3 decades of electronic music - massive scene interview

(By Stéphane Froidcoeur and Vlad McNeally) In early December 2009, I suddenly realized that not only was the year was coming to an end, but also a decade, and I got the idea to look back to what happened in the electronic music scene during the past 10 years. So, I started brainstorming the idea of making a special article about the subject until I realized that this would be also an opportunity to look back on three decades of electronic music as well!

30 years of electronic music sounds a bit surreal, don't you think? I guess for the younger addicts, it's quite normal, but they of course never knew a world without electronic music! But I remember in the early 80s, when listening to bands like Front 242, Cabaret Voltaire, Nitzer Ebb, The Klinik and a lot of those other early artists that it all sounded like a real challenge to compose that kind of music. 30 years later, we can affirm without any hesitation bands being active in the 80s were real pioneers, creating a new style of music that only increased in 'popularity' during the 90s and after the new millennium! I've to admit that a few pioneers were already experimenting with electronic music in the late 70s and I'm sure some even go back to before even that decade, but I think we can all agree that the 'underground electronic music' we here have in mind achieved real significance and importance during the 80s.

There's probably no real date we could name and now commemorate as being the date when the first electronic song was ever released... so the early 80s definitely remain to others and myself the early years... the beginning! So, I got the idea to celebrate this happening by a very special and, dare I say it, UNIQUE and HISTORICAL interview. Together with Vlad McNeally, my partner in crime for this interview, and thanks to the help and contribution of DJ Wildhoney and DJ23 (two other Side-Line members), we started this interview by contacting over 40 influential and rising artists from the scene. Bands, labels, DJ's, and even promo companies were contacted, each of them getting three questions taken from a wider list. We didn't hesitate to contact some famous bands from the 80s and 90s as well as artists from the last decade. The reactions were quite enthusiastic, and in the end we got an impressive contribution from over 20 of these artists!

This mass interview is intended to be a look back to the early years as well as the evolution of underground electronics over this 30 year period. Though I personally regret we didn't get more input from labels and weren't able to get in touch with a few 'big' names (and I don't mean plus size costume big...), I can easily imagine that all the 'missing' artists and labels just didn't get the time to answer us during the Xmas holidays rather than that they simply weren't enthusiast about the idea! Whatever, though - I would prefer to mention and sincerely thank all the artists for their great, enthusiastic and sometimes very detailed answers! I hope you'll all enjoy reading this interview as much as I enjoyed making it!

Being now involved in Side-Line for nearly 20 years, I have made tons of reviews and interviews, but this one is without a shadow of doubt one of the best! (Stéphane Froidcoeur aka Deranged Psyche).

Alphabetical order of the artists, labels, and DJs who contributed to this interview:

• ADAM-X
  
• ALFA MATRIX (Bernard Van Isacker)
  
• ARMAGEDDON DILDOS
  
• ASSEMBLAGE 23
  
• ATTRITION (Martin Bowes)
  
• BILL LEEB (FRONTLINE ASSEMBLY, DELERIUM, NOISE UNIT ao)
  
• CAT RAPES DOG
  
• COVENANT
  
• CRUNCH POD (Ben Arp; also member of C/A/T)
  
• DEPENDENT
  
• DIVE
  
• DJ23
  
• DJ HIVE
  
• DJ WILDHONEY
  
• KMFDM (Sascha Konietzko)
  
• LUC VAN ACKER (ex REVOLTING COCKS ao)
  
• NEON JUDGEMENT (Dirk Da Davo)
  
• NOISUF-X & X-FUSION (Jan L.)
  
• OOMPH! (Flux)
  
• PROMOFABRIKK (German promo agency set up by Leo von Leibnitz)
  
• SEBASTIAN KOMOR (ZOMBIE GIRL, ICON OF COIL, KOMOR KOMMANDO ao)
  
• SUICIDE COMMANDO
  
• TERRORFAKT
  
• THOMAS RAINER (NACHTMAHR, L'ÂME IMMORTELLE)
  
• VNV NATION (Ronan Harris)
  
• X MARKS THE PEDWALK (Sevren Ni-Arb)

SL: At the end of 2009, we'll be able to look back at three decades of electronic underground music. What does this symbolic anniversary evoke for you?

LUC VAN ACKER : I only took part in Old School Industrial era (1984), and I can't believe how electronic music has become so big everywhere in 2010 and so accessible for everyone with a laptop.

DIVE: A lot of good memories about listening to my favorite music and making this kind of music myself, ha! It started all with sound experiments and selfbuild analogue synths introduced to a larger audience through bands like Kraftwerk and Suicide. It became big in the 90ties - with so many bands , too many to mention - to evolve completely analogue in this decade and be a part of every scene you can think of like electro, dance, trance, wave, industrial, crossover, pop and so on and on... and the end is still far away.

ATTRITION : Well, we have been here for most of that journey... So many special memories, and for me it has all gone by rather too quickly! It has been a time of great change in music... it started with punk and post punk, and it was taken up by all of us that embraced this whole new culture of sound. In a way, this music has now come of age... although at the same time, I think it has a long way to go. There's so much more to explore....

I believe industrial music really does reflect the sounds of our lives in the 21st century... and as our lives adapt, evolve, and change, then so will the music that expresses it. Long may it continue to do so...

SL: How does it feel to be a pioneer in the genre, and were you aware that you were getting involved in something completely new and special that would go on for the next thirty years?

BILL LEEB: I feel quite honored and fortunate to have been a part of a movement that has changed, and still is changing, music forever. From the first time I heard Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, to the fist time Kevin and me were making sounds for Skinny Puppy and then with FLA, I felt like this was so new and underground, and that nobody in Canada understood it when I felt we were on to something completely new and different. I think this genre has always been overlooked and dismissed by the general public and music critics as not being 'real', but in retrospect they were all wrong as this is easily the most, and will continue to be the most, influential scene as time goes by... as long as technology keeps forging forward. The next three decades should also be exciting and, as it stands now, I feel bad for anybody who wasn't there for the last three decades. It was a special time in electronic music that will never be relived.

DIVE: Of course, nobody thinks he's involved in something new. I'am also inspired like so many musicians, not to say all, by other bands and music I like. That's the real spirit of a true musician, absorbing all those influences and try to create something new. And indeed I'm now for 3 decades part of this electronic scene but I still feel there's a lot to be discovered still and that's the real reason why a musician continues.

SL: Do you think we can still speak about music as being 'underground' today? What's your view on it?

NEON JUDGEMENT: Underground music is very hard to find these days; it doesn't fit into any radio format anymore. And 'clean' radio formats are everywhere now. These formats are killing music as well as the underground mentality. So, there must be underground music but the problem is where to find it. Probably on the internet, but even then there is so much music on the net that you'll need some luck to find the right stuff. When we started off with making our albums, we still had underground radio - there was Studio Brussels (BRT) with Luc Jansen ("Domino"), and there were also many independent radio stations like FM Brussels, and Radio Scorpio (Leuven) that broadcasted underground/alternative music. But underground doesn't fit into the today's system anymore... it's like the modern radio format is saying that people shouldn't bother with difficult to find music. So, now it only exists as a sub-sub-sub form somewhere in the catacombs of society. There's also the economical factor - when labels finance music nowadays, they prefer bands whose music fits into 'the radio format'.

OOMPH!: I guess it all depends on how you would define 'underground'! Underground is kind of like the opposite of the mainstream, so I would say 'YES'! Although some of the bands have achieved very high chart positions, there still is a big underground scene, just as it was in the beginning. And I think that it will always be like that, because for the mainstream audience, the electronic underground music with all its different styles is still much too extreme.

SL: From our journalistic perspective, it sounds quite easy to make music today, with the amount of software programs/synths being readily available to these numerous new bands! What do you think about this evolution?

KMFDM : Actually, I think of it as a de-evolution, as it does not mark progress but regress. After all, the art of making music, and the challenge for any so-called artist who makes music, is completely taken out of the equation. There's really no art involved when dialing up sound-presets, and operating pre-programmed soft- or hardware. Any device of that sort is as limited and/or (un) creative as the creator initially determines it to be. The result of so many 'bands' using these things is that a huge part of the current output of this type of music has become predictable, choc-a-bloc, and simply repetitive. Quantity cannot make up for lack of quality. I think sometimes of this person I know who recently told me that they had 'won a match of tennis' ... on a Wii gaming console! When I asked if he ever played 'real' tennis, the answer was no... however, he was convinced that he now could actually 'play' real tennis.

The uncomfortable parallel is that there are a lot of people out there that aren't even familiar with the real process of making, creating, inventing, and performing music. Yet somehow they think that they are, just by knowing how to push a few buttons on some ridiculous 'all-in-one' machine. If instant gratification was not meant to be a selling-point, then these toys wouldn't sell after all.

