Electronic Body Music is one of the branches of industrial music. In the times of the so-called “new wave”, the emergence of both new genres and mixtures of existing ones, Electronic Body Music became popular precisely because it became one of the branches of industrial music. This determined the main priorities of the new trend. The heyday of alternative music, post-rock and punk as well as other more heavy and extreme styles demanded a different approach even to the creation of more mass dance compositions. Generally, the style of Electronic Body Music was created practically specially for dance, clubs and disco, and even had some similarities with pop music. But, with all that, its peculiarity is that it is not only more heavy and rock, but it also combines elements of industrial music – noise, interference, beats and other special effects which are combined in one march. But first things first.
History of Electronic Body Music
The origins of Electronic Body Music go back to 1984. At that time musicians from Belgium after many experiments defined absolutely new style of industrial music performance. They were legendary Front 242, they were the pioneers of the new style. Initially the musicians themselves characterized it so: technical and clear rhythms, special, almost artificial vocals, not inherent to human, and a mix with ambient, mostly electronic. The new style was immediately characterized by critics as a new synth pop. However, its proximity to industrial made the style rather heavy, and therefore the circle of its listeners and admirers became somewhat different from the popular music.
As for the performers of this style, there were not so many of them. Almost all of them for the most part belong to the old timers of industrial music. We can highlight the aforementioned Front 242, as well as Nitzer Ebb and Front Line Assembly. It would also be worth mentioning Leaether Strip. These bands created the basis of Electronic Body Music style, though they didn’t play it in its pure form. Most often they were separate albums or even compositions. Actually, the circle of listeners was not seldom limited to industrial fans, and even among them there were the opponents of the new style.
With the lapse of time and technical progress there were possibilities to use all kinds of special effects even more widely. And the style of Electronic Body Music received several branches. First of all they were differed by even more presence of electronic music, big distortions of sound and vocals. The revolution happened in the nineties. Two main directions were formed – Techno-industrial and Dark Electro. Both new styles were connected with a significant weighting of synthesizers and other instruments. Dark Electro became a very dark and depressing style, where the majority of motifs and songs were dedicated to not the most pleasant side of human life. Digital sound processing and distortion were widely used here. And Techno-industrial became much heavier than Electronic Body Music, but at the same time the vocals were recorded without any additional processing. It is quite brutal, but clean at the same time.
In modern times, the styles have found a continuation in club music, dance motifs. As you can see from the history, the style has undergone many changes, but it has remained with its main features – clear rhythms and quite heavy riffs. Its popularity is quite wide, and it moved from collective and instrumental music to purely electronic.