Category: The Rabbit Hole

The Rabbit Hole, Vol. 6: The Grind

The definition of a Rabbit Hole is similar to this: Used to refer to a bizarre, confusing, or nonsensical situation or environment, typically one from which it is difficult to extricate oneself.

While listening to music doesn’t seem like something bizarre or confusing, what I do can often be nonsensical and difficult to get myself out of, so I think it fits many of the treks I do through the Tidal streaming service. This series should be no different.

What I’m simply planning on doing with this series is having someone recommend a starting record, listening to that on Tidal and then using the “Similar Artists” algorithm to go down the rabbit hole and see what records it leads me to. The trek will continue until I hit an album that is either A) so great that there’s no reason to move forward, B) so bad that it derails me or C) feels like a natural end point. In the end, we’ll see how the records hold up and how solid the connections are.

So, to begin:

  • Stabbing Westward – Wither Blister Burn & Peel

The other day I stumbled across their biggest hit “What Do I Have To Do?” somehow (I don’t even remember how I got here) but decided to listen to the full record which I hadn’t heard since it came out and from there, thought it might be a good rabbit hole to go down the industrial rock/metal path. Now, this of course is on the more modern end of the scale since it came out in 1996 and was a heavy rock record but it still represents the era very well. Grinding riffs, drum programming, strong keyboard use and a highly mechanized feel to it. But it’s also a moody record in places, dark and creepy at times in songs that start off slow but pick up power as they go along. It’s definitely dated now but I still enjoyed it 24 years later.

  • God Lives Underwater – Empty

From there I could have went the obvious route with Marilyn Manson but I chose to try to go a bit deeper with the band God Lives Underwater. Empty was first full LP, produced by Rick Rubin and released on American records who tried to capitalize on the growing industrial market in the 90s. You’d have no idea this was a Rick Rubin record on the surface as it has none of his sound to it but it’s still pretty solid for the style. This was 1995, my sophomore year in college and an album I listened to a lot before I went to bed – probably not the greatest choice before trying to sleep for the night but these crazy kids, amiright? And this hasn’t held up well over time. There are some really cool riffs on this record but for the most part these guys have one path – industrial grind over pop hooks. The whole album follows this blueprint until the end where it goes off the rails for the last two songs. I liked this back in the day, not so much now.

  • Prick – Prick

As a Nine Inch Nails fan, I was excited about this record, produced by Trent Reznor and on his Nothing records – and I loved this record back in college. A short lived project from Kevin McMahon, he released this album in 1995, supported David Bowie on a tour and then as he was going to start work on album #2 – the label decided they wanted more radio friendly songs and McMahon refused, thus putting the band on hiatus (he would release a follow up in 2002 though). But this album is still a burst of fucking energy that lasts for the entire 43 minutes of the record. No, it’s not radio friendly but it’s almost danceable in the end and contains both heavy riffs and great hooks. It’s a fuzz blast of melodic industrial grind that still holds up great after all these years.

  • Jane Jensen – Comic Book Whore

I remember this from the cover art from my days at WTSR radio as the music director. I only remember one song from it (“Luv Song”) which is more of an alt-rock song than the pop-industrial feel the rest of the disc has. And I don’t know if we did anything with it when it came in or if I just took it because it didn’t really fit our format. The album was on Interscope in 1996, back in the time frame where major labels still snatched up every damn group in the world and gave them a one album shot. Well, this did nothing and she disappeared from music until 2003 when she finally released another disc. The major label curse actually hurt a lot of artists in the 90s. They got one shot, failed and then many of them either never released another record or waited years and years to get another one out on some indie label that no one had ever heard of before. This album really isn’t very good and has nothing on it that would seem ripe for radio play with a sound somewhere between pop and industrial but very little catchy enough to stick.

  • Leather Strip – Underneath the Laughter

This rabbit hole took an odd turn from here. The Tidal algorithm only offered me three similar artists: Stabbing Westward which is where we started, Poe, would would have taken me on a completely different path altogether and Leather Strip, who are an electro-industrial group. Maybe I understand Poe but I don’t get how either of these groups line up with Jane Jensen but if I’m sticking to the plan, this is where it took me.

I had never heard of Leather Strip but it’s apparently one German dude named Claus Larsen, who has created more than 20 albums worth of electro-industrial of which reminds me of the short period of time that I listened to Front 242, Front Line Assembly and more. Underneath the Leather doesn’t do much for me though as it’s pretty much a standard version of the genre. Apparently they are very popular though, so may I just choose the wrong album.

  • Die Krupps – Volle Kraft Voraus!

I could have went further down the grinding electro-industrial hole but didn’t think that was a good choice, so I pivoted to Tidal’s recommendation of Die Krupps – also German EDM but instead of picking an album in the same general mid 90s time frame, I went back to their second record released in 1982, with hopes of changing the path a bit.

