Anyone else into this mysterious post-industrial project? After finding their complete catalog on a blog I’ve been getting back into them after years and years away. Man, now I remember why I loved them so much back in the day - treated native instruments, artful samples and surprising sonic juxtapositions.
More radiant than TG, Coil, et al, edgier than Vidna Obmana and Robert Rich and just plain more interesting than most contemporaries. I’ve been into “Just An Illusion” and “collusion” and am looking forward to digging deep over the coming months.
Haven’t listened to them in so long I’ve actually forgotten what they sound like.
I remember reading an interview with Miick Harris (Scorn) around '93 and he was raving about them, so I checked them out.
This was before the days of the internet however (had to rely on mailorder…yes, that’s right kids! Mailorder!) and I found their albums very hard to track down.
Shadow, Thief Of The Sun was the background music I used for a photo montage presentation I did in college.
But damn their albums are hard to get.
Any of you guys like Controlled Bleeding??
I haven’t heard a lot of Zoviet France’s stuff, but what I have heard I like. I remember Mark Spybey was a member at one time.
As for Controlled Bleeding I enjoy them very much. Of course like many I was first exposed to them during their “Wax Trax” period which is not really reresentative of their sound overall. They are a band that seems to have changed quite a bit over the years, but I like their mid-'80s ambient period the best. Joe Papa’s operatic vocals was certainly an important part. Music From The Scourging Ground, and the Golgotha EP are two of my favorites.
I also really liked the Joined At The Head 12" much better than the reworked Controlled Bleeding versions of those songs. Ironically Chris Connelly appears on the cover of that 12" grinning like a maniac through some broken glass and a chain link fence despite saying several times in print how much he didn’t care for CB.
Both Joe Papa and percussionist Chris Moriarty have passed away in recent years leaving band leader Paul Lemos (a Catholic school teacher!) to soldier on alone. I have not picked it up but Vinyl-On-Demand released a massive 6 LP set of unreleased stuff a couple of years back.
I used to listen to a lot of Controlled Bleeding. I always appreciated Paul Lemos as he wrote me a very nice letter when I sent him a couple of short stories I’d self published and a fan letter.
These days I really only listen to the Wax Trax stuff by them, but should track down Golgotha as I used to love that album and it was rather a bridge to my fascination with minimalist classical music. I remember “Songs from a Gilded Chamber” (or something like that) was also great.
I think it’s interesting that with their “Penetration” album they did the industrial metal with operatic vox 10 years before Fear Factory but never really got any credit.