Agnieszka Chyli?ska is a Polish hard rock/metal singer. As one of the only outspoken, strong and aggressive female performers to emerge from Poland during the 90s, Chyli?ska was frequently criticized by the public and by the media during different phases of her career. What makes her stand out to me isn’t so much her music – it’s her screeching, vigorous vocal style.
My favorite song by Chyli?ska remains the song through which I discovered her, Nienawidze (I Hate). She recorded this song with her old band, O.N.A. The particular remix that I like isn’t popular among many of her fans due to its electronic treatment by Coptic Rain, but I much prefer it to her rock and nu-metal stylings. The video is eerie and reminds me of the Brothers Quay-directed Can’t Go Wrong Without You masterpiece, created for His Name is Alive. It’s just little things that give me that association, such as that bouncing water-filled ballon egg-creature. Watch:
I rejoice at the fact that I can turn to my dog from the easel, genuinely say “Man, this is good” and be talking about Nine Inch Nails. It’s been too long. Ghosts I – IV is the album I wished for the entire time I suffered through Year Zero. Here Trent abandons vocals almost entirely and weaves a new sand-swept terrain of noise and atmosphere without deserting the industrial beats we hold so dear. I wouldn’t call it entirely different – it’s more like the subtle details dispersed through NIN’s other music, amplified, developed, mature. The accompanying photography by Phillip Graybill and Rob Sheridan is an elegant and seductive supplement to the sound.
The distribution method will keep fans and non-fans alike talking for some time. Namely, the $75 Deluxe Edition containing “Ghosts I-IV in a hardcover fabric slipcase containing: 2 audio CDs, 1 data DVD with all 36 tracks in multi-track format, and a Blu-ray disc with Ghosts I-IV in high-definition 96/24 stereo and accompanying slide show”. Under a Creative Commons license. This means access to every component of the music, for the general public to share, sample, remix and distribute, legally. Beyond the marketing brilliance it is indeed a revolutionary move that pushes copyright boundaries and adds an open source angle rarely seen in this, often individualistic, scene. Ghosts isn’t NIN’s first foray into this realm – With Teeth was streamed in entirety on the band’s MySpace page, and lossless multi-track audio files of 3 songs from Year Zero were made available for download on the band’s website.
Laibach takes over Legoland, found here, via Paul Komoda.
Fun fact! Laibach’s original concept for the Kapital record was that it would be a collection of love songs. The idea was to parody romantic pop melodies and how pathetic most of them are, but that album never happened. Instead, they ended up releasing the more enigmatic Kapital that we all know and love, which proclaimed that the economy is dead and memorably included a hip-hop song about astrophysics. Laibach released three different versions of the album, each with a different mixes of the songs; one on CD, one on tape and one on vinyl.
Buried deep within the vinyl and tape versions of Kapital, one song from the lost album of love ballads survived! That song is Steel Trust, and it’s performed by the beautiful Anja Rupel, who also sang Laibach’s cover of Across the Universe and performed in their subgroup, Germania.
And someone uploaded this song (no video) on YouTube. Here it is, in all its Euro-disco glory. Enjoy!
But DAF do. Let this German electropunk duo’s clicky beeps entrance into a world [or at the very least a basement] of mechanized taxidermy, dusty porcelain, cracked papier-mâché and moth-bitten lace. Here, sterile minimalism and granny frills co-exist in harmony, somehow.
George Harrison’s “Set on You” got nothing on this billow-shirted, leather-trousered alchemy of pop. Perhaps he was somehow inspired by it?
In Paige’s kitchen, outmoded cutlery and vintage postcards abound.
Oh, I love trash!
Anything dirty or dingy or dusty!
Anything ragged or rotten or rusty!
Yes, I love TRASH!
–Oscar the Grouch
Artist, dancer, muse o’ Brooklyn, Paige Stevenson has lived in her sprawling Williamsburg loft for almost twenty years. Every last nook and cranny is filled with artfully displayed found objects. Nicknamed the Hip Joint (after Paige yoinked that specific prosthetic human body part from an abandoned asylum hospital) once upon a time [EDIT 05/11: and now called The House of Collection] the place is legendary; sort of an unofficial Town Hall for the last stubborn gasp of New York’s bohemian art collective. Paige has hosted hundreds of performances, benefits, discoteques, tea parties, rehearsals, photo sessions and film shoots there.
