“The punk rockers said, ‘Learn three chords and form a band.’ And we thought, ‘Why learn any chords?’ We wanted to make music like Ford made cars on the industrial belt. Industrial music for industrial people.” – GENESIS P ORRIDGE OF THROBBING GRISTLE & PSYCHIC TV

1969, Hull, England — COUM Transmissions, an art collective founded by Genesis P-Orridge (Neil Megson) and Cosey Fanni Tutti, inspired by Dadaist art and the transgressive writings of William Burroughs, They took to the streets with an absurdist and subversive approach, they sought to break the mold of stagnation and challenge the social norms embedded in the stiff upper lip of the British psyche.

Through artistic provocation and a confrontational approach to performance, COUM was built to explore social taboos and ask fundamental questions about the potential artist in all of us — and, in my opinion, to face the shadow, a concept written about extensively by Carl Jung and many other esoteric philosophers.

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
— Carl Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 13 (Alchemical Studies)

The infamous Prostitution show, held at London’s ICA, combined collage work and physical artefacts from COUM member Cosey Fanni Tutti’s pornographic ventures through modelling for sex magazines. This put COUM on the radar of both aspiring artists and the powers that be. Their unwillingness to conform laid the groundwork for an imminent artistic revolution — the philosophy of DIY culture, the “do it yourself” ethos upon which industrial music and art would be defined

24 August 1983 — Air Gallery, London, UK. John Balance (Coil), Peter Christopherson (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, Coil), Zos Kia and Marc Almond (Soft Cell) present How to Destroy Angels – A Slow Fade to Total Transparency, a live performance combining tape electronics and ritualistic actions inspired by the Thelemic occult work of Aleister Crowley. The piece incorporated self-immolation imagery and served as both a statement of philosophy and sonic identity.

With atonal elements of percussion, synthesisers and tape loops, this ritual noise work explored the ecstatic and violent nature of man, as well as the transformative qualities of performance and esoteric ritual. Occult inquiry has often been a central theme for many industrial bands such as Psychic TV, creating a kind of satire of the cultism found in both religion and high society. In effect, these performances act as a mirror to ourselves, reflecting the often deplorable nature of mankind.

Many attendees of the performance were appalled and left soon after acts of defecation and bloodletting began. The recording was later remastered and released by the U.S. label Cold Spring, and it is now regarded as a key moment in the history of industrial music and performance art.

DIY – DO IT YOURSELF

The idea of musicianship has often been relative to the idea of skill, the fundamental understanding of chord structure, melody and a technical proficiency to create sound of a palatable nature. An essential fact of industrial music history is none of the artists of the early years had any musical “ability” per se, but a desire to create, an innate calling to push the inside outwards into reality, not creating to please the concert hall but to artistically “do it yourself” by any means necessary. Not to say through years of practice they don’t learn more technical skill, but the action is not from the essence of classical training or conventional understanding. This breathes new life into art and rewires our approach to music and art which will always be of us the people. This Modernist approach to art and music has inspired multiple generations of ” Wreckers of Civilisation ” to further break the stagnation of formulaic approaches to artistic practises, always posing the questions to further challenge our understanding of ourselves and the ultimate journey of self expression.

“We must break out of this limited circle of sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds.” Luigi Russolo – The Art of Noises 1913