NEON JUDGEMENT: Well, with all this software and stuff, you don't need to make a large effort to produce music. So, the music has a much less specific character today. It's become much less personal. With The Neon Judgement, we started with an idea and then found synthesizers and guitars to feed that idea. We had to have a job to get the money to buy the music material. Because we had to go through doing this, it added more character to our music. Nowadays, you can get all the equipment for free and without a lot of trouble by using / downloading plug-ins... and everyone uses nearly the same software and keyboard sounds... so...

ATTRITION: Years ago, I would dream of owning a special synth or sampler... I imagined all that I could do with it... and if I was ever fortunate enough to get hold of one, I would spend so much time learning it and putting it to use in my music. Nowadays, it's exciting; we can have a synth for the price of a few minutes wait and a couple of mouse clicks, and I think it's good that it gives everyone an opportunity. But there is the danger of drowning in all of this... and I find it just as difficult to make music today as it ever was... well, music that means anything... and I think that is just how it should be!

XMTP: Oh yes, that's a quite interesting point. When I started to arrange new technical infrastructures for music production in my house, I was amazed. I remember when I established my T.G.I.F. recording studio in 1990 - it was so expensive to make professional recordings possible... even just MIDI-based music productions! A bunch of hardware filled that small studio room. Today, you have a bunch of pure digital tools that help you to realize nearly every sound you want... yet it is still within a wide range of quality and price. So, there has been no real change at all - it's now just on another level and platform. When I produced the new X-Marks The Pedwalk album, I was extremely happy about the flexibility that digital production offered me, but the most important aspect remains - one needs to have creative ideas and needs to compose good, interesting tracks. This can not be solved by technology only!

SL: What do you think we will remain from the electronic music produced in between the years 2000 - 2009?

LUC VAN ACKER: I can only speak for myself, but the electronic music genre called 'glitch' and 'sinewave' (for example, Alva Noto, Ryoji Ikeda) left a big impression on me.

SEBASTIAN KOMOR: Memories... are they a recipe for disaster? No really, there's been a lot of great music during that time, but it was also the fall of many great bands, labels, and music stores/chains. It was the years that it all started falling apart. Now, I guess it's time to build things back up and try to keep the spirit going without slowly starving the people who are behind the music, shows, and labels... well, the core of the music industry, I guess. Things are falling apart, that's undeniable. I really hope it picks up again, as music is truly something amazing.

THOMAS RAINER: What we experienced in the past decade was what I would call the 'reunification' of EBM and techno. In the late 80s / early 90s bands like Front 242 or Germany's Eco were on the same compilations and played at the same parties as projects like U96, Marusha or Westbam... It was more or less one style of music and it was called techno. Later on with different influences coming in, the styles parted and became EBM and techno, with EBM later leading to all the new styles of our subculture with the influences of rock, punk, wave and industrial. Nearly all of these styles (aggrotech, industrial, powernoise, etc.) started getting inspired by the evolved techno and it's own substyles and incorporated a lot of these influences into their own sound which resulted in bringing both closer together than when they were divided.

The 2000s further saw what some call the democratization of music. With CPUs becoming more and more powerful and affordable, a broad part of the population was able to produce and record music and distribute it through the internet. 10-20 years ago, every band had to first work their asses off in the concert business to acquire the funds needed to record a demo and maybe through that get signed to a label. All that lead to a flood of bands and projects that were thrown at the market without any filtering and that immensely damaged the quality of releases, from the recording as well as the arrangement and production side.

SL: What have been the main facts and points of evolution in the electronic scene during the last decade?

NEON JUDGEMENT: Technically, it was the software. Artistically (and for my personal taste), the French electronic artists who did a lot of good things with electronic music equipment the latest years, like The Hacker, David Carretta, Super Discount, and Vitalic to just name a few... and they do that in respect to the legacy from 'Les Belges' and what we created in electronic music during the 80s! And that's a main fact!


NOISUF-X / X-FUSION: The main fact is, that it's now very easy to make music. Everybody can start making music without spending a lot of money. For some people it's good... but sometimes I think the quality of music was better in the times when artists had to spend a lot of money to it. Back then, only the ones who were REALLY interested in making music were able to release something. Nowadays, everybody can download an illegal copy of Music Maker... or something like that... and upload their shit to Myspace.

The other thing I've noticed is that it's more and more about financial success, and not about good music. Too many bands try to copy what their favorite bands or successful bands are doing. I like bands that actually try to find their own way... because it's the only way to create something new.

SUICIDE COMMANDO: I've noticed quite a few changes in the electronic scene over the last years... some for the good, some unfortunately also for the worse. Technically, the electronic scene evolved enormously over the last ten to twenty years. When I started doing music back in the 80s, computers were still as good as being nonexistent, so everything still had to be done with expensive 'real' instruments as softsynths and music software didn't exist at that time. Today, however, they've invaded the entire market, and only few artists still work in the old way.

Not only there was the technical (r)evolution, but it also became way easier and, above all, cheaper to do and create music - those old synthesizers and samplers really cost a fortune ! This has resulted in a real flood of new artists and releases; so today, we do get a lot of quantity. Unfortunately, quantity doesn't always mean quality, so it can be considered as one of the dangers of today's scene as well.

Of course, the rise of the internet also resulted in way more bands self releasing their music, with many bands using new platforms like MySpace and Facebook to reach the people. But unfortunately with the arrival of the internet, there also came illegal downloading and the arrival of the mp3 generation which has caused a lot of real drama on the CD market. Over the last decade, CD sales have dropped drastically because of file sharing or illegal downloads, and many labels, distributors and shops have already gone bankrupt and for sure more will follow in the next few years. The CD became a dying medium.

Musically, I've seen the electronic scene more move towards the techno industrial scene, with hard pounding beats and vocal samples, and with an ever-increasing tempo. When I started doing music, 120 BPM (beats per minute) was really fast, but today songs with 120 BPM have somehow become slow, while the average song now has a BPM rate between 135 and 150. I guess it somehow follows the speed of our lives, as life also goes faster and faster these days.

ARMAGEDDON DILDOS: I think many musicians looked back to the music of the 80s and 90s in order to create something new. However, I hear this fusion of musical styles not only within the electronic scene. The sound and the music of Kraftwerk, for example, was something totally new. Today, it's hard to create something comparable... but we always should try.

DEPENDENT: Unfortunately, it has mostly been a process of fragmentation and de-evolution. Even if you look at 'industrial' music only, you will find a good dozen subgenres that have evolved and created their own smaller and smaller scenes, as many people were not really willing to adapt or to incorporate other types of music into their mindset or lifestyle. This has had a devastating effect on the infrastructure of this scene, I am afraid. In some ways, some parts of industrial are now MORE underground than they were ten years ago. But, on top of being 'underground', they have also become devalued. However - in an effort to also say something positive here - at the same token, you will have to realize that electronic music is here to permanently stay. Right now, this is the third decade of a subculture that started out as a very small venture, and the fact it lasted thirty years now is a very positive thing to me.

SL: Dark electronic music has been never as 'popular' throughout the scene as it has been in the past few years! Why do think there is this newfound fascination for darker music?

SUICIDE COMMANDO: I think dark electronic music always was popular - just think of bands like Leaether Strip, Placebo Effect, Yelworc... but just like any trend, it has its ups and downs. The same happened with Futurepop and now with EBM - just look at the EBM revival of the last few years. And like it always is with trends, you always get a lot of followers... and then once it becomes popular, you also get the haters and bashers! So, in the last few years a lot of new bands jumped onto the dark electronic wagon copying their examples or influences, but only the best will survive.

SL: The internet has considerably changed our life, and I dare to say the world, and it has had a great impact on the music scene as well! Facing the pros and cons, what's your conclusion about this tool?

ALFA MATRIX: From the very start of the Alfa Matrix label, we embraced the internet at full. The fact that I had worked as marketing responsible for Belgium's biggest e-shop back in the late '90s did influence this a lot. I knew that physical stores were going to have big problems as far distribution was concerned seeing 'how' and 'why' people purchased their goods online. It was impossible that a brick and mortar store would every deliver such a service. So we became the first label to have an own webstore that shipped out worldwide at very competitive prices and therefor now have - after almost 10 years - a very targetted customers database of which most online CD shops can only dream of.

That was before downloading became a bit of a problem. When we realised that downloading was becoming more and more important (even with the piracy problem), we sought a trustful long term partner to get our entire catalogue digitalised for online downloads via all kind of services. Again, Alfa Matrix was the first label to have a worldwide download deal for its entire catalogue.

So, I think you get the point, Alfa Matrix would not be there where it is now without the internet and we try to exploit and use it at maximum when we feel that it can be properly used. It won't stop there because we are already working on something new as well, something that we see that other labels don't even pay attention to but which is becoming increasingly important.

OOMPH! : The internet is not killing music! It is helping to spread your music to everybody around the world very quickly and easily. What is killing the music (both the industry and your favorite bands) is the attitude of the consumer. They believe that it is legal to copy music without paying for it! This is wrong and it's killing your bands. If you have the need for music, you have to buy it! If you are hungry, you pay for your food... or do you steal it in the supermarket, too?

