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Saturday, July 1, 2023

R.I.P. Monte Cazazza (1954-2023)

Artist, prankster, and industrial music pioneer Monte Cazazza has passed on.  

His work can be streamed here.

Cazazza was an underground legend who deserves wider recognition, He worked with Factrix, Survival Research Laboratories, and Boyd Rice, pioneers to a number.  It was he who first coined the phrase "Industrial music for industrial people," popularized by Throbbing Gristle.  Anyone up on their industrial music history will recognize among Cazazza friends and collaborators the creators of what evolved into today's industrial acts:  NIN, Marylin Manson, et al.  The purists sneer at these pale shadows....the founders' music grew from avant-garde performance art and the writings of Burroughs and Luigi Rosso as much as any pre-existing music.  Indeed, they had to actually invent some of the instruments they used.

Cazazza's version of Brion Gysin's Kick That Habit Man is an indication of his avant-garde influences.  The permutations of this phrase were generated by a computer and were meant to be recited -- and were -- at events such as the Domaine Poétique, a kind of happening featuring pre-recorded sound, light shows and projections, and the recitation of works such as the permuted poems of which Kick is only one example.


Cazazza is also a member of a club including Billly Childish and Sonny Vincent:  artist/musicians banned from art school campuses.  I'm not gonna provide a link to those tales.  You'll learn more by searching it out for yourself.  Cazazza was ahead of his time; an entire genre owes him its very name....

R.I.P. M.C.

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