I I don’t remember how I got into possession of that tape. Multiple stories exists and were told from time to time, to myself or to anyone who would listen, always changing my memory of it:
In one story I got it as a goodbye present, shortly before I moved to another country; we were standing outside of my house, warm summer evening of course, a hug and the tape, something to remember her by. In another story I got it a year later in a letter, because for some reason I had thought about and asked for it, homesick and alone, wanting a token, something that would bring back the memories of that summer, enclosed in a black envelope, smelling of patchouli. Or maybe I simply borrowed it someday to make a copy, and never gave it back. I do know that it stayed with me for a while, listening to it on my walkman while I made my first steps in Vienna.
I lost it a couple of times, sometimes the whole thing, sometimes only the cover or the track listing; once the damn thing broke, the walkman ate the tape and I had to screw it open, carefully removing the crunched tape from the magnet head, surgically flattening it out, taping it (haha) back together and slowly rewinding it.
And then over the years I just forgot about it.
Until a couple of weeks ago, almost exactly twenty years after I first listened to it on the backseat of that little blue VW, when I found it again. The whole thing, tape, track listing, the plastic cover and her handwriting.
I always had the tracks as digital files somewhere on my computer, but listening to the actual tape again after all these years felt totally different: all the cracks and bends and hisses, the wobble and cuts, everything so familiar, immediately brought me back.
Spring of 1998, a little town in Northern Germany where I grew up, sitting in the backseat of my friend’s car, all dressed in black, the windows rolled down, the sun in my face, the smell of cigarettes, so so sure of everything I knew, and so so scared of everything I didn’t. And in the player was that tape.
We must have listened to it a hundred times in that car, back and forth. I started measuring the distance between our towns in songs: her picking me up and driving from my house to the city: Side B(which wasn’t fully recorded). Driving from her house to the city in the middle of the night, stopping at the local cemetery: a little over one side.
It’s funny how music taste changes, how much it evolves and maybe even adapts. I didn’t particularly like the music on the tape; my friends, almost 5 five years older than me, assured me that this, too, was “goth” music — but I was used to something way cleaner, I was interested in sad songs, being misunderstood and miserable in a dark room with a candle, not these harsh sounds, loud drums, samples and screams. Quite ridiculous if I listen to it now. And if you look at the track-listing, the compilation isn’t really that good. I mean, most of it is some german electro EBM from the nineties, some of it obvious as hell, some of it so niche and insignificant that no one would even want to talk about.
But for me the whole thing perfectly describes a time and a zeitgeist — both for me personally, remembering my last summer in Germany and my first freedom as a teenager, but also as part of a subculture and music scene. A time where everyone was trying to reinvent the great legacy of the eighties: industrial getting more harsh, darkwave renewed or reborn and new genres like the “Neue Deutsche Todeskunst” (New German Death Art) invented.
So here comes a track-by-track description of that very tape, a nineties EBM & electro compilation called “Black Hole”, the very first ‘goth’ mixtape I ever got, probably recorded in 1997 on a little stereo somewhere in Lower Saxony, Germany, by a nineteen-year-old girl.
Side A
01. And One — Deutschmaschine
(1994, I.S.T., GER)
We start with an obvious one, the typical bassline & hi-hat drum combination of And One; Steve Naghavi singing about the German machine, which apparently is undying and should be unplugged.
A track that should never miss on any german synth or EBM compilation, a club classic, the sound & style so totally characteristic for And One — they never really changed it. Taken from their 1994 album I.S.T., it’s probably their most well-known song from that time — a mix of Depeche Mode-influenced synth-pop combined with a harder EBM beat.
Their texts were sometimes a bit … controversial, for me at least. There I was, politically educated through punk records, listening to a German electro band singing about Germans being proud and small. It took some time and closer listening to “Deutschmaschine” until I got the point : a warning about Germany’s role in the world or how they see themselves — a warning not to repeat history. More on that point later.
02. Still Silent (feat. Peter Spilles) — Shockwaved
(1996, Sick World, GER)
Still Silent featuring Peter Spilles, notable singer of dark electro band Project Pitchfork, deliver an electro-industrial track, nicely changing the pace using light synthesizers and a heavy distorted electric guitar. Spilles slowly builds up the tension, singing about a nearing bomb, falling to earth, the heat wave, the “shockwave”, leaving us with a despairing last thought before or after the apocalypse: “the power of humanity is death”, and silence.