SL: Beyond record sales, the internet's made it much easier for fans to interact with the musicians they admire, as well as given those musicians a way to broadcast their thoughts and opinions without the need of interviews, liner notes, and newsletters. Do you think that's been a positive or negative facet to working in the genre?

ATTRITION: On the whole, it's positive... I think we still need interviews, newsletters, and most of those traditional ways to get the message out, but I love the fact that through everything from blogs to status updates we can now put out our thoughts on anything we bloody well feel like without needing anyone else to get it out there. It breaks down barriers and it can be liberating at times... although it can also be diverting... and sometimes it is maybe a little TOO easy to say what is on your mind... like a step down the road to the whole world hearing your every thought...!

NOISUF-X / X-FUSION: If a musician has the time to search for interesting or important questions between the spam, it's a good thing for the fan to get a direct answer to a question he can't find in any interview. But if we're talking about Myspace, for example, 95 % of the messages and guestbook entries you get there is pure spam. So, I disabled the function to write me messages and I don't read my guestbook because it bores me to hell to read again and again 'do you like me - YES or NO?' or 'we are band XY - visit our Myspace site'.

I think interviews are still the best way to give answers to hundreds of people at the same time, but a lot of people have become too lazy to read interviews and end up asking really stupid questions via email, like 'where do you play live?', and 'where can I buy (or download) your album?'. I don't answer these mails, because all answers to these questions are already on my website. If people are too lazy or stupid to read the information there, it's not my problem. Only sometimes I will receive questions via email that are worth answering.

SL: World and local politics have long been tied in with the music of the electronic underground, spanning a range of artists from Ministry to Suicide Commando. What major newsworthy issues do you think had the most impact on the genre over the last ten years, and how do you perceive those statements standing the test of time when these works are looked back on in the future?

DEPENDENT: Unfortunately, I think that the content of lyrics and topics are becoming less and less relevant for electronic music and its perception. Especially industrial music, which started out as a very artsy and almost political kind of music; it is safe to say that this is not the case anymore. I can only mention the protests against the Bush administration as the main topic of artists for the better part of the last decade... and rightfully so. I remember Ministry, Suicide Commando, Stromkern, Nine Inch Nails all singing about the same thing. But then again, everybody in this music scene completely agreed on the GWB thing, so it was almost pointless. I am a little sad to take notice that apart from those kinds of protests, I can hardly put my finger on anything else that I can remember. There are some brilliant small songs that are very nice statements that I would like to mention, like Dismantled's 'On Your Knees' on the 9/11 attack, or SVD's 'Decay' on the Columbine Shootings; both managed to impressively document the impact these tragedies had on us.

CRUNCH POD: I think the largest issues to impact the genre were the terror attacks of 09/11/01 in the US and 07/07/05 attacks in the UK. I think there were more political-type songs about the 'War On Terror' and the U.S.' response than really anything else over the past decade. I think it'll stand the test of time for at least a while, especially when considering that the U.S. is still actively involved in combat in two areas as a direct result of 9/11. It seemed to light a fire under artists after a period of time when this scene was far less politically active in the songs and albums that were being written.

DJ23: Wow, being an American, it would seem the number one answer to that question would be King George the Second and his poorly planned war, which seems to have completely disrupted the world order. Things like that I feel make this kind of genre and culture thrive, though. Ministry put out some of their best work when this country has been being oppressed by either of the Bushes. KMFDM also thrived during both Bush regimes, though at one point KMFDM and the culture were tied into an unfortunate tragedy, which hugely affected turnout and fresh faces in the U.S. events. To this day, people in trench coats are still feared by the mainstream's thought and ignorance. It seems to me, though, the rest of the world coexists with this sub-culture better than the U.S. does... there is some taboo that's still here. At the same time, however, with everyone in the U.S. being beaten into submission to look and act the same, some people towards the end of the decade have escaped and wandered into our subculture to stay and have had enjoyable experiences. In this genre, I believe certain works will stand the test of time but mainstream people will still watch A.I. and not care who that band is at the junkyard. It's all about the love for the music and having fun no matter what style of music you deal with. As long as we help educate the masses in whatever way we can to show that we are not serial killers and mass murderers and just like the rest of the world and have our own gripes, grievances and passion, we can rebuild from whatever trials and tribulations befall us all as a cyber kid, rivithead, or whatever you feel you want to be categorized as within this scene.

TERRORFAKT: I think a lot of the top news stories and topics over the past decade have really shaped the music in this genre. September 11th attacks, stem cell research, space travel, illegal downloads, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, sleeper cells, terrorism, Side-Line Forums drama, etc. We've seen a lot happen in the past ten years in the world as we know it, so that is guaranteed to inspire and define the way artists write.

SL: It's almost natural that the new generation involved in the underground scene will look back on the previous one as being more revolutionary. In your mind, how do the nineties, or even the eighties, stack up against the 2000's? Is it a case of rose-colored glasses when looking backwards, or did you find the decade to be creatively sterile in comparison?

CAT RAPES DOG: The 80s started off in a creative burst with new wave and post-punk, where everything was possible. A lot of music from the early 80s still sounds fresh to me. New Order's Power, Corruption and Lies and Cabaret Voltaire's The Crackdown are still great pieces of work. However, the mid to late 80s didn't survive as well; there's not much I still enjoy listening to from that period. The same can be said for the early 90s with its fascination for the new techno genre. Especially horrible today is the 'techno beat mixed with metal riffs' songs from the mid 90s. I remember thinking that was so cool at the time... but it's not. The late 90s and the rest of the 00s have been more interesting. The electronic scene today encompasses so many different styles, and to me feels more vital than ever.

ARMAGEDDON DILDOS: I think we have to go back to even the 70s, when electronic music got bigger and bigger. Bands like Kraftwerk put something totally new into music and that carried on during the 80s and 90s with bands like Depeche Mode, Nitzer Ebb, Front 242, Skinny Puppy, D.A.F... there are so many bands, so forgive me for not naming all of them. And there was the growth of techno, house, trip hop, etc., as well. The music of the last decade is - to me - a conclusion of these three decades and I have to say it was not as innovative.

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SL: One facet of live shows that changed dramatically from the nineties to the 2000's was the rise of the electronic-industrial laptop performance. How do you view that phenomenon, and what repercussions do you think it had on both artists and audiences?

ADAM-X: Ironically for me, the switch over from hardware to laptop enabled me to go up on stage to play live. All my production work prior to 2005 was recorded exclusively on hardware sequencers and synthesizers. Much of the gear I owned at the time ether had no memory banks or very little memory to save the sounds I would use in each song. Once a song was finished and recorded to tape, I would have to then clear my machines and start fresh again. Working in this fashion really limited myself from being able to go on stage and perform my songs 100% live. The only way playing live was an option was do it on the fly with unreleased material. I was not to keen on doing this so I stuck with DJing as my outlet to performing until I got hooked on making music on a laptop with Ableton Live.

Where as I do feel it is much more pleasing to the eye of the audience to have a ton of synthesizers and sequencers with cables all over the place on stage, how many live acts performing in this manner on stage are actually playing 100% live? The majority of electronic music acts I have seen using an all hardware setup were performing with pre-recorded loops or entire songs backed up on CD-R. Though watching a performance with a laptop is not as visually pleasing as an act with synthesizers galore on stage, but to me it is more important that a live act is playing 100% live. I could care less which method is used. Just play live without faking it! As for the audience, I think they are generally accepting of the practice to use laptops if you add stage presence to the show. No one wants to see a performer with eyes glued to a laptop the entire set. Also, no one wants to see an all hardware performance with eyes that never look out to the audience either. A show that wins me over is one that you can feel the spontaneous energy of the music and stage presence of the performer, and it should not matter whether they use a laptop or hardware to get their music across.

SEBASTIAN KOMOR: It's the cause and effect of the evolution in the world of software that makes it possible to have a whole production on stage and in studio on just a laptop. Then, you have all the software that is loop based and also the programs that were designed for live use, like Ableton Live. Calling it performance... I don't know, it doesn't feel or look like it. In fact, I've been to shows where the person on stage might as well just sit backstage and press 'play'. The music is there, but it's really not interesting watching someone pressing buttons and move a mouse on stage for an hour. I think the best way to see the contrast is for example watching something like a Rob Zombie clip from a show then switch back to a laptop performance. 'Nuff said.

THOMAS RAINER: If executed properly, a laptop performance can be just as challenging and creative as a 'live-band' concert for an audience. Software like Ableton Live and strong mobile CPUs... they laid all the powers into the artists' hands to rearrange and perform their songs as if it was with a traditional instrument. In my opinion, the question is never what kind of 'tool' a musician uses, but how much creativity and skill he puts into it.
Music is always about creating emotions in the audience and recreating that initial emotion for within yourself, and if you do that with an acoustic guitar or with a laptop, it doesn't matter as long as you get the message across.

