 | RE/Search 6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook by V. Vale
Buy used from: $50.00 This is the natural starting point. Re/Search's significance to the 1980s underground is hard to overstate. SPK, Burroughs, TG, and Ballard.
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 | Crash: A Novel by J. G. Ballard
Buy new: $11.20 / Used from: $1.55 Crash might well be the cornerstone of attempts at reconstructing the influences of the early industrial bands.
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 | The Western Lands by William S. Burroughs
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $1.61 Everyone says "Naked Lunch" but I think "The Western Lands" is a more direct route to the core of WSB-land.
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 | Tape Delay: Confessions from the Eighties Underground by Charles Neal
Buy used from: $20.59 Hafler Trio, Swans, Neubaten... The best overview of the 1980s industrial scene. Up to Nine Inch Nails (and we'll let other people go from there).
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 | Wreckers of Civilisation by Simon Ford
Buy new: $22.76 / Used from: $20.00 But before them were COUM Transmissions and the Throbbing Gristle. Genesis, Sleazy, Chris, and Cosey were the beginnings, and foundation, of industrial.
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| Industrial Revolution by Dave Thompson
Buy used from: $11.86 I'm not a huge fan of the book, but David Thompson's Industrial Revolution is another good resource.
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 | Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK (Short Circuits) by Alexei Monroe
Buy new: $25.64 / Used from: $8.99 There is nothing better on Laibach and NSK than this. An interesting niche of the culture.
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 | England's Hidden Reverse: A Secret History of the Esoteric Underground by David Keenan
Buy used from: $958.90 Another corner of the industrial world, David Tibet, Current 93, Nurse with Wound, and friends. Looks around, there are copies out there without spending hundreds of dollars.
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 | Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century by Mark Dery
Buy new: $16.00 / Used from: $0.27 A little more on the culture aspects.
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 | Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History
Buy new: $32.95 / Used from: $4.68 For the more academically minded...
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 | Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk & Postmodern Science Fiction
Buy new: $23.35 / Used from: $3.90 If the "cyber" aspects are interesting, this classic, if scattered, work hits on a lot of the high points.
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 | Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction by Scott Bukatman
Buy new: $21.33 / Used from: $9.95 Continuing the academic treatment, though you have to deal with nonsense from Donna Hathaway and company.
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 | Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century by Greil Marcus
Buy used from: $13.95 Sure, it's overly loud, focused on punk, and much despised by academics, but Greil's take on Dadaism, Surrealism, and postmodernity in music is entertaining at a minimum.
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 | Noise/Music: A History by Paul Hegarty
Buy new: $16.47 / Used from: $24.00 I'm embarrassed, have owned this for years but not gotten around to reading it.
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 | Industrial Evolution: Through the Eighties with Cabaret Voltaire and Local Government (Poptomes) by Mick Fish
Buy new: $13.16 / Used from: $7.50 Fairly dull book on Cabaret Voltaire and the Sheffield crowd's resistance to the Thatcher years.
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 | Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein by John Corbett
Buy new: $23.95 / Used from: $8.99 And the connections to Free Jazz and 20th Century Classical. A great book. Sun Ra as well as Psychic TV. Sonic Youth and P-Funk.
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 | Electronic and Experimental Music: Pioneers in Technology & Composition (Media and Popularculture) by Holmes
Buy used from: $47.00 Experimental does not equal industrial, but there is overlap. This is an excellent history of experimental music of the last century.
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 | Electronic and Computer Music by Peter Manning
Buy new: $33.71 / Used from: $18.95 Heading a little further into formal electronic composition...
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 | Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking by Nicolas Collins
Buy used from: $24.00 DIY
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 | Modulations: A History of Electronic Music: Throbbing Words on Sound by Iara Lee
Buy used from: $3.22 History of electronic music.
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 | Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts by Douglas Kahn
Buy new: $21.17 / Used from: $16.95 Another digression with overlaps, art music and sound art.
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 | The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross
Buy new: $12.24 / Used from: $5.65 The classical music of the modern era.
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 | Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music
Buy new: $21.44 / Used from: $14.50 Wire magazine's take on the modern music. Excellent journalism, some coverage of industrial.
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 | Ocean of Sound by David Toop
Buy new: $11.70 / Used from: $7.68 The ambient digression.
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 | Painful But Fabulous: The Life and Art of Genesis P-Orridge by Throbbing Gristle
Buy used from: $99.50 Genesis P-Orridge biography. Ignore the collector nonsense, there are cheaper and library copies out there.
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 | Rapid Eye Movement by Simon Dwyer
Buy new: $24.95 / Used from: $3.18 Another classic. Forward by Genesis P-Orridge. This covers a fair amount of ground with film makers, musicians, and visual artists.
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