FRIDAY PLAYLISTS: Industrial Strength Records

Kicking off the first weekend of 2024, Adam wants you to usher in the new year with the hardcore techno released by Kenny Dee's BK-based label, Industrial Strength, formed in 1991

INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH RECORDS

Brooklyn-based DJ and producer Lenny Dee’s career in electronic music goes back to the 1980s, but he discovered the harder edge hardcore techno and gabber music that his label would become known for when he met Frankfurt DJ and producer Marc Acardipane after both played a rave in Frankfurt. Blown away by what he heard, Dee promised that he would release some of the music he heard in Europe in the U.S. Upon returning home, he launched his label Industrial Strength Records with a focus on European hardcore techno and Gabber, and American artists also playing with the new style.

The artists released on Dee’s label all have a unique aesthetic within the world of electronic dance music. It is dance music aligned with the conceptual shock tactics of dada, surrealism, and industrial music and power electronics later on. Australian group Nasenbluten emphasized breakbeats (and would become influential on later genres like breakcore), ironic audio samples, gangster rap samples, power electronics shock, and vaguely danceable beats. There’s truly nothing like Nasenbluten and I’d recommend studying their work even if you aren’t interested in dance music but are enthusiastic about the ways that art projects hone and define a marketing aesthetic.

Chicago-based gabber producer Delta 9 became a fixture of the label. Before he was “The Horrorist”, New York-based producer Oliver Chesler recorded music beneath the provocative moniker “DJ Skinhead,” a name that also indicates the conceptual vision of the ISR label and project. Another label mainstay, the New York-based “speedcore” group Disciples of Annihilation, were also an important example of the label’s focus.

I could go on, but just listen instead.

PHOTO: DJ Skinhead