I had a Die Krupps moment in time at some point in my life, back when I would get on a genre bandwagon and have to go after everything that sounded like it but I can’t remember when that was – certainly not back in here in 1982, for damn sure. But maybe I should have ventured back this far and maybe I will not as this is pretty awesome. Aside from the overly busy “Wahre Arbeit, wahrer Lohn” the rest of the album is less grinding industrial like this rabbit hole started out and more EDM (Electronic Dance Music) and/or Neue Deutsche Welle at the most. But it’s catchy, weirdly “fun” if you can say that for this style and even though all the lyrics are in German, it still mesmerized me for a little more than a half hour.

  • Throbbing Gristle – 20 Jazz Funk Greats

Moving to Die Krupps took me on the path I wanted to go on from the start but took a long while to get to – back to the late 70s and early 80s of industrial music of all sorts. And well, I’ve heard that this record may be the best industrial record of all time and I’ve never heard it before – so it’s about time I got to it, which made choosing this path down the rabbit hole pretty simple.

And…I don’t “get it.” I’m pretty open to most genres and I was surely open to this but this is a stark, minimal, industrial record with elements of synth-pop but an it’s surely good but not nearly the experimental grind I was expecting out of the group.

  • Einstürzende Neubauten – Ende Neu

I actually bought this record the day it came out in 1996. To people that know me and know this era of my musical collection – I bought, sold and traded constantly to pick up almost any new release that fit in any sort of genre I was into at the time and at this point I was 20 and in college and the dude that came to our student center every week with the releases knew me very well. I can’t imagine how much money I would have saved had Tidal existed back then. I can’t say I wouldn’t have bought this as my tastes have changed so many times over the years that it’s hard for me to say what my mindset was at the time other than “oooohhh new! Shiny!” but this doesn’t do much for me at all right now. I remember liking one song in particular though – the 11 minute “NNNAAAMMM” which I actually still do like quite a bit but the rest is dull experimental rock music, varying between industrial, rock and ambient and sort of just there.

And with that, I’m going to end this Rabbit Hole. I wanted to go down this path and get to some of the classic Industrial bands but once I got there, maybe I should have let the algorithm take me down the more modern path. But what fun is that really?

The Rabbit Hole, Vol. 5: Electro-stylin’

The definition of a Rabbit Hole is similar to this: Used to refer to a bizarre, confusing, or nonsensical situation or environment, typically one from which it is difficult to extricate oneself.

While listening to music doesn’t seem like something bizarre or confusing, what I do can often be nonsensical and difficult to get myself out of, so I think it fits many of the treks I do through the Tidal streaming service. This series should be no different.

What I’m simply planning on doing with this series is having someone recommend a starting record, listening to that on Tidal and then using the “Similar Artists” algorithm to go down the rabbit hole and see what records it leads me to. The trek will continue until I hit an album that is either A) so great that there’s no reason to move forward, B) so bad that it derails me or C) feels like a natural end point. In the end, we’ll see how the records hold up and how solid the connections are.

So, to begin:

  • Allie X – Cape God

As I was participating in last week’s song exchange on the DBC (check it out live at WTSR every Thursday night from 8-10 PM ET, song exchange happens at around 9 pm ET and I’m “Bastard #1) I presented Bastards #2 and #3 with “Super Duper Party People” by Allie X, which they fucking hated because their tastes are highly suspect but I also left them a note that said “I think if I were to really get into a new genre now, electro-pop would be it.” And this is how a rabbit hole begins.

I work from home, isolated in my basement like I have the coronavirus (editor’s note: I don’t) and regularly, the only thing that gets me out of my seat is a danceable song. And I’ve been finding more and more of these in the electro-pop genre. I love upbeat, fun songs, with singable hooks and totally memorable beats and that’s what the genre gives me.

I feel like Electro-pop as a label is near the top of the food chain for the genre at least but there’s so many variations. It’s all a branch off of pop music, of which I would then branch off synth-pop from that and then a branch off of synth-pop is electro-pop. Could I explain to you the difference? Well, I don’t know. To me, snyth-pop sounds like it’s fully synth based as the base and happens to be a pop song while electro-pop like you hear on Allie X’s record is more of a pop base with fun electronics. That’s what my ears here. Is that right? I have no idea.

But I love this Allie X record from the fun “Super Duper Party People” that the guys detested to something a bit more poppy like “Sarah Come Home” but it was the former that made me get up and dance and start me down this path.

