Holy cow, i found a Throbbing Gristle LP in a crate today

I managed to get out of today's record collecting adventure with 5 albums for a little under $40. Believe me, if i had actual money to burn, i wouldn't anymore. It did, however, start me thinking about how i actually decide what to buy, and my weird criteria might be of interest to someone.

Some people collect records as an investment. I do not. Some people want audiophile mint rare import bootlegs. Not me. I want things that I like, or things that intrigue me. I'm going to listen to them, get fingerprints on them, and generally eliminate their resale value because i just like physically putting on records. The furthest i go into the real "collector" side of things is thinking i'd really like to say "i have that record."

When i go shopping, i'm going to spend $20-$50 and i'd prefer to have more than 2 frisbees when i get home. On the other end of the spectrum, i don't buy stuff i can find anywhere until i have a reason to buy it. I tend to favor things i'm simply not going to find again, assuming they don't cost enough to make me put something else back.

Today i got the first Steppenwolf album, ZZ Top's Eliminator, two Thomas Dolby albums, and something i never thought i'd stumble across in real life, D.o.A: The Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle (their 2nd album). They all deserve proper write ups, but Throbbing Gristle literally named their record label, and thus the parent genre, "industrial."

Most people would mistakenly call it "noise," but it's not just generic anti-music. It is the sounds of machinery, the metaphorical opposite of "agricultural" music, new, modern, metallic, if human rights violations had a soundtrack, the sick and depraved, the mass replication of force and enterprise. Think of it as ambient technological collage. "Nauseating" is the most common adjective thrown around, but i tend to find it quite pleasing (i'm weird, i know). I like that dark, impersonal, found-sounds on the tape recorder from hell's weekly staff meeting aesthetic.

If you've never heard of them, give these dead-beat dads of Industrial music a listen. You might like it, you might hate it. If nothing else it'll at least give you some sense of the lineage of bands like NIN, KMFDM, Front Line Assembly, Skinny Puppy, etc.

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