(A wonderful track to play in the club, when the dancefloor angrily stomps through the fog, rebelling against the nearing apocalypse; I used to continue my set with Cure’s Lullaby, just to rapidly change the mood of all these serious Goths.)
I was curious to find out more about Still Silent and was amazed when, during my research for this post, I found out that behind Still Silent is actually German musician Mindy Kumbalek, the keyboarder of the band “Goethes Erben”, one of the founding elements in the “Neue Deusche Todeskunst” wave in the mid-nineties; so it’s not a coincidence when Oswald Henke (singer of Goethes Erben) sort of covers “Shockwaved” in his own interpretation called “Nichts bleibt wie es war” (Nothing remains the same) in 2001.
03. Oomph! — Der Neue Gott
(1992, s/t, Germany)
Oomph! may be considered one of the founding fathers of the “Neue Deutsche Härte” movement from Germany, something that was later accredited to the well-known band Rammstein. I don’t think Oomph! ever got a big following outside of Germany, and even there it was just one of those alternative, maybe industrial metal bands forming in the nineties. This song though, “Ich bin der neue Gott” (“I am the new god”) is somewhat different from the later, more metal and guitar-centric stuff that Oomph! was famous for. Using a EBM bassline, synths and drums, Dero Goi the frontman sings about how he killed the old god (“he was ugly, sick and weak”) — and subsequently replaced him as a new leader: bigger, stronger and more beautiful. On the dancefloor, this song was a killer track at the time, a one hit EBM song wonder, rivetheads screaming, stomping on the dancefloor and singing “Gott ist tot”.
Obviously, analogies to Nietzsche come to mind: God is dead, men killed and replaced him — a theme not unfamiliar to NDH or NDTK.
But it’s also interesting to note that the lyrics are partly taken from the Socialist working-class marching song, called “Brüder zur Sonne zur Freiheit” — Dero Goi re-interprets it as:
“Kinder zur Sonne zur Freiheit, Kinder dem Lichte empor, hell aus dem dunklen Vergangnem, leuchtet die Zukunft empor”.
“Children to the sun, to freedom. Children upon to the light, bright out of the darkness shines the futures”.
Thinking of EBM as a working-class music scene, harsh electronic beats as the music that women and men dance to after working in the factory, this reinterpretation fits really well with the whole EBM movement at that time — and maybe even today.
On this tape Oomph is not the only band borrowing from socialist themes in their music — but we will talk about this more when discussing PALs “Gelöbnis” on Side B.
04. Isecs — Einheitsschritt
(1996, Elektronische Körper Musik, GER)
“Drei Schritte vor, drei Schritte zurück” — this is how I learned to dance. Hands behind my back, eyes on the floor, very serious, three steps backwards & three steps forward. This was something more elegant than the hopping around with my arms in the air to various punk songs that I was used to. This was serious goth dancing.
“Einheitsschritt” by Isecs, a scene-critic song about the uniformity and arrogance of a goth subculture, struck me more as a textbook for various goth specific rituals. This was my introduction to dancing, to a hairstyle (“Vogelnester”), how to dress (“black stuff”), what to do (“go to the cemetery or clubs”).
And what a wonderful song to dance to — the synth and bassline — a simple but very driving instrumentation.
The “Einheitsschritt” (loosely translated to “walking in line”) is a persiflage and critique on the scene itself, their arrogance and self-importance, ending on the line “it’s always three steps forward but four backwards — and the truly dark souls remain lonely and unheard”. Back then I had no real experience with the scene or what people were like, so I didn’t really get the whole point — but it hits one of the common points of criticism of every subculture: how can you be so unique when you’re all wearing the same clothes/color, listening to the same music, doing the same things, etc… And of course, we all feel that way at some point with every youth culture — getting sick of the people in it, even though the uniformity of a goth subculture is always seen bigger from the outside than from the inside. For me this youth subculture always had and still has so many facets.
05. Invincible Limit — Push!
(1986, s/t, GER)
“Push!” is the oldest song on the tape. Invincible Limit (or Invincible Spirit) released it in 1986 and created one of the most famous EBM tracks from the 80ies in Germany. You can easily put it next to songs by Nitzer Ebb, DAF or Front and it wouldn’t fall short: a hard and danceable electronic beat, synths sounding like electricity and distorted lyrics about “getting on the floor” and “Push!”ing.
Apart from this song, the frontman Thomas Lüdke had a couple of other club hits in the eighties and nineties with Invincible Limit/Spirit, like “Love is a kind of mystery” and “Devil Dance”, or with his other music project called “Mao Tse Tung Experience” the single “Irregular Times” — absolutely recommended for everyone who’s into a more old school EBM sound.
