Industrial music emerged in the 1970s from avant-garde and early electronic music

Industrial music is a genre inspired by post-industrial society that emerged in the 1970s, drawing from avant-garde, early electronic music, musique concrète, tape music, noise, and sound collage. The term was coined in 1976 by Monte Cazazza and Throbbing Gristle with the founding of Industrial Records. A key feature of the industrial wave was that it encouraged non-musicians to experiment with noise-oriented styles — commercial synthesizers and the cassette underground lowered the barrier to entry. This accessibility led toward power electronics, dark ambient, and death industrial. The 1980s cassette underground distributed most of these releases outside the mainstream industry.

Examples

Throbbing Gristle, NON (Boyd Rice), Cabaret Voltaire (founders). Later: Clock DVA, Einstürzende Neubauten, SPK, Nurse with Wound. Whitehouse coined ‘power electronics’ as a further subgenre.

Assessment

Explain the connection between the cassette underground and the proliferation of industrial/noise subgenres in the early 1980s. Why did industrial’s encouragement of non-musicians matter for noise music’s development?