SL: What do you think YouTube's impact has been on the electronic-music underground? Has the video medium become more or less important due to its presence?

NOISUF-X / X-FUSION: In my opinion, videos have become less important because of the fact that a lot of people are using YouTube in the wrong way. Too many people upload their favorite songs with only a picture of the cd artwork. I don't want to talk about that too much since it's illegal, but in the end it makes no sense to search for a music video. If I search for NOISUF-X, for example, I can find nearly every song I ever wrote on there, only with the artwork used as the visual source for the 'video'. In the end, you have to be lucky to find a real video from an artist.

So, speaking for myself, I wouldn't waste that much time only for finding a video.

SUICIDE COMMANDO: For sure it gained a lot of importance, even though I'm not a big fan of the whole YouTube thing, because while you get a lot of quantity, you also get a lot of garbage... but they say quality will always prevail, so I certainly hope so. Doing video clips used to be only something for the really big bands in the old days - in our scene, you only had a few bands like Front 242 and Front Line Assembly doing real video clips. Thanks to modern technology, it's now accessible (and payable) for most of us, so I guess that's the good thing about it.

SEBASTIAN KOMOR: YouTube is great for promotion. I mean the whole fkn world is on YouTube watching videos every single day. Well-tagged videos can reach people that you normally never would. It's a great tool... minus the idiot comments some people throw in just because they can, but hey, that's the nature of the beast called 'www'.

SL: A lot of very famous 80s and 90s bands made a kind of come back during the past decade! What's the explanation behind this massive come back and what have been the main noticeable changes in these artists' work?

LUC VAN ACKER: Thanks to YouTube and other sites, communication between people who have an interest in the same music is BIGGER than ever and so is the interest for older acts. Reliving the past seems to be hip... as I try to forget. Revolting Cocks are all NEW guys, Arbeid Adelt! is not ready, Shriekback are thinking about it, and Ministry does not exist anymore... so I've restarted my solo career, as I get along with myself... I think? Another noticeable change is that BEER DRINKING is important to the organizers of revival acts, as 40+ people drink more and spent money, which is GREAT!

X MARKS THE PEDWALK: Don't know exactly. But, well, even band members are all getting older, looking back on their lives and music, thinking about past times in a very special and emotional way (is it desire?) - just like their fans do! It is possible to create, or warm up a new respectively already existing connection, between these people. On this basis, you can reactivate emotions... a very important base for music. So, why not take a chance and come back to the music market? Don't forget that most of the bands, especially the songwriters, still control their musicianship and ability to produce successful tracks.

SL: Bands, labels, and distributors... they all complain about decreasing sales! However, the music crisis already existed a few years back before the economic crisis. Do you think this situation would have been avoidable and do you see an exit to this growing disaster?

ALFA MATRIX: It's simple, if you don't adapt, you die. Look at all those local shops that got the boot because of the big supermarkets. Times, they are changing and this is the case in every industry. Another good example is Google Maps Navigation which will kill the traditional GPS makers one by one. That's progress. However, these are business examples whereas piracy is simply people stealing and not a business case at all. It's weird that lots of people don't have a problem with stealing online, but that's the result of what I call the 'we get it all for free mentality' started online by nothing else but Microsoft's FREE Hotmail service and related internet offers, ha! There, we have the culprit! And now serious, promoting everything for free has resulted in a mindset shift for a complete generation. It's too late to change this but it's not too late to try and convince people that lots of music is a piece of labour, not just something that was quickly thrown together on a cheap PC...

DEPENDENT: I don't think it was avoidable at all. If you look closely, you will see other creative industries falling into the same kind of trap right now. I think gaming software will be the next thing to steadily go down the drain. Movies are hurting, books are hurting, and print in general is hurting as well, so I don't think this could have been avoided completely. I do think that labels could have done a better job at explaining what it is they do, so people listening to electronic music can understand WHY they there is a need for them still.

I actually do think of the internet as a 'new room' in the process of having a gigantic impact on our society, and we have still not deciphered all the little (and sometimes not even some of the bigger) side effects of this thing here. I think we will have to start thinking of how we can make people behave responsibly on the net, because I think there might be an effect in the not-so-distant future where the internet as a new realm will create more damage, and cost more jobs and money than it creates. Don't get me wrong, I am not somebody who 'hates' the internet, but the negative sides of this pseudo community are becoming very hard to ignore, and this has only very little to do with the 'music crisis' or internet piracy in general. I think this realm (I am not even calling it a medium anymore) will need to be regulated, and I think we will have a tough job at our hands for the next twenty years or so trying to make this a safer place for everybody. Sorry for sounding so conservative!

CRUNCH POD: I don't think it was 'avoidable' any more than it was when vinyl and cassettes gave way to CDs was 'avoidable' back in the 1980s. Sure, sales are decreasing, but getting upset about it isn't going to change anything. A new model will eventually emerge as it always has in the past, it'll just be a while until I does. I have no idea what the new model is... if I did, I'd be doing it now!

DIVE: Don't know where it's going to if music publishers and author companies can't find a way to compensate the artists for their work. Everybody wants to get paid for the work he does and so does a musician. I dont think it's fair that people are offering the music without permission or a deal online and that the artist gets nothing from the profit. And be sure the profit is big, can you imagine how many blanco cdr's worldwide are sold every day to record all this music for free?

When I see how the Belgian company Sabam is pretending to do something but achieves absolutely nothing, then there's not much hope. We'll see...

SL: With the rise of the home studio and the decline of one's sales, how has the process changed for selecting bands you choose to market? Does it make it easier to find new artists, or has the loss of income forced one to pay more attention to trends rather than talent?

ALFA MATRIX: A label always has to have a very healthy mix of bands and styles. That is not different for a label like Alfa Matrix, where several styles are nurtured and fed to the masses, so to speak. From the electro rock/metal by I:Scintilla, to the pure dark electro by several of our new signings such as Acylum to name just one, to more eclectic bands such as Psy'Aviah, who add that extra twist to the label's roster. Jumping the wagon just because a certain style does well has never been our concern, really. Since our start, Alfa-Matrix has been signing bands that we all thought had something that no other band had, or which had potential all around. Then again, we never signed any band just because there was a certain style doing well. On the contrary... and may I add that trends these days pass by so quickly that it would be suicide signing just with that in mind. Quality comes first and then we check if the band is also active on their own on the net (because the net has become the most important promo tool these days) and what kind of image they portray there. Finding new artists however has never and will never be a problem, but you obviously will sell less than 10 to 15 years ago. It's part of the evolution of the market, which will make that less-selling bands might be dropped faster than in the past since the breakeven level has been more difficult to reach nowadays.

SL: The first years of the millennium saw an impressive growth in print and online magazines. What have been your experiences with this 'specialized' media and what's their impact?

COVENANT: Magazines and fanzines are essential to any style of music. To get interviews with underground artists and "specialist" knowledge is a fantastic thing. Before the online revolution, it was difficult and expensive to produce and distribute a magazine. The internet gets away with a lot of cost and difficulties. Naturally, you still have to compete with a lot of others, but quality will always prevail, no matter what medium you choose.

OOMPH! : It is good to have a wide range of specialized media and magazines, so that everyone can find a magazine that mirrors their needs. But it will be as always: only the good ones will survive, the bad ones will die... so, keep you fingers crossed and try your best!

SL: Some people claim that the compact disc will disappear within a few years while being replaced by digital labels and releases. What do you think about it and what do you predict will happen in the next decade?

BILL LEEB: I think CDs will be here indefinitely, as will buying music on line. I am sure someone will invent a system that will stop people from stealing artists' intellectual properties, which will in turn also make the internet more responsible, so that people will not be able to character-assassinate other individuals with out recourse. I think artists will focus less on making whole albums as the new generation's mental time-span is near zero, and that will give each artist about thirty seconds of their time. The focus will be more on individual songs and touring, but the ending has not yet been written. For as long as technology evolves, the chance of something completely new evolving is entirely possible. For instance, maybe we will all have a microchip put in our necks, which will automatically receive any music signals from your favorite artist that will be transferred to your subconscious while you are sleeping. It will function as if your brain was an iPod. This could work with audio and visual.

SUICIDE COMMANDO: I'm afraid we're slowly heading in this direction, yes! I don't think the entire compact disc medium will disappear, but just like what happened with the vinyl medium, now is about to happen with the compact disc medium. You still have some vinyl releases today, and you still will have some compact disc releases in the future, but I indeed think we're rapidly moving to the digital medium. Not that this is a bad movement in itself, but the biggest problem is that many people no longer want to pay for their music. For the new mp3 generation, it almost became normal to download your music for free or illegally, and many of them no longer value the music and only want to consume it. And therein lies in my opinion the biggest danger, not only for our scene, but for the entire music industry. For sure, mediums like iTunes are a positive evolution, but I'm afraid it will never replace the loss of CD sales because of the numerous illegal download portals. What really pisses me off is the fact that only a few people are now even making money on the backs of so many hard working artists and then even they dare to complain that they don't get paid enough for offering their illegal downloads on those different portals. It's really like the world's gone upside down. It's sad, but true.