06. Codex — Riechst du das?
(1992, s/t, GER)
Stefan Ackermann is sort-of famous for his crazy stage presence as the frontman of the band “Das Ich” (representing the “Neue Deutsche Todeskunst” at its peak). With his part bald, part spiky hair and an always manic expression in his eyes, he resembles a henchman of Satan himself, especially with songs like “Kain & Abel” oder “Gottes Tod”.
With Codex he recorded one song in 1992, which apart from the German & slightly over-pronounced lyrics, has nothing to do with his work in “Das Ich”. Thematically Stefan Ackermann is happy that summer is coming soon, he repeatedly asks “Do you smell this? It’s gonna be a very nice summer”. The rest of the rhymes are on the same level, always a bit tacky:
Die Hecke konnt’s nicht wehren,
wie hoch sie immer stund,
du reichtest mir die Beeren,
ich reich dir meinen Mund.
(GoogleTranslate says: The hedge could not resist, How high she always stood, You gave me the berries, I’ll give you my mouth.)
When listening to it in 1998 I actually liked the text. I imagined these Victorian-style Goths, in their frilled shirts and long coats, reciting poems, etc… I too was anticipating the summer that year, long nights & deep relationships; so the lyrics resonated a bit with my pubescent self.
Musically this seems like the most obvious 90ies electro song ever — and it is: a rip-off of the 90ies Eurodance classic “Rhythm is a dancer” by Snap. Same synth-line, same rhythm, same “Lalala” of a female background-singer.
07. Qntal — Ad Mortem Festinamus
(1992, Qntal, GER)
I never was a big fan of this medieval sub-genre of the goth-subculture, which was more a Metal thing than anything. Electronic music with medieval lyrics & vocals, however… That was something else.
Qntal combine experimental electronics with historically correct lyrics, as done in “Ad Mortem Festinamus” from their first record. The text written in 1399 talks about the inevitability of death and “the need to stop sinning”. The music is composed and produced by Ernst Horn, the electronic mastermind behind another German dark-wave band — and one of my favorites at that time — called “Deine Lakaien”.
More interesting than the first album is “Qntal II”, their second one released in 1995. There Qntal combine not only electronics and medieval vocals, but also thematically address the riots in Los Angeles beginning of the 90ies. An album that one of my first friends in Vienna lent me and I once listened to for 8 hours straight, while studying for an exam.
08. Eco — Liebe & Hass
(1990, s/t, GER)
The only band that appears twice on the tape, Eco from Germany — a sort-of EBM band with one of these somewhat resilient club-tracks from the nineties — so so very typical for that time, the sound, the lyrics: “you and I, I hate you I love you”. For me back in the day, this had nothing to do with Goth music and I remember distinctly when listening to the tape for the first few times wondering if the appearance of that song on the tape was an accident — to me it sounded more like electronic, maybe even nineties German techno music, even though now I realise that the EBM style is unmistakably there. The second song by Eco present on the tape, called “Schmutz/Dirt”, is a bit more interesting, both scene-related and for me personally — but I’ll cover that later.
09. The Merry Thoughts — We Love To
(1996, Psychocult, GER)
Sometime in the early 00s I attended one of the goth club classics parties in Vienna’s nightclub called ‘Avantgarde’ back then — the venue now still active and known as “Viper Room”. My first steps inside the Vienna goth scene, I made my way over the dancefloor, bumping into various people ’cause the fog was so thick, up to the DJ and asked him a bit shyly if he could play “We Love To” by Sisters of Mercy. After a few minutes of ignoring me, he took down his headphones, examined me for a few seconds with a growing smirk on his face and screamed “there is no such song” and immediately got back to his record.
There I stood, long black hair in my frilled shirt with heavy eyeliner, my confidence dropping through the fog onto the dancefloor, took a deep breath and screamed back “of course, it’s called -we love to-” but he ignored me, so I left him alone. But a few tracks later, my wish actually came on, and arrogantly enough I thought to myself — “ha — Ii was right after all”.
I was sure for a very long time that this was Sisters, only to find out later that it’s actually by a Goth Rock band from Germany called “The Merry Thoughts”. I felt very dumb then.
Taken from their 1996 record “Psychocult”, the song is a driving goth rock track with an uncanny resemblance to the sound of legends in the 90s such as aforementioned Sisters, Rosetta Stone or even Star Industry — and it later became one of my favorite tracks to play in clubs, bridging the gap between a guitar/wave-centric set and more electronic tracks, because of its fast & driving beat.
