Dark Ambient/Industrial recommendations

[Perdition's Light]

These are genres I want to delve into further but don't really know where to begin? What are some of your favorites? No EBM or synthpop please!

Thanks.

 

[Vilden]

I'm kinda new to this genre myself, and want to check out more but here is some I like:

Svartsinn (my favourite)
Kammarheit
Djinn
Desiderii Marginis
Undiscovered Moons of Saturn
Northaunt
Atomtrakt
Raison D'être
Mortiis (old)
Nothing
Úlfur

 

[CAIRATH]

Dark ambient/electronic & darkwave:

Atrium Carceri - Cellblock
Coil - Musick To Play In The Dark Vol. 1
Coil - Musick To Play In The Dark Vol. 2
Coil - Ape of Naples
Herbst9 - From A Dark Chasm Below
Lustmord & Robert Rich - Stalker
Raison d'Etre - Within The Depths Of Silence And Phormations
Raison d'Etre - Enthralled By The Wind of Loneliness

Industrial:

Clock DVA - Buried Dreams
Front 242 - Front By Front
Front Line Assembly - FLAvour of the Weak
Front Line Assembly - Hardwired
KMFDM - Nihil
KMFDM - Xtort
Ministry - The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste
Ministry - Psalm 69
Noise Unit - dEcodEr
Skinny Puppy - Rabies
Skinny Puppy - Too Dark Park
Snog - Third Mall from the Sun

Can't go wrong with any of those.

 

[Dev]

Herbst9 - From A Dark Chasm Below

I'm a noob in this genre and I say you should favor "Buried by Time and Sand" by Herbst9, more accesible , much richer and very different from Raison d'Être (for instance). Amazing.

 

[CAIRATH]

Haven't heard it, but I'll check it out. Thanks.

 

[Wires & Waves]

Front 242 - Front By Front
Front Line Assembly - FLAvour of the Weak
Front Line Assembly - Hardwired

these are EBM dude

though not the gay futurepop style of ebm which is probably what he meant

 

[CAIRATH]

Those bands easily fit under the industrial umbrella. It's not like electronic genres are as distinguishable as metal genres are. EBM basically means dancable industrial music. Atleast that's how it started out when Front 242 "invented" it. Later it turned into 'gay futurepop' or however you want to call it. But there is nothing inherently wrong with EBM and lots of bands fit under both genres.

 

[Vilden]

But there is nothing inherently wrong with EBM and lots of bands fit under both genres.

Except that he quite clearly stated that he didn't want any EBM. ;-)

 

[CAIRATH]

Shrug, then don't listen to them.

I just think bickering about electronic genres is ridiculous. Unlike metal genres the genres for electronic music are vague and mostly serve no real purpose. Take a genre like techno, no one even knows what it means. It's just randomly applied to lots of artists. The same goes for industrial really. The term is applied to so many wildly different sounding bands that the term has lost all meaning apart from being just a generic classifier for harsh(ish) electronic music. Atleast in metal the subgenres have fairly specific traits that belong to them that help you classifiy a band as either black metal or death metal for instance (unless they mix them together).

 

[unknown]

Can't forget Gruntsplatter!

You need to talk to VVVVV. He's the resident Dark ambient freak

 

[Perdition's Light]

Can't forget Gruntsplatter!

You need to talk to VVVVV. He's the resident Dark ambient freak

That nigga hasn't been here in ages. I tried Front 242 years ago, bought one or two albums of theirs. Wasn't too keen on them back then, but my tastes have probably matured so maybe I'll give em another shot.

I love Skinny Puppy (I own all of their albums) and have for many years but I think Ministry and KMFDM are utter shit for the most part.

 

[CAIRATH]

KMFDM have made a lot of poor albums yes. But I like the ones I listed there. I guess it depends on how much cheese you like with your music. As for Ministry, I love pretty much all their albums (apart from the first two which are hilarious but terrible cheesy 80's pop albums). I am however starting to get a little tired of Al's constant anti-Bush ranting though. It was all over Houses of the Mole (which was otherwise a good record in my opinion) and judging from the album cover of Rio Grande Blood (the upcoming album) he's continuing that trend. It gets a little tiresome.

 

[Carcassian]

Gary Numan
OMD
Wham!
Abba
Einstende Neubarten (Spelling? Ive got an album of theirs on a dubbed tape - pretty good industrial progenitor stuff)

 

[Perdition's Light]

Wham! are a little too heavy for me I'm afraid.

Einsturzende Neubauten. off the top of my head, I'm that good. I have Halber Mensch somewhere, I need to give it another listen. I think it was a little over my head when I first heard it.

edit: "Enola Gay" by OMD is possibly my biggest guilty pleasure ever. I know, it's even got 'gay' in the title omg lol rite

 

[CAIRATH]

My girlfriend is really into them but I personally can't stand them. The only song I like is Sabrina. They're just... weird, and Blixa Bargeld's voice kind of bugs me. To be fair I've never really sat down and actually listened to a complete album though.

 

[CAIRATH]

Er... to clarify, I'm talking about Einsturzende Neubauten and not Wham! there. Ofcourse I love Wham!

 

[Perdition's Light]

pink shirt ist krieg!

 

[Phrozenspite]

I'll second the following Recs
Gruntsplatter
Einsturzende Neubauten
Skinny Puppy
Raison d'Etre
Lustmord
Coil
Nothing

I'll also go ahead and recommend
Throbbing Gristle
NON
Whitehouse
Navicon Torture Technologies
The Axis of Perdition
Grunt
Melek-Tha
Brighter Death Now
In Slaughter Natives
Genocide Organ
Merzbow
Masonna
Karlheinz
Massdirge
Emil Beaulieu
Mz. 412
Annie Gosfield(everyone who likes TG or Neubauten needs to check her out, shes on Zorn's Tzadik label and records the sounds of factory and instruments being destroyed... on her last album she had a duet with a violin and a satellite)

Basically when you get into Industrial its best to ignore bands such as NIN, Kmfdm and Ministry who have large amounts of industrial in their sound but are for the most part rock based... It started as a freeform art project that was against the commercialism of arena rock and punk. As such it was anti-music and has more in common with musique concrete than any sort of rebellion based genre. The most distinct branches of Industrial these days would be Darkwave(which is a lot of the bands with the rock influences), Power Electronics(Noise, with a fairly simple beat... can get quite complex in structure though, i'd say it compares to noise like death compares to grind)
Noise(no real structure, just boundless sonic expirimentation)
Dark Ambient(The more soundscape style music, it can either be emulating a dungeon or surprisingly soothing)
Than you have the classic industrial, industrial rock etc...

You'll hear descriptions bounced around like Black Ambient, Death Industrial, Tech Noise... those are all faux genres like how people will say that something is war metal and such...

 

[Perdition's Light]

Greatly appreciated. I knew a little of the original spirit and intent of industrial music and that's what appealed to me most. That's why I specified no EBM or synthpop, I was really getting at "less rock-based" and more freeform.

 

[MasterOLightning]

I don't know much about this stuff, but maybe Blut Aus Nord - Thematic Emanation... would fit the bill. It's definitely got industrial influences, it's rather ambient and dark as well. It's still just a short EP though.