Dum Pendebat Filius

Today’s Friday, and this time you’re actually getting the Friday MP3s on a Friday, readers. Do I have my shit together now, or what?

This week, the featured artist is Front 242, the Belgian industrial pioneers, a particular favorite of mine, part of my personal musical pantheon. Front 242 was basically synonymous with “industrial” during the Wax Trax! heyday of the late 1980s/early 1990s, although the band members themselves preferred the term “electronic body music.”

One could argue that there were other industrial artists as good as Front 242, but you will not be able to convince me that there was ever anyone better. Alas, I think they, like all too many artists, hung in there too long and eventually jumped the shark (1993’s “06:21:03:11 Up Evil” is where I draw that line), but they were responsible for an awful lot of good stuff. If you don’t like 242, you don’t like industrial music.

Here are the tracks. There are seven, which seem reasonably representative to me:

1. Special Forces (5.02 MB, 05:28) — From the 1984 LP “No Comment.” It starts out with a sample from Apocalypse Now, Gen. Corman saying, “He joined the… Special Forces,” and then proceeds to kick some butt. The driving beat is quite characteristic of much of the material on “No Comment,” which also included the standout tracks “Commando Mix” and “Special Forces Nomenklatura” as well as the club hits “Lovely Day” and “No Shuffle.”

2. Television Station (2.47 MB, 02:41) — From the 1986 LP “Official Version.” While “No Comment” sounded harsh and martial, with driving beats and samples from war movies, “Official Version” was much darker and more richly layered, looking forward to 1991’s “Tyranny For You” (q.v.). This track is short, yet not without a certain complexity. It’s a good representative of “Official Version.”

3. Agressiva Due (2.74 MB, 02:58) — Also from “Official Version.” This song could have almost been a club hit, with plenty of banging percussion and shrieking feedback competing with a catchy beat. Particularly pleasing is the sample of Ronald Reagan saying, “We tried, via diplomacy and demonstrations of military force.”

4. Circling Overland (4.37 MB, 04:45) — From the seminal 1988 LP “Front By Front.” This album was my introduction to industrial music. I first heard it in 1989, in the barracks, while I was stationed at the Defense Language Institute; the guy who introduced me to it, Chris Henderson, who’s long since lost in the mists of time, deserves my unending gratitude for doing so. I grew up on “classic rock,” and this was definitely something new. Industrial music simply does not get much better than “Front By Front,” and I can’t recommend it highly enough, particularly since the 1992 Sony/Epic reissue includes the excellent 1989 “Work 242″ EP, in its entirety. If you only own one Front 242 CD, it should be “Front By Front.”

This track, “Circling Overland,” is pretty nice. It’s simple and catchy, with just enough punch. “1/1/2029, the stars are shining bright.”

5. Im Rhythmus bleiben (3.88 MB, 04:13) — Also from “Front By Front.” Im Rhythmus bleiben is German for “Stay in rhythm.” Seemingly optimized for simplicity and punch. Why, at the end, did they put in the woman’s voice saying “Boy, lots of boy”?

6. Work 01 (3.20 MB, 03:29) — Also from “Front By Front.” Sheer perfection, from the opening “Is this the kind of work you’d like to do?” to the final “I nostri sogni sono sempre presenti.” Most of the samples are taken from Lars von Trier’s 1984 film The Element of Crime, which makes it even more pleasing. Nothing but bassline, percussion, and samples.

7. Moldavia (4.04 MB, 04:24) — From the 1991 LP “Tyranny For You,” 242’s first major-label (Epic) effort. “Tyranny For You” was an excellent album, despite its noticeably slicker production; it was also (alas), in my opinion, their last good one. “Moldavia” is a pretty good representative track, extremely catchy yet just a bit dark, still recognizably “industrial” (242 moved on into not-very-good techno after this).

Enjoy.