10. Project Pitchfork — Song of the winds
(1992, Entities, GER)
Probably one of the most famous darkwave exports from Germany, Project Pitchfork deliver a percussion-heavy track about winds. Everything fits here; the pad sounds mimicking the sound of winds, a playful synth melody, the mentioned percussions and Peter Spille’s almost-muffled voice — until he hits the refrain:
Be a thunderstorm in the north, be hurricane in the south, be a typhoon in the east, be a tornado in the west.
Project Pitchfork had a lot of club-hits over time, but this one always stayed with me . Though it’s nothing special and it heavily relies on the refrain, I always caught myself on my way home from some party, singing to myself in a deep voice: “be a thunderstorm …”
Side B
11. Relatives Menschsein — Verbotene Triebe
(1993, We Came To Dance Vol. 2 // 2002, Thanatos, GER)
I don’t have much to say about this song — one of these Neue-Deutsche-Todeskunst bands, next to “Das Ich” or “Goethes Erben”, some members also active in the dark-wave band “Dorsetshire”. Lyrically about lust, desire and forbidden instincts (“Verbotene Triebe”). A little too typical for that style and genre, driven by a snare-drum and the vocalist’s manic laughter.
On the tape this song marks the end of Side A, where the tapes gets a little wobbly during the first snare-drum hits and then suddenly stops; the questioning look of my friends in the car, wondering if we should continue with Side B or rather listen to something else. This is probably what’s most familiar about this song to me.
12. Some More Crime — Der Tod Ist Ein Meister Aus Deutschland
(1993, Another Domestic Drama In A Suburban Hell, GER)
Heavy electric guitars, cut-up & layered interview samples, breakbeats, some glitches — this is Bernd Friedmann’s project “Some More Crime”, a social-critical song about immigrant crisis, right-wing populism and fascist-violence — and it feels more to date than ever.
The center of this song is a sample from Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge”, published in 1948 by the Romanian-born poet, about the horrors and death of concentration camps.
“Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland, sein Auge ist blau”, (death is a master from Germany, his eyes are blue).
The whole sample a contrast to the interview samples of news-reports; violence against refugees in Germany versus the horrors against minorities during the Holocaust, deliver the message: This is what’s happening in Germany right now, don’t make excuses, don’t repeat history. One could even make the point that we’re hearing the same warning as in And One’s ‘Deutschmaschine’ in a more direct way.
The sample itself, read by Paul Celan in a sung-like intonation, fits somewhat perfectly with the synth-line— a horribly beautiful piece of art, which always sends shivers down my spine
13. Eco — Schmutz
(1995, Das Album, GER)
“For you I am only dirt, when you’re on top of me, satisfying your lust”.
I was talking to a friend a few weeks ago, discussing Eco and their overall influence on the scene and German EBM or electronic music in general — and he made an interesting point: Here we have a song, called Schmutz/Dirt, which sounds more like a 90s eurodance track, and thematically addresses the topic of sex to the degree of a one-sided satisfaction if not to say forced intercourse, all in a dialog between the male and female singers. He: “you got to treat her bad / she’s always kicking me away”. She: “I am only dirt for you when you’re satisfying your lust”. This was obviously meant to shock the audience and it did for me, when I was fourteen — I never heard someone sing about that stuff or even address that topic loudly.
Of course this theme is nothing new in industrial or goth music — bands like Throbbing Gristle, Chris & Cosey or Die Form were always playing with topics such as sex, perversion, submission and dominance, as well as S&M in general. But the point that my friend was making was that here we have bands that are starting to sing about these themes in a more blunt and direct way — to some degree, even cheap. It was slowly moving away from a shocking art-form, trying to be more pop and mass-culture fit — and maybe we see here the predecessors or hear a template for the (back then) soon to be popular Aggrotech genre.
Of course Eco is not to blame here, and it’s maybe a bit unfair using their one song to drive my point, but the following years electro-industrial music was saturated with imagery of objectifying and degrading women, often combined with a militaristic & fascist look.
A more comprehensive study of this phenomenon can be found in the article “Misogyny in Industrial Music”, published in 2012 by Nadya Lev on coilhouse.net:
“(…) musicians in the industrial scene can rise up and continue to call bullshit on the misogyny as it happens, (…) Modern incarnations/offspring of the industrial scene can still be angry, hard, heavy… but not hateful or abysmally ignorant.”
