Children of the Generator (1988)

Great comp of the late 80s NZ industrial/electro scene. Utterly dark stuff, but none of it gloomy.

Headless Chickens kick it off with their driving reductionist chant/drone 'Throwback'.

Two tracks from Straw People: the danceable 'Full Power' and the Gavin Bryars marching music of second-sider 'Surface'.

The classy Black Girls Machine's industrial pop 'Asking' on side one is a great a-sider to side two's THX-1138-sampling trancer 'Heaven Hell.'

F.T.W. share their Scared Straight samples with basic beats and bass, and side one ends with Factotum's industrial symphony 'Miasma'.

Side two starts with some Gutteridgesque surfkraut from Graeme Humphreys and Bevan Sweeney, and ends with Greg Johnson's 'Hall of Heaven', which wouldn't sound out of place in some early '70s flower child's freak out before coda-ing with what sounds like Philip Glass played on a Casio borrowed from They Might Be Giants.


I just feel that I need something stronger

Massive Stereo Sellout - By Now (1988)

The only recording by duo Ben Hayman and Steve Roach, 'By Now' by Massive Stereo Sellout is colder and simpler than Fetus Productions, less aggressive than the Skeptics, and without the pop sensibilities of the Headless Chickens.

Hope, their 'hit', sounds like what Jack Nance might've danced to in an Eraserhead  nightclub.

Some of the sounds on here actually remind me of early Aphex Twin/AFX -- at his least self-indulgent -- as performed by Nigel Bunn.

'By Now' is an excellent and unexpected example of an underdocumented scene in eighties EnZed. Get some more info from BiFiM Magazine, October 1988, over at Club Bizzare.

Brain Dump