ARMAGEDDON DILDOS: I agree. The disc will disappear within the next twenty years. Contrary to vinyl, I don't know if this format is strong enough at last even due to those people who like to have something in their hands after shopping. Also, this format isn't safe. It's possible that information will get lost after some years. The technical development is still going on in large steps, though, and it will have extreme influences on our daily life and man-machine communication.

CRUNCH POD: I don't think CDs will completely disappear. I'm sure they'll still be around for collectors just like vinyl still is today. I do see more and more releases going digital, though. The majority of young music listeners have been raised to expect music to be an audio file and the majority will grow up only really knowing the mp3 as the dominant format. While I don't feel like completely getting rid of CDs at Crunch Pod, we have cut our CD production down to a more realistic number so we're not left with hundreds of unsold CDs sitting around, and we've put more emphasis on getting our releases more widely available digitally.

PROMOFABRIK: The compact disc is still a medium of the peoples of the 80s and 90s. For them, the cd is more than just the music on a silver disc, it's the entire product with booklet, pictures, lyrics and packaging. The desire to hold a cd-tray in their hands and put a cd into the player to LISTEN to music is also a symptom of a different attitude towards music and a deeper and more meaningful relationship with art and its message, emotion and heart. As long as those people love to hear new music, cd will exist. The newer generations do not have that close connection to the media, as all the music they learned of is mainly coming through as mp3 from friends, mp3db.ru, download shops, etc. Music serves other purposes as pure entertainment or as some background noise when browsing the internet. At least this is what I assume to explain the phenomenon. The cd will remain a crucial medium in some circles and for music lovers, but I believe it will lose its position as the standard medium in the next five years!

SL: As the scene's drifted back towards the underground, how much impact do you think club, fashion, and festival culture had on the last ten years versus the 90ies?

BILL LEEB: The underground is where this music will hopefully stay, as that is where true art is made. The fashion and festivals are a big trademark of this scene and it is really a dedicated lifestyle more then a trend. When you attend a Mere Luna festival-type event, you get to really understand how unique and individual all the people there are and what a special one of a kind gathering it is. It is a culture within a culture and will hopefully continue to move forward and evolve without losing the integrity that has come with it - 'long live the darkness'!

SEBASTIAN KOMOR: Fashion definitely had more of an impact. Dare I say more than the music itself? Unfortunately, I feel the underground scene has become a parody of itself over the years. What was unique and special is now as common as Wal-Mart clothes. Like you stand out wearing sneakers over something like New Rocks. And may I say I am so tired of corsets? Jesus, people!

Anyways, the 90s ruled this scene. It also was when the best music was made, from 1992-1996... the golden years. What happened? Inflation of music and labels... it's like the scene is a blob that devours all and becomes bigger and bigger while destroying everything in its path. Time to cleanse.

SL: At the turn of the millennium, there was a sense of both wonder and tension as to how the 2000s would play out. Considering the general topics of futurism found in the genre, do you think this vision has been reinforced or decayed over the last ten years?

VNV NATION: The 1990s was a party, no matter how you look at it. We all wanted the image that had been slowly fed to us in the 80s. It started with a recession and soon everyone growing old enough to have a full-time job wanted to escape through labels, trend based products, clubs, music that meant nothing, clothes, gadgets, hedonism, excess and all the things that they imagined that the rich money-makers had in the 80s. We suddenly wanted the latest portable computers and latest mobile phones because they were in our reach. We wanted to live in the techno-enabling future we had dreamed up. The cool kids wanted a faster internet, something that was still relatively a commercially-unexploited and unregulated open world information service. They wanted a more technological world against the soundtrack of repetitive techno while the party went on and on and on. Meanwhile, in the electro-industrial scene, and despite the fact that there were still so many bands who continued to make home-made soundtracks to late 80s dark future movies, singing (or shouting through a distortion pedal) about death, electrocution, more death and chemical spills, there was still a strong movement of people who were positive about the future of the world, who embraced the rapid technological modernization of the Western World and who were old enough to remember a time when we hoped for a better world and an elevated consciousness with the coming of the millennium. In case you missed it, none of the elevated consciousness happened. January 1, 2000 was just a date, and a time when we all feared the computers of the world were going to shut down. They didn't either. It was another fear tactic that the media jumped on to keep us scared. I think all the futurists saw us, in the 90s, moving to a scarier world than George Orwell had imagined. We would become addicted to the gadgets that were supposed to make our lives easier and better, we would become slaves of manipulation by the corporations who shape our world and we would obey trends, without question. They saw a coming world where we would be empty and would lose the human spirit, piece by piece. Nothing is final and, at the time of writing, we are emerging from a decade where the mainstream music industry, who learned their formula making strategies in the 90s, feeding boy/girl bands and meaningless shit to children, have been kicked so hard in the balls. Underground music is alive and well and some of it has emerged in the last ten years to take the mainstream by storm. You can't keep a good thing down because there is no marketing formula that can predict it.

ADAM-X: Personally, I have not seen much movement recently in the genre and because of this I have jumped back a bit more into the techno scene. Of course, I still have my love and desire for Industrial and EBM music, but I feel there is much more appreciation for pushing for forward-thinking electronic music currently in the techno scene then I do in the Industrial/EBM scene. That still does not stop me from trying to push new sounds in the industrial scene, which I feel my latest album release on Hands this year will show.

Currently, after many years of stagnancy, there has been a big breakthrough in 2009 of quality techno with new and cleaner production and utilizing elements of dubstep mixed with harder edged techno. Where as I saw a lot more movement with EBM and rhythmic noise in the early part of the millennium, I now see a lot more of a progressive movement in techno. I am playing a major role in this movement with an anonymous project I created earlier in 2009. I have released a series of several vinyl 12"s under an anonymous project name that fuses industrial sounds mixed with dubstep, techno rhythms and basslines. This new project is creating major waves and was just signed to major techno label CLR for an April release date. I strongly feel that if you look around out there, you will find a lot of forward-thinking industrial music. You just need to overlook the genre-naming of things and listen to the music itself. If you search, you shall find!

ASSEMBLAGE 23: It's funny, but technology has almost snuck up on us. Thinking back to 1999, it's amazing to see how different things are now compared to the. Back then, most of us still had dial-up internet connections, software synths were virtually unheard of, not many people knew what an mp3 was, not that many people had cell phones, and GPS was unheard of. Now, all of those things are every day parts of our lives and we don't even think twice about it. I'm a big fan of all things having to do with technology, so I think it's great, but of course the down side is that we become dependent on that technology to the point where, if it suddenly become unavailable, we're screwed. I always thought an interesting concept for a sci-fi movie would be a scenario in which the earth got hit with an electromagnetic pulse that fried all the electronics on the planet. Suddenly, it's the native and indigenous tribes that we consider to be primitive who would have the upper hand because they're used to living without the dependence on technology. Kind of scary to think about it.

SL: While some trends will certainly remain, what ones do you think we'll all look back on and see as quintessentially dated and "2000ish" in the future?

COVENANT: Future Pop and anything that reminds you of crappy trance music. That, and arpeggiated 'Virus'-type basslines.

SL: Back in 2000, gothic music was well saddled onto the side of the electronic-industrial genre, yet these days, goth rock has almost gone into hibernation in comparison to its electronic peers. Why do you think that split happened?

ALFA MATRIX: Electronic music has taken over allover so that the shift was not that surprising. Then again, bands like Krystal System and I:Scintilla which use a healthy dose of guitars might have been labeled 'goth' in the past, though they actually never belonged to the gothic movement. They're both doing great and don't need the gothic stamp to get their own public and fans. So let's say that 'goth' as a marketing ploy is just outdated... which would explain the fact you hardly hear people speak about 'gothic' music these days.

Having said that, look at the Gothic Festival in Belgium... It's all in the mind in the end!

SL: There's been a slew of terms thrown out to describe the sub-genres of electronic/industrial music over the last decade - futurepop, terror EBM, hellektro, powernoise, technoid, synthpunk, steampunk... do you believe any of these will have any lasting validity by the time we strike 2020?

ALFA MATRIX: Some will, most won't. I'm pretty sure we'll all go back to using the basic descriptions with a few exceptions like 'endzeit', 'powernoise' and a few other terms that do cover the music they refer to pretty much. By 2020, maybe we will have 'pinkelectro', 'rabbitnoise'... These are just names, and in the end, the music speaks for itself!

SL: Sometimes, retrospective articles like this one declare a person or even an idea the "X of the Decade". Out of all the innovations and people who partook in this genre's working over the last ten years, what would you say is the #1 thing or being that made or destroyed electronic music in that period?

