Electronic body music (mainly known by its acronym EBM) is a music genre that combines elements of industrial music and electronic punk music.

Emerging in the early-to-mid 1980s, the genre's early influences range from the industrial music of the time (Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire), European electropunk (DAF, Liaisons Dangereuses, Portion Control) and straight-ahead electronic music (Kraftwerk).

Characteristics

The style was characterized by hard and often sparse danceable electronic beats, clear undistorted vocals, shouts or growls with reverberation and echo effects, and repetitive sequencer lines. At this time important synthesizers were Korg MS-20, Emulator II, Oberheim Matrix or the Yamaha DX7. Typical EBM rhythms are based on 4/4 beats, mainly with some minor syncopation to suggest a rock music rhythm structure.

Etymology

The term electronic body music was coined by the Belgian band Front 242 in 1984 to describe the music of their EP No Comment, released in the same year.

A few years before, DAF from Germany used the term "Körpermusik" (body music) in an interview to describe their danceable electronic punk sound.

Another term that has been used to refer to EBM is aggrepo, a contraction of "aggressive pop", mainly used in Germany in the late 1980s.

History

In the early 1980s artists like Front 242 or Nitzer Ebb (both influenced by acts such as Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft, Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle) started to combine German electropunk with elements of the British industrial music. The result of this mixture was a straight danceable sound that was called EBM back in 1984. Notable EBM albums include Front 242's "Official Version" and Nitzer Ebb's "That Total Age", both released in 1987.

In the second half of the 1980s, American and Canadian music groups such as Front Line Assembly, Ministry, Batz Without Flesh or Schnitt Acht started to use typical european EBM elements. They combined these elements with the roughness of american post-industrial music (Revolting Cocks).

Shortly after, a handful of bands such as Nine Inch Nails created a more rock-oriented style under the influence of EBM synths and sequences. The most well-known result was released in 1989 under the name Head Like A Hole.

Meanwhile EBM became popular in the underground club scene, particularly in Europe. In this period the most important labels were the Belgian PIAS, Antler-Subway and KK Records, the German Animalized, Techno Drome International and Zoth Ommog, the North American Wax Trax! and the Swedish labels Front Music Production and Energy (later merged to Energy Rekords).

Other artists besides Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb were Die Krupps, Vomito Negro, Signal Aout 42, Insekt, Force Dimension, Bigod 20 and Electro Assassin.

A few other groups were A Split-Second (a Belgian electro-rock/new beat act), AAAK, The Weathermen, The Klinik, Borghesia, The Neon Judgement, Attrition or Philadelphia Five. These acts produced some genre-typical songs, although they were not EBM groups.

Some EBM artists also had an influence on many New beat and Goa trance artists (e.g. Juno Reactor, Astral Projection, Eon Project).

Developments and derivatives

Early Developments

Between the early and the mid 1990s, many EBM artists split up or changed their musical style and began to borrow more distorted industrial elements or elements of rock music or metal. The album Tyranny For You and following albums from the pioneers Front 242 initiated the end of the EBM epoch of the 1980s. Nitzer Ebb, one of the most important artists, became a simply electronic rock band. Without the strength of its figureheads, the original electronic body music finally faded by the mid-1990s.

New groups, such as Leæther Strip, :wumpscut:, and early VNV Nation, combined harsh distorted beats with synthesizer-driven melodies. What to term this evolution of the EBM genre is somewhat controversial, with artists, labels, and the music press using either simply the term EBM, or else alternate terms such as hardcore electro, electro-industrial, ^[1] or especially in Germany and South America, elektro. Other notable artists of this era include Allied Vision, Psychopomps, Controlled Fusion, early Decoded Feedback, and NVMPH. A second developed genre at this time was dark electro. Dark electro combined sinister electronic soundscapes with grunts or croaking vocals with a special attention to despair. Important artists were yelworC, Mortal Constraint, Trial, and Tri-state.

Later Developments

An outgrowth of these genres that developed in the mid-/late-1990s and resurfaced more recently is aggrotech, which combines the basics of electro-industrial and dark electro with harsher song structures, straight techno-influenced beats and aggressive lyrics, usually distorted, of a militant, pessimistic or explicit nature. Some acts are Funker Vogt, Tactical Sekt, Hocico, newer Suicide Commando, Feindflug, Dismantled, and Velvet Acid Christ.

By the late 1990s a few bands (notably VNV Nation, Covenant, and Apoptygma Berzerk) were incorporating more influences from synthpop and trance. VNV Nation's Ronan Harris and Apoptygma Berzerk's Stephan Groth called this new style futurepop, a term now more widely used to describe their later music and that of similar groups.

Around the same time, a similar process was happening in reverse as a number of artists from the European techno scene, such as Terence Fixmer, Thomas P. Heckmann and David Carretta, starting including more elements of EBM in their sound. In the United States, Adam X moved in the same direction. This tendency grew in parallel with the emerging electroclash scene and, as that scene started to decline, a number of artists associated with it, particularly The Hacker, moved towards this techno/EBM crossover style.

There has been increasing convergence between this scene, the futurepop scene and also the old school EBM scene. Bands and artists have remixed each other and, most notably, Terence Fixmer joined with Nitzer Ebb's Douglas McCarthy to form Fixmer/McCarthy. In 2005, Andy LaPlegua, formerly of futurepop band Icon of Coil, but now recording and performing under a number of different names, mixing EBM, industrial and techno styles, coined the term Techno Body Music (TBM) for a Combichrist track. The term was used in the title of a Masterhit Recordings compilation, "This Is... Techno Body Music Vol. 1", that featured bands from across the various scenes declaring "TBM will break down the walls inside the heads of the people by putting the best of two scenes under one common term."^[2] The futurepop group, VNV Nation also included two TBM style tracks on their album entitled Matter+Form; "Strata" and "Interceptor".

Other more recent bands such as Ionic Vision, Spetsnaz and Proceed have gone the other way by reproducing the old EBM style with some releases in the new millennium.

References

Notable EBM Artists

Samples

See also

• List of electronic and industrial music artists
• List of post-industrial music genres and related fusion genres
• List of electronic music genres
• New Beat

External links

• electric-tremor - The History of EBM in Belgium (written by Ionic Vision)