Even after seven years of fighting litigation to try and kick her out of the rent-controlled space, Paige’s enthusiasm for collecting and sharing this vast array of discarded treasures remains boundless. “I guess my relationship to trash is one of aesthetic appreciation on a daily basis, because one could define the decoration of my house as Trash Decoration. It’s something that I live with every day, and enjoy, and actually love.” In this recent interview for The Garbage Collection, Paige discusses site specific pieces she’s rescued from the rubbish heap:
“The collection has accrued over the years from scavenging unloved objects. It seemed very sad to me that these things, because they were no longer used, had become garbage, landfill, trash… It’s my way of holding on to a little bit of the past.”
Edward Burtynsky cares about our planet and has an eye for the surreal. His photography reveals nature transformed by industry, aspects of production that are vital to yet rarely witnessed by the general public.
The results of his extensive travel and research are stunning – the serenity of a sunset reflecting in fractured ground, the eerie silhouettes of coal mounds, the eternally halted machines of old industry.
“Westinghouse and Edison were not friends at all. You can see why as the girls wind coils for the Alternating Current Westinghouse adopted from Tesla instead of Edison’s pet Direct Current.” – Goldenthrush on YouTube
I admit this post isn’t about a Voltron-style battle between Edison and Tesla, though I certainly wish it were. The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an industrial giant founded in 1886. The company made itself known by being the proprietors of the first patent for Nikola Tesla‘s alternating-current transmission. In 1904, 21 short films were made by the company to showcase its various technological advancements – girls winding armatures, coil winding machines, steam hammers, assembling and testing turbines, etc. Parts of these films have been edited together into an exceptionally inspiring clip and set to music. The rhythm of industry at its finest – a superb way to begin the week!
Sow was a short-lived but prolific project of spoken word artist Anna Wildsmith, her once boyfriend Raymond Watts of Pig and several members of KMFDM. Among other gritty eclectic compositions on their 1998 album “Sick”, the title track stood out and forged itself into my brain. Wildsmith screeches, cries and whispers through some of the strangest lyrics you’ll ever feel forced to pay attention to. Appearing fully nude on all of “Sick” album art, Anna carries the theme over into the vocal tracks, too. Her voice, though beautiful at its core, is distorted into nerve-endings and vocal chords stripped raw – commanding, compelling and frail.
Sow only released two full-length albums: “Je M’Aime” in ’94 and “Sick” in ’98, but remains one of my favorites to this day. Since, there have been 3 newish tracks released through Euphonic Productions which can be heard here. Little is known about Anna’s current whereabouts. During a 1999 interview with Release magazine she was living in a primitive French village, writing and hoping [though not especially planning] to release more albums. If anyone knows what she’s up to these days, I’d love to hear about it.
I never thought I’d ever see my two favorite music scenes, riot grrrl and industrial, intersect more than than when I saw Bonfire Madigan open for Laibach in 2004. There she was, pink hair in pigtails and stripey socks and her screeching cello, with ominous black banners of gear-contained NSK crosses hanging on either side. But that very special industrial-meets-riot-grrrl moment was matched (if not surpassed) when I received a link from a group called Experiment Haywire this morning:
Does that sound like Kathleen Hanna’s long-lost EBM project or what? It’s not polished, but neither was riot grrrl, and that’s exactly what made it charming. The musician behind Experiment Haywire, Rachel, has also started a record label called machineKUNT. While I’m not crazy about the name (I just hate that spelling! I hate it!), the idea is great. Their first release, a compilation called “Extreme Women from the Dark Future,” features various female EBM musicians. It’s a nice contrast the dumb, misogynistic “Shut Up and Swallow” bullshit of bands like Combichrist.
The idea of women in industrial music isn’t new; they were there from the very beginning. Most female EBM musicians who came before, such as Shikhee from Android Lust, deliberately made their gender a non-issue in interviews. That was a powerful and positive statement of a different sort, but it’s interesting to see someone, perhaps for the first time, make gender the primary focus of their industrial/EBM project.
And just because I love it, since we’re on the topic of riot grrrl, here are Jem and the Holograms performing Le Tigre’s Deceptacon:
