGDSOAB vhs recognizable of course by the computer monitor attached beside the keyboard. If I remember correctly Ministry had sold it by the time Filth Pig had rolled around so perhaps the last release it was used on was Linger Fickin Good.
@ dildo, yes!!! I remember hearing that story, and how horrified the guy was at seeing what Al and company had done to it. Very punk rawk!!
Speaking of computers and musical software this is the single best thing I have ever seen on youtube [laugh][laugh][laugh]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDC5jso9RUQ[/reply] Man, I would love to have one of those…that keyboard makes some magical sounds…Ministry and Revco sounds better with the Fairlight.
Nobody sampled the way ministry did back in the day. Entire songs seemed to be written on samplers. Flashback, You Know what you are, etc to name a few.
As for recent bands that sampled well, I’d have to say the pickings are very slim. Skrew was very good with samplers on their first two albums. 13mg also worked well on Trust and Obey.
Speaking of which, 13mg are recording again as is Skrew.