#orphx

Orphx performing in Athens; 2018.

Industrial Soundtrack For The Urban Decay (2015) is a documentary film by directors Amelie Ravalec & Travis Collins produced by "film du garage", which tells the story of the industrial social, political, artistic and musical movement; collects interviews with the most influential leaders and artists on the scene, news, curiosities, press reviews and can count on the participation of artists such as Throbbling Gristle, Genesis P. Orridge, Cabaret Voltaire, SPK, Lustmord, Test Dep, Click Click, NON, Clock Dva, Re/Serch, Z'ev, Sordide Sentimental, Hula, In The Nursery, The Klinik, Ant-Zen, Orphx, Prima Linea.

Set to a steady background throb of mechanized beats and drones, the film splices archive performance clips into contemporary interviews with key players in industrial rock’s origin story including Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, Test Department, In The Nursery, Clock DVA and Non. These mostly British, mostly male scene veterans have largely remained fringe figures, although Throbbing Gristle co-founder Genesis P-Orridge is a renowned underground icon who has starred in previous documentaries, while Graeme Revell graduated from Australian band SPK to become a Hollywood score composer with credits including Daredevil, Sin City and Pineapple Express. Revell argues that industrial music has now been absorbed into contemporary pop and soundtracks, thus proving that “aggressive noise elements can become part of popular culture.”

The film-makers traces the fascinating origins of industrial music right back to the Dadaist art movement of the early 20th century, through the cut-up methods of William Burroughs and Bryon Gysin, to the avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen and proto-noise bands like Can and The Velvet Underground, with digressions into French cultural theory and cult author JG Ballard’s dystopian sci-fi futurism. In the 1970s, in parallel with the embryonic punk rock scene, early industrial artists formed their own semi-anarchist network of independent record labels and DIY fanzines, exchanging audio cassettes and “mail art” via the postal system

Although they were workers, students or unemployed, the pioneers of this industrial music were educated, resolutely turned towards art, and had a strong political conscience. Although they had no musical background, they took the plunge and changed the course of music. They found their inspiration in groups of the German Krautrock movement such as Kraftwerk, Can or Faust, in the Dada movement, Futurism, Surrealism or in authors such as William Burroughs, Brion Gysin or J.G. Ballard. Combining Do-It-Yourself punk with underground mailart and fanzines, these pioneers were also among the first bands to incorporate sound loops, homemade synthesizers, industrial recordings and cutup techniques into their music.

“It is a result of our life experiences, of the sounds that you hear that express how you feel”, Cosey Fanni Tutti of Throbbing Gristle, a formative group in the growth of the Industrial music movement explains.

The compressed trailer for this film of 52 minutes, directed by Amélie Ravalec and Travis Collins promises to span the length of breadth of Industrial music, claiming its origins of discontentment arising in 1914, through to Dadaism in Switzerland, The Beat Generation, all the way to the 21st Century to popular culture through the soundtrack of unforgettable films, such as Sin City.

“Industrial music came from that DIY ethos”, as does the aesthetic of this documentary with scene after scene relentlessly slammed into one another, with not always crystal clear sound bites from interviewees, and harsh colour contrasts.

For the occasion, the usual "Radio Talk" returns to the Riot studio, a live format by Gabriele Frasca (writer, essayist, poet, translator and above all music lover) and Stefano Perna (who has been engaged for years in research activities of digital audiovisual media, sound design, sound art and radio experimentation).

This is not an informative documentary - but rather a frenzied, schizophrenic overload of self affirming opinions from a small corner of the movement in which all interviewees, Boyd Rice of Non, Click Click and Cabaret Voltaire agree with one another, almost word for word.

The opening and closing of the evening could only be entrusted to Luca Anzani and his "Hard Listening" selection: music that emphasizes the less commercial and more experimental aspects of the Noise - Industrial - Minimal - Electro - Glitch - Ebm - Krautrock - Proto Techno - IDM - Cyber - Dystopic - Analogue genres, strictly on CD and vinyl records.

SPK - In Flagrante Delicto

Coil - Circles of Mania

KTL - Last Spring: A Prequel

Death in June & Les joyaux de la princesse - Blood by despair

Recoil - Stone

Senking - Black Ice

This Quiet Army - The pacific theater

SPK - The doctrine of eternal ice

Ancient Methods - First Method

Boyd Rice / Death in June - Are you out there

Schedelvreter - Sounding Heaven

Coil - Cardinal points

Boyd Rice - Assume The Position

Boyd Rice vs Coil - Various Hands

Silver apples - A pox on you

Ike yard - Mirai

Click click - I rage i melt

Pankow - Never thought of consequences

Coil - Penetralia

Danse society - Hurt

Skinny puppy - Choke

Carlos peron - Garladinos

Morbus M - Corruption

Vicious Circles - Resistance

Cloaks - Desolate Turves

Test dept - Statement

Death in june - The Calling

Cosey Fanni Tutti (born Christine Carol Newby, 4 November 1951) is an English performance artist, musician and writer, best known for her time in the avant-garde groups Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey.

Tutti first performed under the name Cosmosis. According to Throbbing Gristle biographer Simon Ford, the name of Cosey Fanni Tutti was suggested to her by artist Robin Klassnick based on the title of the opera Così fan tutte, meaning literally "That's What All Women Do."