Death Factory
We wanted to make music and records more effective and relevant to our Industrial society, and we wanted to make business more efficient and creative as well. Industrial Records Limited was born. Named as the most unromantic yet appropriate title we could envisage.
http://www.throbbing-gristle.com/tg/tgnewsframe.html
“Industrial Records began as an investigation. The 4 members of Throbbing Gristle wanted to investigate to what extent you could mutate and collage sound, present complex non entertaining noises to a popular culture situation and convince and convert. We wanted to re-invest Rock music with content, motivation and risk. Our records were documents of attitudes and experiences and observations by us and other determinedly individual outsiders. Fashion was an enemy, style irrelevant.
We wanted to also investigate music as a Business phenomenon and propose models for entirely new and innovative modes of commercial operation. A parody and an improvement. Industrial Records was founded before any of thee better known of the English Independents and was at its close the 3rd largest, yet the most elusive. We wanted to make music and records more effective and relevant to our Industrial society, and we wanted to make business more efficient and creative as well. Industrial Records Limited was born. Named as the most unromantic yet appropriate title we could envisage. Big records companies produce records like cars; we are connected to a contemporary social situation, not a blues orientated past style; we work hard for what we want, we are industrious; we parody and challenge large industrial companies and their debasing ethics and depersonalisation; we work in an old factory; industrial labour is slavery, destructive, a redundant institution so we call it the Death Factory. Music From The Death Factory, from the world, from life. Records in English also mean files, documents, as collected by Government agencies, employers, schools and police forces. Our Records are a combination of files on our relationship with the world and a Newspaper without censorship. Monte Cazazza suggested our business slogan should be INDUSTRIAL MUSIC FOR INDUSTRIAL PEOPLE. You Get what you deserve. Or do you? Well, from the people with a vested interest in controlling and guiding society to follow their recommendations as to what attitudes you should have, what motivations should govern your bebaviour and what goals you should be satisfied with, you DO NOT get what you deserve. You get what you are given, and what you are given is primarily conditioning that pushes you towards blind acceptance, wasted labour, frustrated relationships and a vast sense of hopelessness. We are trained to feel we are not responsible or in control of our society and world so that we will continue to let “Leaders” look after us like parents with retarded children.
Leaders are not essential, we are TAUGHT to believe we need them, that we are not able to assume responsibility for ourselves. Lies created leaders, lies perpetuate leaders, lies destroy joy and creativity and hope. There are NO LIES on these records, no one here is a leader. We assume full responsibility for ourselves. We will not be deflected from our destiny. OUR LIFE.
There is currently a trend back towards total control and safety in the record and music industry. Groups are styled, hyped and successful before they even release a record. Old outlaws and thinkers are opting for security, comfortable records that apply radical discoveries to banal musical ends. Show business and its inherited goals and justifications are triumphant again. The public is seduced and cheated by emptiness packaged alluringly in cheap tinsel. Fear is the Government once more. On this record are people who were not afraid to think, did not avoid risks. People of all ages are here, from 16 years old to 70 years old. Truth and hope have no boundaries, no set style, they are implicit most clearly in the way you choose to live. The title of the last record issued by industrial tells the rest. “Nothing here now but the recordings.”
Or perhaps there is…”
Genesis P-Orridge 1990
(Text taken from MUTE TG CD 1)