  • La Roux – Supervision

Unlike Rabbit Hole #4 which was based on the Eurovision contest I’m back using just the Tidal “similar artists” algorithm to move down the chain. La Roux had one hit in the US called “Bulletproof” back in 2009, so it’s been a while since she had a moment here but she’s been busy on other people’s records. This is her third album and I had high hopes for it when it came out in early February but there’s one thing missing – the hook in the chorus. With this type of electro-pop sound, I very much expect the hook to be catchy as hell it’s not on the vast majority of these songs. All the songs are kind of funky but for some reason the whole album feels like the band just isn’t letting go. It feels too safe. I mean, it’s still solid even if a bit too cold and calculated. Although, I swear there’s a George Michael’s Faith album vibe in a lot of the songs, like the one below in which I hear the key riff from “Monkey” in it.

  • Betty Who – Betty

La Roux took me to Australian singer, Betty Who and her album from early in 2019. I had heard this before also thanks to the DBC Song Exchange with the track “Just Thought You Should Know” which she and her “writers” should be sued for since it’s basically lifting Go West’s “King of Wishful Thinking” note for note. But the rest of the album is a great representation of electro-pop, super catchy, hook filled and Betty has a great voice to go along with it. Fun record for sure.

  • Robyn – Body Talk

From there, I could have chosen Carly Rae Jepsen, which would have gotten me off the electro path too far, so instead I chose the inevitable path, to Robyn. So if you only know Robyn from the song “Show Me Love” in 1997, you have no idea what you’re missing. Unfortunately, she’s kept a pretty low profile since the point but Body Talk was my album of the year when it came out in 2010. But it’s also hard to imagine that it’s been 10 years since this came out and that she’s only had one full length since then, since this was so fucking good. With Body Talk, she reinvented herself as a electro-pop artist and created some of the catchiest material of the decade on this record. In 2010, this sounded almost groundbreaking. In 2020, it still sounds relative – I don’t know if the pop world has even caught up to this yet. You feel it right away with the second track, “Fembot” which sounds like it’s coming from a sexy rapping robot, followed by the spoken word track about everything that’s killing her while warning everyone “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do.” There’s also more straightforward songs like “Call Your Girlfriend” in which Robyn tells a dude to call his girlfriend and break up with her and then crazier tunes like the pseudo-reggae “None of Dem” or the actual Reggae song “Dancehall Queen.” Overall, it’s a fascinating trek into the different realms of her mind and all the corners of electro-pop.

  • MØ – No Mythologies to Follow

The only problem with hitting up Robyn so early in this is that I usually end the trek on something really good or really bad and well, I’m not sure it’s going to get any better than Robyn. But can’t stop the Rabbit Hole three albums in, so the algorithm gave two interesting choices – Grimes and MØ. Grimes just released an album so I listened to it but I had no idea who MØ was, so I went there and picked her first of two LPs, released in 2014. So yes, this is electro-pop, I suppose but it’s a lot more midtempo than I would like. Not one song made me pause from the paying gig to stop and dance – so not really my bag for this album.

  • Icona Pop – This Is…Icona Pop

Conscious effort to go backwards from MØ as I was getting trapped in the same type of material. So I went backwards to the recommendation of Icona Pop. I knew the name but didn’t even recognize them as the “I Love It” group – which, since it’s the first track, I was quickly reminded of. And now this is the type of electro-pop I would really like to get into. If I was to move forward, I would move from this to Kesha, as it’s similar for sure but for this, the whole album is a super fun burst of energy. Now a song like “Ready for the Weekend” is more electro house than pop and I’m not moving info Diplo territory, so I prefer tracks like “All Night” or “We Got the World” which don’t have the house beats with them. Or just the simple silly fun of “Then We Kiss.” They haven’t released an album in 7 years though, but supposedly there’s a new one in the works.

  • Dragonette – Fixin To Thrill

This is a new one for me as I’ve never even heard the name Dragonette before but heavens, they are on my radar now. The only full band on here so far, this 2009 album was their second and is pretty much the definition of electro-pop as I define it in my mind. Fun, upbeat and even a little quirky (with a banjo in one track) this is the exact type of record that I want to find more of and focus on in the future.

  • MNDR – Diamonds

Another woman I’ve never heard of before, she released one electro-pop album back in 2012 and only some singles since that point, so there really hasn’t been a point to get on my radar and there’s really no reason to be. This is half good, half dull. For every momentum builder, there’s a pretty dull track bringing the album back down to earth again. There’s promise here but nothing that reaches full potential.

  • Sleigh Bells – Treats

The algorithm popped Sleigh Bells near the top after MNDR for some reason, even though these guys are more noise pop but I guess something about keyboards got them mixed together. This is the only record I know from Sleigh Bells and the one that critics nut over when they talk about the band. I think I liked it when it came out in 2010 – maybe I drank the cool aid at the time because I hate this thing now. Fuzzed out rock, random noise, a true assault to the ears. And with that, I’m derailed.