CAT RAPES DOG: The number one good thing of the last decade must be how the recording process moved from a studio with hardware to your own living room and software - and to an affordable price. The number one bad thing was the overuse of the autotuner.

ASSEMBLAGE 23: My answer to both of those is the Internet. It's made music easier to find and purchase than ever before, it's allowed artists and fans to interact in ways we've never seen before, it allows artists on opposite sides of the world to collaborate, and it makes free tools for musicians available at the click of a mouse. The downside, of course, is that it has created the file sharing culture which has really made things difficult for indie labels, it's increased warez copies of software which makes it difficult for small software developers to survive, and, in a sense, music has become SO readily available, that it can actually be more difficult to find the really good stuff among all the crap. It's definitely a double-edged sword, but its impact on music is undeniable.

PROMOFABRIK: For me it is hard to name one outstanding artist that made a real advance in that genre, as the most groundbreaking artists like Portion Control or Einstürzende Neubauten definitely made the progress in the 80s already. But to name one album that had a huge impact in that field is Skinny Puppy's Greater Wrong Of The Right. A negative example in the past ten years is even harder to define, as there is a vast amount of very generic releases and bands/artists that do not add something to electronic music due to their narrow-minded and limited artistic skills. Many only copy their predecessors, which for themselves only followed the most innovative bands of the early 90s. I don't want to name any specific artist, as this would make them outstanding for being an example that they do not deserve to be.

SL: In the early nineties, electronic-industrial music appeared to have a much larger presence in the market, and in the United States, was even at times covered by large media figureheads like Spin and MTV. However, these days, it feels like the genre's been almost 'blackballed', despite the occasional success of bands like VNV Nation. Why do you think that's so?

VNV NATION: In Europe, the major press and TV coverage only really happened during the late 80s with bands like Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb getting most of the spotlight, and thus opening doors for many other bands, thanks to shows like MTV's 120 Minutes and Rapido (thank you, Antoine, for your dedication), and because it was seen as a new and cool genre of music - the alternative punk side of the rising tide of hard electronic dance music. There were lots of movements going on in this 'scene' bur a lot of bands were being pushed under the industrial-electronic umbrella, whether they liked it or not. The sound wasn't cohesive yet and a lot of the bands sounded very lo-fi, despite the focus on technology. At the same time, during the period of 1988-90, different forms of new and creative dance music, that were follow-ons from EBM in many ways, were already becoming the main focus of street culture, and thus the music industry moved on to the next cool thing. EBM was a victim of it's own success, in a way, as it spawned and opened the doors for hundreds of new branches of electronic music. None of the EBM bands had broken into the charts and it remained underground until the momentum died out. At the same time, so many flavors of techno shot out of nowhere, on the tails of the 80s electronic dance movement, and dance music was what people wanted so they became the new trends. No one in the mainstream alternative press was interested in EBM anymore.

Meanwhile, in 1990, it all changed around to the American definition of 'Industrial music', through bands like NIN, Ministry, the Revolting Cocks, etc. I would like to add that, to most Europeans at the time, this sounded like biker-rock and metal with a sampler or a drum-machine. In Europe, the word 'industrial' still generally meant bands like SPK, Fini Tribe, Einsturzende Neubauten, and many other experimental electronic bands, who also bashed metal, from time to time. In any case, this modernised-rock sound became extremely popular and acceptable to the American mainstream market, which had always rejected pure electronic music from the mainstream. It had guitars, was made up of people who fit the 'rockstar' image, people whose lives and habits fit a time-honoured checklist of sex, drugs, more sex, rock and roll, a risky video, pornographic statements shouted out in songs, swear words, a 'parental guidance sticker' on their CDs and a melody from time to time. The modern industrial-rock sound wasn't successful in Europe, for the most part, like it became in North America, with very few exceptions.

Every trend has an expiry date so, after the boat had sailed on these music styles, on either side of the Atlantic, the mainstream was already out looking for the next new thing and industrial-electronic or rock-industrial, were considered 'old' and 'out of date'. Thanks to the popularity of the NIN/Marilyn Manson branch of things, people associated a very cheesy-gothic image with the word industrial, which was easy to become rather dated. There's no way to change this perception so if you don't sound like that, call it something else. If the terms 'industrial', 'EBM' or 'goth' or 'crying mascara and looking lost and lonely' are associated with your band, it's a death sentence to your chances of getting mainstream-alternative coverage. I should add that I've never cried mascara and the alternative mainstream in North America are quite happy with that. We also spend our time concentrating on writing songs, not coming up with new haircuts and make-up techniques. Music that speaks will always have an audience. People in the North American alternative press consider us to be alternative-electronic-rock, which is fine with me, except for the word 'rock', which makes me think of things like Aerosmith, for some reason.

COVENANT: I think it's a combination of less marketing in general and the abundance of available music. Today anybody can get anything in a matter of seconds and that makes people much more eclectic and less likely to home in on any specific genre. People are simply more eclectic and less interested in building 'scenes', I guess.

KMFDM : Back in the heyday of electronic-industrial music, it was new, exciting and really quite underground. That was compelling to some people and they tried to bring it on to the radar of the mainstream. After all, the people that 'discover' a 'new trend' and then go about exploiting it are always the ones that end up getting filthy rich. Therefore, MTV and Spin didn't exactly do what they thought was best for mankind in general... there was a market and they wanted a bite out of it. Now, some 15 -20 years later, the electronic-industrial scene may still be going strong - in the minds of the 'insiders' - but for the mass-marketing mechanisms of the music-industry it has become utterly irrelevant, because amongst many other reasons:

a) It is of little appeal to people who are not into tattoos, piercing, fetish and vampire-stuff, 'alternative' lifestyles, i.e. the vast majority of our various societies.

b) The advent of internet piracy of the music, the subsequent disappearance of small, independent record stores, their subsequent replacement by giant chain stores that put in their shelves only music that appeals to the vast majorities, i.e. moves units and makes them money.

c) As a) and b) indicate, there's no money in this facet of youth-culture.

It is as it always was, a fringe-market, of little or no interest to the people that 'make' the trends, the ones who, untiringly, shove the newest 'must-have' into the ears and faces of an ever insatiable consumer culture with little tolerance, fear of the unknown, no discerning taste and no balls to go outside of the dictate of their peers (the vast majority of our societies).

SL: Futurepop has been certainly one of the most successful electro styles during the first years of the new millennium, but these days it all looks like the genre suddenly collapsed! What was futurepop all about, and why did it suddenly disappear?

DJ HIVE: Before futurepop hit the scene, I think it was already slowly aging and becoming the sign of a different time. I'm mainly speaking for the electro-scene here, but I think it became apparent at the end of the 90s, that the bands that had been fresh at the beginning of that decade (e.g. :WUMPSCUT:, Plastic Noise Experience, Leaether Strip, Calva Y Nada, Project Pitchfork) had really become quite stale in their music. Futurepop took the best of those bands and fused it with more modern trance-sounds, making it music that stood out from the rest of the pack, just as those earlier bands had done in the early 90s. Futurepop turned into the ambassador of the electro-industrial scene (whether everyone liked it or not), reinvigorated it and even brought a spot of light and hope into an otherwise dark mindset. I still remember that around the turn of the century, I received an e-mail from a longtime scenester, that simply said 'what have you done to our darkness?', as I gave more and more attention to futurepop at my club nights. I think he was not alone in that sentiment, but I think it was a necessary change to keep the scene alive and to bring in young kids again.
Why did futurepop fade again? Because it itself became stagnant as well, after about five years. Futurepop bands either moved into a different musical direction or continued to repeat themselves (with little success). Personally, I think the only futurepop band that's still doing well is Rotersand, but even their futurepop has evolved from what it was in the beginning of the decade. But it is thanks to futurepop that we have the new genres (like TBM) that are popular now. Futurepop showed musicians that it was okay to infuse other styles into the mix again, and to be creative, to innovate, to use sounds from a different scene in an unconventional way.

SL: Considering futurepop was such a large trend in music, why do you think it became the dominating archetype of electro-industrial music?