14. P.A.L. — Gelöbnis
(1995, Signum, GER)
Earlier we talked about how Oomph! used the slightly altered lyrics of a socialist song in their track; PAL takes this idea one step further and samples almost the whole pledge of the “Ernst Thählmann Pionieer Organisation”, a youth organization in East Germany, on their track “Gelöbnis”. A young female voice swears allegiance to the organization, its founding fathers and the socialist ideas of the DDR, its friendship to the Soviet Union. It is followed by an industrial (or rhythm and noise) track, no lyrics, just harsh percussions combined with another sample, maybe the same female voice saying “Achtung: Ordnung” (Attention: Order) over and over again.
According to an interview with PAL frontman Christian Pallentin, this track was finished in a hurry: “(..) and sometimes someone wants a track for a compilation and the deadline is quite close, and then you just sit down and see what comes out .. result: Gelöbnis” (Source: http://www.mucke-und-mehr.de/magint/intpal.htm) .. and it became probably their biggest success in the industrial club scene.
In the middle of the song we get another sample, taken from the movie “Geschichten Jener Nacht” (Stories of this night), a movie from East Germany 1967, ideologically close to the socialistic ideas of the GDR:
“Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa — und dett sind im Moment wir”
— the first part obviously taken from the Communist Manifest of Karl Marx (“A spectre is haunting europe”), the second part an almost arrogant and self-assured addendum to the original quote “and currently this is us” — kind of reinforcing the contradiction between the communist ideology and the price the DDR payed for maintaining this mindset, through “Achtung: Ordnung!”.
Published on the (probably) most important record-label of the German industrial scene “AntZen”, P·A·L’s first record “Signum” might be considered the foundation of a “power noise” genre, experimenting with rhythmic noises and samples. And recently this very record got re-released on the wonderful Aufnahme+Wiedergabe label from Berlin — highly recommended.
15. Leæther Strip — Kill A Raver
(1997, Self-Inflicted, DEN)
I think the lyrics say it all: Claus Larsen of the legendary Danish dark-electro band Leæther Strip, wants to kill a raver. For whatever reason. (Maybe a protest against the upcoming colorful rave scene in Europe?).
Mass production
You’re going down
Kill a raver
It’s eating me up inside
Giving it up
I’m giving it up
Fuck you, you silly bastard
I’m gonna rip your head off
You fucker
Well. It’s probably no coincidence that the instrumentation of that songs reminds one of an early 90s rave track. Yep. Klaus Larssen did a lot of crazy stuff — I hope to see him play live someday.
16. Psyche — Misery
(1989, The Influence, CAN)
This is by far my favorite song on that tape, then and now. For one it is probably the only real darkwave song on the tape, on the other hand it resonated more with my fifteen-year-old self lyrically: Darrin Huss sings about being afraid and trapped in his own body “by misery”. Shortly after his brother, Stephen Huss, left the band to deal with his ongoing struggles with schizophrenia, Darrin Huss collaborated with the Canadian film score musician David Kristian and recorded the album “The Influence” in Germany, with Kristian in charge of music and sampling bringing a whole new element to the Psyche sound.
From my sleep at night to when I wake
I see things that make me afraid
On the other side of the darkness
A body that doesn’t feel quite like my own
For me that was what goth music was all about back then, a dark(-wave) sound and a despairing voice, singing about my own pain — however small and insignificant the teen-angst might be, that was what I was looking for in that kind of music at the time, being fifteen years old & wearing black.
Interesting side-note: the video for “Misery” was entirely filmed in Hannover, Germany — the very city we would often visit in 1997/1998, in that little car, listening to Misery.
17. Skinny Puppy — Morphedus
(1997, We Came To Dance Vol. 10, CAN)
Ah finally, the founding fathers of industrial, the “electronic wizardry and warped sensibilities of Skinny Puppy” [CBC, Brave New Waves] from Vancouver, Canada.
If, dear reader, you know me personally, you’re probably used to my ramblings and history lessons about one of the most brilliant bands ever to exist. If not, I will not bore you (unless we meet in person). Just this much: In one of their podcast conversations, Bruce and Alex from idie:youdie asked the question: “How would your life be different, if you never heard any Skinny Puppy, or if Skinny Puppy never would have existed?” — and I can’t answer that question, can’t even begin to think about it.
The more astonishing it is, that this song “Morphedus” was the very first track I heard of them. And I hated it.
