The Bureau of Industrial, Noise & Avant-Garde Disturbances
Bureau Selection · Trivia
Four trivia entries, selected daily by the Bureau, spanning people, records, labels, equipment, studios, venues, sleeves, words and litigation.
Lustmord, the long-running dark-ambient project whose catalogue the Bureau files among the early dark-ambient documents, is the working alias of which figure?
Filed answer A · Brian Williams. Born 1959 in Wales, working continuously as Lustmord since 1980. The catalogue's combination of subterranean-recording materials, extended low-frequency drone, and ritual-and-occult content has shaped later dark-ambient practice; Williams has also pursued a parallel career as a film sound designer and composer.
Legendary Pink Dots was co-founded in 1980 by Edward Ka-Spel and which long-serving collaborator?
Filed answer B · Phil Knight (The Silverman). Working under the stage name «The Silverman» across more than four decades. Knight's electronics-and-keyboard work has remained constant across the band's line-up rotations; the other three options are real Legendary Pink Dots-adjacent figures from different periods (cEvin Key's collaboration with Ka-Spel as Tear Garden; Van Hoorn and Pistoor both long-running band members).
Cabaret Voltaire's 1982 album 2x45 took its title from its original release format. What was that format?
Filed answer A · Two 12-inch discs at 45 RPM. Two 12-inch discs cut at 45 RPM · the title is literal. Released May 1982 on Rough Trade and recorded at Western Works in Sheffield and Pluto Studios in Manchester, it was the last Cabaret Voltaire album to feature founding member Chris Watson, who left during the sessions.
Tony Conrad's 1972 LP collaboration with which German experimental-rock band extended the long-running drone-violin framework Conrad had developed across the previous decade?
Filed answer B · Faust. Conrad recorded Outside the Dream Syndicate at Wümme (the band's long-running studio). The album's two side-long pieces, «The Side of Man and Womankind» and «The Side of the Machine», presented Conrad's sustained-drone violin work atop Faust's krautrock-period rhythm framework. Conrad died April 2016 aged 76.
A new four, rotated daily.
Bureau Selection · Current
Four tracks, hand-picked by the Bureau. Three canonical, one wildcard. Filed in no particular order; the numerals below are filings, not standings.
Selection revised periodically. The full Audio index lives at /audio →
Explore
Each department opens a working corner of the Bureau, from the tradition's pre-history to the records, scenes and texts that argue it into being.
The Long Tradition
Six chronological essays covering the long pre-history (1913–1975) through the founding wave, turn, crossover, dispersal and streaming age.
ExploreGenre & Taxonomy
Twenty genre files covering power electronics, harsh noise wall, death industrial, dark ambient, rhythmic noise, glitch, Japanoise and the surrounding contested categories.
ExploreFounding Texts
Eight manifestos and position statements, from Russolo's 1913 letter to Pratella through the Industrial Records prospectus and the Harsh Noise Wall refusal.
ExploreThe Practitioner Axis
The register of every practitioner and precursor figure filed in this archive, in alphabetical order. Each entry leads into a full artist page.
ExploreImprints & Catalogues
Label histories. Industrial Records, Some Bizzare, Mute, Cold Meat Industry, Ant-Zen, Hospital Productions; the imprints that pressed the records, distributed the catalogue and frequently went under.
ExploreRecordings, Equipment, Studios
The physical objects the genre exists as. Records, master tapes, equipment, studios and the techniques behind them. The Second Annual Report, the Akai S1000, Beck Road, the tape cut-up.
ExploreSleeves, Posters, Photography, Film
The visual mode. Sleeve design, gig posters, scene photography, performance and film documentation. The visual vocabulary the tradition shipped its records and ideas in.
ExploreWe must break out of this narrow circle of pure musical sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds.
Luigi Russolo · The Art of Noises · 11 March 1913