VNV NATION: It wasn't some elite, underground sound that alienated music-listeners. It bridged so many music styles at the same time and created something new. It was embraced so wholeheartedly at the time, in electro and goth clubs, because it felt like a wave of fresh new sound and it hit something inside people, for the first time in a long time. As much as people in the dark-electronic-scene like to pretend they are not, they are deeply emotional people. Jen from Ayria hit the nail on the head when she said that it attracted all types of non-extreme alternative people to the clubs and, most of all, it attracted girls to the clubs in large numbers. As facetious as this might sound, when girls go to clubs, lots of guys go, too. Like it or not, this is how it works. The clubs were packed. The dancefloors were solid. The DJs couldn't make a mistake playing music from this genre. People cheered and sang along and people were happy. The clubs were full of anthems that were both euphoric and melancholic and sentimental at the same time. I can't begin to describe what it felt like in a club between 1999 and 2001. Suddenly music from this genre was expressing something positive and euphoric, bringing in sounds from other forms of dance music, it meant something and spoke about the world and the human condition with a sense of intelligence, AND you could dance to it. It seemed that positive emotion had been missing from this music all along. The originating bands in this genre were taking influences from then-popular underground dance styles and dance bands and making a whole new sound with it. This music was made up of songs and, at the same time, it reflected what was happening in other areas of popular electronic-music. What dance music didn't have was anything that could be described as 'substance'. I would argue that it was something that most dark-electronic music and industrial didn't offer either. Just like people in the industrial-electronic scene could listen to bands like Underworld, Fluke, Chemical Brothers, etc, people who listened to general alternative electronic music could listen to this.

...And then the elitists wanted 'Cookie Monster' vocals back and the name-calling and battles began.

ASSEMBLAGE 23: I never considered it to be a 'real' genre to be honest. To me, it was inevitable that trance would become an influence on this kind of music, and so I just saw it as the way the electronic industrial/EBM/whatever you want to call it, naturally evolved. But the electronic music world in particular seems to have a need to create a new genre any time something slightly different happens to a style of music rather than just accepting it as the evolution of an existing style. At any rate, trance is catchy, clubby music, so the appeal of that influence is easy to understand.

DJ WILDHONEY: The current electro-scene became more 'poppy' all over the years. This was an evolution I didn't like so much, as I prefer more the old-school EBM; it has to sound hard and raw for me. Perhaps the fact that the current (young) generation electro-heads like these spacey bleeps and sound-spectrums a lot has something to do with it, I don't know. I could never really understand the success of it. Bands like Covenant, Straftanz, or VNV Nation are still ok for me, but the popularity of some projects like Welle:Erdball or Nachtmahr I can not understand at all. I hope that's not the real future of pop, ha ha!

SL: From Spetsnaz to the collaboration of Terence Fixmer with Douglas McCarthy, it seems that traditional EBM is on the rise as we head into the next decade, and that even sectors of the techno and electroclash circuit have turned to follow suit. Why do you think that's occurred, and do you see it as a lasting or possibly important phenomenon?

ADAM-X: In conversation with Terence and seeing him also play live at Tresor club in Berlin a few months back, he seems to be also heading more in a techno direction. His last solo album, Fiction Fiction, was pretty much EBM-less. I think traditional EBM was much more on the rise back from 2000-2005 when Terence, David Carretta, Ionic Vision, Millimetric, Thomas Heckmann, The Horrorist, myself and a few others were pushing the sound with a more stripped down aesthetic. Now in the last few years, it seems EBM has headed into this cheesy electro house direction that I truly despise. As for the rise you mentioned, I have not noticed one in the traditional sense but I'll keep my ears open for it!

DJ WILDHONEY: As long as it sounds good, I don't care where it comes from! I know that there are world-famous DJs, bands and artists nowadays who give respect to bands like Nitzer Ebb, DAF, etc. because they grew up with this music and it made them do what they are doing now... I respect people who make old-style stuff that has been put in a new jacket and is mixed with new ingredients like Vitalic, DJ Hell or Felix Da Housecat. Their stuff is also appreciated in the dance scene even though they originally got it from the 80s. I hope this phenomenon will stay for a long while, as it's a positive evolution ...

SL: All over the past 30 years, image always found an important place in the scene and I sometimes got the impression that a marketable image was more important than making good music! Why is image that important?

CAT RAPES DOG: Throughout history, people have always wanted to be entertained and to see something that's not a part of their everyday life. If you would go on stage and play your songs with the same state of mind as if you were shopping at the supermarket, no one would be interested. You need to put on a show and catch people's attention. It's the same thing that has attracted, and is still attracting, people to all kinds of religion; people want a spectacle that will make them forget their worries for a while.

SL: Beyond the music, how has the new digital age changed the way you market your craft? At one time, image was critiqued for being put before one's music, but has that balance changed in the last ten years? If so, do you think the role of marketing has had an adverse, or maybe even positive, effect on the quality of music?

KMFDM: Generally speaking, the more time an artist has to spend worrying about his/her marketing, the less time he/she will be able to spend creating art. Therefore, I do not concern myself with these aspects. I have an office that takes care of KMFDM's marketing, and they know exactly the right amount of what needs to happen, and when and where that's going to be. I am old-fashioned in the way that I believe in 'word of mouth'-marketing. Seems to still work just fine!

THOMAS RAINER: 10 years ago, labels had enough money to pay a department to take care of marketing your music; now, every musician faces the challenge of having to play all kinds of different roles in order to get his music to the potential listener. It is not about the music alone anymore, now everybody has to maintain his/her social network sites and do management tasks.
Image was always more important than the music and will always be, as this is the canvas on which the audience paints their dreams, hopes, aggressions, and/or fears. It's what makes an artist unique and stand out from the others, as it paints the picture of the person behind the music which is ultimately who the audience will have a 'relation' to. Faceless music performed by indistinctive guys in black may have its appeal, but it will always be interchangeable with each other.

SL: Several labels really ruled over the 90s. Thinking to labels like Zoth Ommog, Machinery, Energy, KK Records, Off Beat, Hyperium... but they've nearly all disappeared! What was their real impact and do you think the labels active during the past decade were more professional in their approach and work in comparison?

X MARKS THE PEDWALK: I can't tell you more about labels' work during the past decade, mostly because I just returned from a more than '10 years break' from music! But generally, even music means business to the owner and the team behind it. And so it's like you can find in every other business... one company is acting with very professional structures, a strong profile, a strategic background and also financial power - others don't... but for sure, it always depends on the people, too! At the beginning of the electronic music movement, it was very easy for new labels to gain access to the market, because the growing electronic fan crowd was happy about every release that gave them the important 'stuff' - so the effect to the young electro scene was tremendous. Different styles from all over the world and a bunch of high-profile bands were being brought to us by all these new cool labels. I was proud to be part of one of the most high-profile electro labels in the world, but with the time, all players had to realize that they all were competitors amongst themselves and also within the main music business. And so at the moment, when the market for electronic music was saturated and it was harder to earn money with it, they had no idea and no substance to work with it in a constructive way. Finally, there was no movement, no creative ideas, no innovation - just reproduction - and the fan crowd has stagnated. It was just a simple consequence that, step-by-step, the labels disappeared - welcome to the market economy! Today, there are just a 'handful' of relevant labels and I think they all know how important it is to think seriously about how every step in the market has changed with the new digital distribution structures and digital ways of communication.

SL: What have been the most successful bands and eventually songs of the past decade?

DJ23: Where does one start with this question? The most obvious answer is VNV Nation because they have become totally independent at this point by shrugging off labels and creating their own. Bands like Grendel, x**, Soman, Agonoize, Reaper, E-Craft, Faderhead, X-Fusion, Noisuf-X and most recently SAM and Nachtmahr just kind of came out of nowhere and took stuff over, progressing relatively quickly as far as their sound and popularity. Then there is a band like Combichrist which was formed out of the ashes of a band who dissolved after they quickly took over as well, but that parent act Icon Of Coil started at the beginning of the decade and, for whatever reasons, split into separate acts about the middle of the decade... which would seem to reflect the feel of the decade as well because the separate members projects are completely different from Icon Of Coil.

Songs... wow, it seems again anything by VNV Nation, Icon Of Coil, Combichrist, Suicide Commando, Hocico, SITD, Tactical Sekt, Assemblage 23 and Funker Vogt has some odd magical staying power, then at least over here in my part of the woods, there's the annoyingly popular Rotersand ' Exterminate, Annihilate, Destroy'... they can't seem to shake that one no matter how many following albums they've released. There's also Grendel ('Soil Bleed' and 'Hate This'), SAM ('Arm Of Justice'), Soman ('Ruler' and 'Twister'), and Seabound ('Poisonous Friend'). I can really be at this for hours! Other acts like Terrorfakt, Life Cried, FGFC820 , Imperative Reaction and stuff by acts that seem to have come and gone like Davantage and God Module still all have tracks that get lots of exposure and play in various locations.

DJ HIVE: For my music tastes, there is no denying the decade got off to an excellent start with VNV Nation (Burning Empires - 2000), Apoptygma Berzerk (Welcome To Earth - 2000), Covenant (United States Of Mind - 2000) and Assemblage 23 (Failure - 2001); they all had a strong release that really put them on the map and turned 'futurepop' into a genre. Too bad it didn't last. I think we had to wait until 2003 to get a new infusion into the electro-industrial music scene, with Combichrist's The Joy Of Gunz (2003), an interesting album and led to Everybody Hates You (2005), which is one of those albums that contains nothing but great songs, and signaled the birth of a new genre: TBM, or Techno Body Music.

