Notes from the Industrial Underground

Since the Industrial Revolution there has been a drive through Dadaist Art and Futurist music to explore the alienation and new social order about by the change from an agrarian society based on manual labor to a mechanized society based on machine labor and mass production. The change in society wrought by the Industrial Revolution also brought about a socioeconomic class system that sharpened the disparity between rich and poor and still exists today. Dotcom millionaires co-exist with overeducated and unemployed middle class kids waiting tables and immigrants who perform backbreaking labor in sweatshops and fields for less than a living wage. A constant barrage of advertising and TV make sure that even the poorest immigrant sees how the rich and famous live so that they stay motivated to spend whatever money they can scrape up for that latest fancy cell phone or name brand shirt. The Romans used bread and circuses to keep the lower class under control; today we have McDonald's and reality TV.

In the late 70's UK youth railed against that class system with punk music, drawing attention to the struggles of poor, alienated people to survive. These intelligent and underemployed youth fought back against the mainstream for survival using the writings of political theorists, revolutionaries, and philosophers to inspire their cause. Out of the ashes of the punk scene that imploded in the early 80's grew a revolutionary musical movement that would become the Industrial/Electro music scene. The early Electro/Industrial artists like Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb used electronic music and drum machines to underscore lyrics that explored the disillusionment and alienation left in the wake of the greed and excess of the 80's and in the shadow of the Cold War where Communism and Fascism were very real threats.