These fast electronic “braps” with nonsense words and chopped up samples, no structure, don’t look for a melody .. what was that? break-beats? weird improvised electronic stuff? I hated it and skipped it (or fast-forwarded through it) every time.
Years later I found my excuse: this track was a big mistake, never to be released in the first place, even the title is a typo. According to the very comprehensive Puppy discography at prongs.org, the title should be “Morpheus” :
The track is misspelled on the CD packaging as “Morphedus”. This rough demo version was submitted without the band’s knowledge, reportedly by their old manager.
But as I said, musically you evolve and adapt and change your appreciation of music and different styles, and as I spent hours listening to Puppy (and Cevin Key, Doubting Thomas, Hilt, Download, Ohgr, .. I’ll stop), I grew to love that track. For the mistake that it is, for being my very first contact to a new genre — I even know the lyrics by heart now.
”A final mix of that track (…) appears on the Back And Forth 06 compilation, released in 2003" and you can listen to all its weirdness on the left.
Btw, if anyone knows the source of the samples in that song, please let me know.
18. Covenant — Figurehead (Plain)
(1995, s/t, SWE)
I think Covenant was her favorite band. In 1998, shortly before I left Germany, their third studio album “Europa” was released and I remember her buying it, being so happy and listening to it non-stop. My personal favorite is and always will be their first one “Dreams of a Cryotank” — maybe there will be a post about it in the future — but this song “Figurehead (Plain)” is taken from the second album called “Sequenzer”, according to a Wikipedia quote the “best electronic album of the decade”.
There is a ton written about Covenant, about their evolution and influence to electronic music, being one of the biggest electronic industrial acts to date, so I won’t get into any detail. For me “Figurehead” and everything on Sequenzer still has this dirty electronic sound, the roughness of the first album, before they started on “Europa” to get more clean, more “sequenced” (ha) and streamlined in a way.
More than any other track on the tape, this one has a certain nostalgic and almost sad feel to it for me — I spent a lot of time with their early records.
19. Christian Death — Sex Dwarf
(1998, Pornographic Messiah, USA)
The last song, which doesn’t appear on the tape’s track-listing, was added after I first listened to it in 1998. And honestly, it shouldn’t be there:
Christian Death’s cover of Soft Cells “Sex Dwarf”. That’s it. We won’t talk about the Valor Kand incarnation of Christian Death.
A few other anecdotes
- The track “Ad Mortem Festinamus” is missing on the track-listing; on the back it says ‘Calva Y Nada’, which is obviously wrong — but given the evolution of this compilation I sometimes think that this track was overdubbed or added later (which would be quite hard to do..).
- Talking about evolution: the last four tracks on the listings are written with a different pen, as if those were added at a later time. Nice little coincidence: those four tracks are the only non-German ones on the compilation — as if someone broadened their horizon over time.
- Psyche is followed by Skinny Puppy on the tape, which is a nice little coincidence.
- The B-Side is not fully recorded, the last ~7 minutes are left blank.
We Came To Dance
The attentive 90s goth music aficionado will by now probably have realized that some of the tracks (actually 11 out of 19) are taken from the quite popular German sampler series called “We Came To Dance”, a series which I discovered years later but which is quite full of these kind of songs. And I would absolutely recommend that ten volume series to anyone who is just a little bit interested in that time.
Legacy
The 90s are sometimes regarded as slightly ridiculous when it comes to music, and it’s no difference in the goth/industrial scene. Growing up with that, discovering all these bands during puberty, I always look back with a little smile on my face, not taking it too seriously.
But back in the day it gave me a lot of homework: Where did the bands come from? What were their influences? And what lies on either end of the musical spectrum that we call ‘goth’ music or (to quote idie:youdie) “Our Thing”?
When revisiting the tape now, I discovered a whole new aspect for me: Here we have bands that were politically involved and interested. A sound where you can almost recognize the big influence of the coming years. Tracks that are still played today in clubs around the world.
The collection of tracks or bands is by no means complete or even significant for that time. If we really wanted to talk about the German 90s Goth subculture, we obviously would have to consider bands like Wolfsheim, Deine Lakaien, Silke Bischoff, Das Ich or Lacrimosa — to name a few.
But for me, personally, it’s a treasured little gem in my music collection. A token of my youth and musical education. One of my Horcruxes.
Thanks for reading.
Thanks to @ellinem & @traxbox for their initial feedback.
And thanks to @alicetragedy for all the suggestions and for correcting all of my broken sentences.
❤
(Disclaimer: All videos are embedded directly from youtube.com. I claim no rights)
