VA - Control I'm Here (Adventures On The Industrial Dancefloor 1983-1990) (2024)

In the post post-punk aftermath, as electronic rhythms and synthesisers began to dominate the landscape, and with industrial godheads Throbbing Gristle now no more, artists across the UK, Europe and the US began to fuse minimal, emerging proto-house music, dark and Gothic tinged aesthetics and the noise and brutality of industrial music to create a hybrid which proved simultaneously cold, alienated and accessible. Taking it's lead from the dark shadows of cold war politics, governmental control, medical gore and a brutalist futuristic vision, this industrial mutation slid comfortably onto dancefloors catering for those for whom Thatcherism, Reaganomics and Eastern Bloc ideologies provided no hope, producing the most unlikely of clubbing scenes.

Characterised by hard hitting and repetitive rhythms, distorted synthesisers and guitars, pounding bass, heavy samples and lyrics exploring a side of life unavailable in mainstream music, this new thing split, morphed and mutated as the decade progressed. From the coven-disco of Alien Sex Fiend to Sisters Of Mercy's ice cold Gothic rock-techno, The Neon Judgement's Electronic Body Music and the mutated synth pop of Ministry to future chart toppers' The Shamen's sampling of a psychedelic endorsing MP and Renegade Soundwave's how-to guide to cocaine fuelled sex, this was music the invited outsiders inside. Terrifying and disturbing to those who weren't living it, but everyday and real to those who were. 'Control I'm Here' provides a carefully curated overview of that time and place, the variety of forms this industrial machine took and the key artists who pushed this hard music into the fringes of the mainstream, giving no quarter in their full-frontal approach to both their sound and the package they presented it in. Intense, heavy and free from concession. If this doesn't sound like music for you then it almost certainly isn't.

Tracklist
Disc: 1
1 Renegade Soundwave - Cocaine Sex (Turbo Lust Mix)
2 Controlled Bleeding - the Fodder Song
3 Severed Heads - Twenty Deadly Diseases (Extended Mix)
4 Age of Chance - Kiss
5 Laibach - Die Liebe
6 Nitzer Ebb - Control Im Here (Zero Option Mix)
7 Nobody Uninc - Only Human
8 Alien Sex Fiend - Ignore the Machine (Electrode Mix)
9 Hula - Give Me Money
10 The Dave Howard Singers - Yon Yonson
11 The Neon Judgement - TV Treated
12 The Sisters of Mercy - Lucretia My Reflection (12" Version)
13 Son of Sam & Good Shepherds - Cuts 'N Bruises 14 the Weathermen - Poison (12" Version)

Disc: 2
1 The Shamen - Christopher Mayhew Says (7" Version)
2 À;Grumh… - Kill
3 Lead Into Gold - Idiot
4 Nocturnal Emissions - No Separation
5 Front Line Assembly - Lurid Sensation
6 The Force Dimension - Hidden Ambush (Red Version)
7 Absolute Body Control - Tanzmusik
8 Test Dept. - New World Order
9 The Cassandra Complex - Beyond Belief
10 Front 242 - Quite Unusual (12" Version)
11 SPK - Seduction
12 Die Krupps - Germaniac (Analogital Climix)
13 Section 25 - Dirty Disco II
14 The Jackal - Underneath the Arches
15 Executive Slacks - I'm Coming

Disc: 3
1 Meat Beat Manifesto - I Got the Fear (Titanium Mix)
2 Attrition - the Fiftieth Gate
3 Die Warzau - Land of the Free (Machine Mix)
4 Borghesia - Naked, Uniformed, Dead Hot Trash Mix
5 Wmtid - Kunst
6 Hunting Lodge - Tribal Warning Shot
7 Esplendor Geometrico - Comisario de la Luz III
8 Legendary Pink Dots - Maniac
9 Silver Chapter - Neon Queen
10 M.A.D. - Sunfeast
11 Ministry - My Possession
12 Die Form - the Beast
13 Screaming Trees - Don't B Afraid
14 Son of Sam - Starch
15 625 Lines - Under Construction