The return of harsh electronics started around that time as well, with solid releases by Grendel (Soilbleed - 2005), Tactical Sekt (Syncope - 2006) and of course, Suicide Commando, who had been the lone harsh band that stood strong during the futurepop years (Mindstrip - 2000), but were also back with a vengeance in 2003 (Axis Of Evil) and 2006 (Bind Torture Kill). The harsh trend really didn't die though, but the music did evolve again, adding more sounds from other club scenes (techno, rave, hardstyle, etc.), which kept the music fresh and 'with the times'.

Some people dislike this, but personally, I think it has ALWAYS been the strength of our little scene, and the very reason why it has survived several decades already. Notable albums in this new direction are Reaper's Hell Starts With An H (2007), SAM's Synthetic Adrenalin Music (2007), Soman's Mask (2007), X-Rx's Unmöglich Erregend and NOISUF-X's Tinnitus (2006) and The Beauty Of Destruction (2007). Of course, not all bands went wildly ahead with the new 'faster, harsher'-philosophy and some beauties grew from that as well, proving this scene is not the one-trick pony, that so many argue it has become. Brilliant releases, such as Faderhead's FH3 (2007), x**'s The Art Of Revenge (2008) and Rotersand's recent Random Is Resistance (2009), are but a few examples of what this scene is capable of. Next to these releases, a lot of other noteworthy albums have surfaced in 10 years for sure, but I think those above really mark changes in the evolution of the club scene. Many of the great songs of the decade also come from these albums, for me, but a lot of other great things came from these and other bands as well. Listing them would just take up a lot of space. Safe to say, it has been a good decade, with the only draught becoming visible in 2009 itself, which had very few interesting releases. But I wouldn't say this is a sign the scene is dying. It's just catching a breath to launch into the next decade, I hope.

DJ WILDHONEY: I will only mention the bands that I like most of the past decades: Cat Rapes Dog - Die Form - OOMPH! - KMFDM - Lords Of Acid - Die Krupps - Nine Inch Nails - Front 242 - The Invincible Limit - The Eternal Afflict - Depeche Mode - DAF - Wumpscut - Snowy Red - Spetsnaz - T.Raumschmiere - Nitzer Ebb - Pouppée Fabrikk - Soko Friedhof - The Neon Judgement - Amnesia - Combichrist - Trans-X - Funker Vogt - The Klinik - Tragic Error - Placebo Effect - Liaisons Dangereuses - Vitalic - Fad Gadget - Antiloop - Dance Or Die - Calva Y Nada - And One - The Prodigy - Vive La Fete - ...

PROMOFABRIKK: Tough question! There have been many great songs and excellent albums, and if I look back for the past ten years, maybe this period was not as glamorous as the 90s. This might be only due to the fact that we became older and did not love the newer styles that much, as the music you liked when you were teenager always seems the most important. Great bands for me in this age are Informatik, Patenbrigade: Wolff, Neotek, Skinny Puppy (still), Rome, though commercially the most successful bands are Rotersand, VNV Nation, Feindflug and Covenant.

TERRORFAKT: If I hear 'Dead Stars' by Covenant again I'm going to kick someone. I'd say however that Combichrist, Vomit Arsonist, Covenant, VNV Nation, and that fuck Caustic have all had some good results in the past 10 years. I'd venture to bet though that bands like Alter Der Ruine, Everything Goes Cold, Cervello Elettronico and Prometheus Burning will really break out and show their true potential soon.

SL: Did you notice any evolutionary changes in the musical taste of the club visitors during this time period? If so, what were they?

DJ23: I wouldn't say an evolution as much as a change in individuals' personal tastes and preferences. It seems more of the noisy acts are getting club play here in the last decade as well as more terror EBM tracks. You also have to factor in that there has been an explosion of more terror EBM and industrial or noise acts in the past decade as well. Ten years ago, you only had to choose from maybe playing Feindflug, Suicide Commando, or Ant-Zen acts versus a ton of bad synthpop bands. Now, it has all flipped the other way to where if you play synthpop in certain areas of the US, you risk getting a beat down. However, there are still the staples... naturally VNV Nation always seems to bring a floor back to life no matter how risky you try and take things. All the changes also rely on what the DJ is playing or being asked to play, or what bands are being pushed by the few media venues and web-zines this culture has cultivated.

As a smaller part of the whole of any society worldwide, it would seem we have less to work with until someone unfortunately gets linked to bad press like KMFDM and most recently Zombie Girl, and all that factors into a later question that drastically affected turnouts and new faces in the US. At least on this side of the pond, there have been various ups and downs, but as a whole, labels have come and gone, more have become available but it seems to be to the point where newer labels are pressing albums in the cellar of their houses. You can blame that on the stigmas from these scandals coupled with file sharing and various other reasons. Love it, hate it or be indifferent, this genre needs acts like VNV Nation and Combichrist to get out to the rest of the world and bring them in. Not only can anyone identify with the content, they also are great live and that's where you get hooked if you take a friend who is not really into this scene. Those acts are the best showmen and know how to bring you in.

DJ HIVE: Absolutely, the club-going audience is looking more and more for a real club experience, with all the focus on beats. In a progressive club, there is little room for a 'quiet moment'. People want to feel the beat, experience it, dance to it. And they seem to want it, harsher, faster and louder. Some people seem to think this devaluates 'the scene' as a whole, with no more space for more introverted music. Personally, I think all this has opened up 'the scene' more to a different audience, giving 'the scene' a valuable infusion of new blood. And some of this new audience will definitely explore all facets of the music scene and will stumble onto some other things that you wouldn't normally hear on a club night. But with clubs being the only exposure our music can get to a bigger audience, I think it's imperative to keep the beats flowing, to grab the attention. That said, I notice some DJs fall into the pit-trap of adding, for example, hardstyle and psytrance to their repertoire, just because the audience seems to like the sound. That is, of course, every DJs prerogative, but personally, I think the line should be drawn between 'influenced by a style' and 'the style itself', to avoid alienating your own audience and even pushing them towards a different scene. And I feel, as a DJ, that I have a duty to look after my own scene...

TERRORFAKT: In the past couple of years people have become 'bored' oh what I'd say is the normal standard EBM or 'future-pop'" sound, where everything is basic formula or cookie cutter style with so many bands sounding like the others, or at least not trying something original. It shows that people want something more, something a bit more complex or interesting other than presets on a Virus, or 16 note arpeggiated synths or a bass line.

Twenty pages of text later, it's really difficult for me to quickly conjure an appropriate bookend to Stéphane's introduction. Here, I'm left with holding the obvious questions like, 'what can one assess from all the information above?', and 'what can one glean from these artists, labels, and DJs as to where this scene is going?' Though my journalistic experience is half of Stéphane's own, it's pretty easy to point out that fads and gimmicks come and go, and that anytime that some naysayer might declare this genre of music dead, one can readily hop onto Google and point out that it's still thriving even if only a few bands have exploded in popularity enough to 'make it' in the last ten years.

While perhaps passing on the popularity torch to those bands like VNV Nation and Combichrist, down from their forefathers in acts like Skinny Puppy and Front 242, it is also easier when glancing back at the ten as well as thirty year increments and see who at what forged those now-passé trends, and recognize who rode along on coattails for a time only to be forgotten by the decade's end.

Still, even more important was and still is the presence of the internet and the still-ongoing switch from a market dominated by physical media to a digital one. For us in the 'old guard', perhaps the reason why those compact discs still hold so much weight is due to remembering those times before online stores, when hunting down new artists absolutely required print magazine, mail order catalogues, word-of-mouth research, and that less-maligned predecessor to the torrents, the old-fashioned mix tape. While as some like Bill Leeb and Crunch Pod pointed out, the media will probably still exist in the next decade, it is becoming increasingly hard to imagine that anyone except true audiophiles may bother with hard (and probably limited-edition only) copies in the oncoming future. Still, perhaps in the long run the effect will iron itself out, as while unoriginal artists will certainly have that online platform for releasing everything they write to the world, labels may emerge once more as being what they always were - that valuable source of fans committed to assisting a new crop of artists emerge onto the world scene; basically, beacons of quality in a bleak sea of preset-laden quantity.

Due to the internet, the 00s will definitely be remembered as the decade the informational floodgates opened, though this new technology do go hand-in-hand with the ability to create whole albums and house entire studios within a mere book-sized laptop computer. So, even though the scene is a midst an era where 'shock terror EBM bands' are riding high in popularity, perhaps reflecting to the beginning of the 00s and its perception of a limitless future is the best. The electronic music scene, after all, is one that spearheads adapting to these new forms of technology before the rest, and after thirty years, perhaps one should remember that turn of the millennium technological sense of optimism / futurism. In short, it's impossible to say where electronic music will go in another decade let alone another thirty years, but doubtless it will still be going on as strong as ever, with its brief commercial highs and its ever-steady underground lulls with a worldwide scene still praising and criticizing every step of it from some anonymous corner of the web. (Vlad McNeally)