Attrition

(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

Attrition belong to the second generation of British industrial music. Formed in 1981 in Coventry by Martin Bowes and Julia Waller, they made their way through the crowd of experimentalists with a somewhat childish sound that, little by little, took on more serious characteristics.

The group debuted with a soundtrack, originally available only on cassette: This Death House (Adventures in Reality, 1982 – Third Mind, 1987 – Projekt, 1995 – Two Gods, 2008). This rarity was reissued five years later by Attrition’s own label, and a remastered version in 1994 by Bowes himself was released on compact disc.
The album contains only two long suites of twenty minutes each, in line with the practice of early Throbbing Gristle. In retrospect, their suites were more psychological and less technological than those of other industrial musicians. Crawling thrives on the muffled noises that intermittently appear over the torpid snake of electronic drones, which slowly transforms into a dark storm: almost nothing happens, and when it does, it is barely anything; but what doesn’t happen—the muted crescendo in the background (almost a slowed-down bolero)—is everything.
The polyrhythmic, pounding, metallic percussion that is characteristic of industrial music dominates the score of Dead Of Night. This time, what sets it apart is the unusual violence of the timbres: the decadent alienation of Throbbing Gristle is here overwhelmed by a Nietzschean approach, in which the superman rides the machines and bends them to a ceremonial self-destruction.
Five instrumental tracks derived from This Death House, simply reworked into the ambient ethos of the 1990s, were collected on Ephemera (Hyperium, 1994).

Deliverance and The Voice Of God were their first singles in 1984, the tracks that established them within the industrial scene.

The Attrition of Reason (Third Mind, 1984) (Projekt, 1994) marked their official album debut. Bowes began with this album to make use of the female voice, following a standard more aligned with synth-pop than industrial music. Indeed, the new sound of Attrition would have been better called “dissonant synth-pop” rather than “industrial music.” The minimalist keyboard patterns on Day I Was Born mainly create a Freudian nightmare atmosphere (as does the Clock DVA-style saxophone). The more experimental compositions, like Behind Innocence Lies, harked back to Death House, but with less conviction in execution. The robotic dances (Beast Of Burden and especially the instrumental Take A Walk) follow the same strategy of emphasizing psychological effect over danceability; even so, the foregrounded noises and constant rhythm changes are not enough to fully resolve the tension between mechanistic precision and estrangement. The same year, their singles Deliverance and The Voice Of God fared little better.
The EP The Voice Of God (Third Mind, 1985), included on the CD, shows the same limitations, both in electronic songcraft (Next Day) and in mechanical dance (Across The Divide).
The weaknesses of the album lie in the inexperience of the leader, showing how “industrial” suites were often a result of composers’ inability to write decent music, and in the approximation of the singer—both amateurs at the start of their careers.

The progression toward danceable gothic music, which had begun in 1985 with the single Shrink Wrap, gained momentum with Smiling At The Hypogonder Club (Third Mind, 1985) (Projekt, 1994). Bowes focused his strategy of approaching synth-pop with Look At The Hedonist, whose exotic march blends both the decadent and gothic sides of the movement. However, the dying rosaries of Feel The Backlash and Pendulum Turns are monotonous and predictable, sometimes descending into melodramatic theatrics like Mind Drop. The only track that rises above mediocrity is My Eyes, with its delicate piano filigree and whispered vocals (not coincidentally, a non-danceable track). The album also includes the single Shrinkwrap, which manages to make things even worse.

On the subsequent In The Realm Of The Hungry Ghosts (Third Mind, 1987) (Projekt, 1994), the psycho-ambient watercolor of Vigil and Marianne's Dream returned Bowes to the atmospheric dimension that suited him best. Yet Bowes, stubbornly seeking his own path in synth-pop, still preferred to squander his resources on the classical march of a madrigal like Into The Waves and the android cadence of In Your Hand—all attempts only partially successful, undermined by the amateurishness of the medium and the lack of originality in the goal. Bowes finally finds the right balance with the long chamber drama of Surge And Run, set against a background of exotic ceremonial music (once again a kind of mutilated bolero). He also sinks the claws of his best gothic work into the bleak requiem of The Last Refuge.
The CD version also includes the 1987 EP Future Tense, featuring the experimental toccata-and-fugue of Which Hand and the tragic Adam & Eve.

1988 was the year of vindication for Bowes, thanks to the album At The Fiftieth Gate (Antler, 1988) (Projekt, 1995). A more measured use of keyboards (with crucial external assistance), the employment of samples and guitar riffs, and, in general, a less presumptuous attitude immediately paid off. From the sobbing kammerspiel of My Friend Is Golden (also released as a single) to the heavy industrial syncopations of Death Truck, from the decadent atmosphere of Milano to the thunderous title track, the album reveals precisely the balance and maturity that were missing in previous works. Individual tracks still leave something to be desired, but the overall project begins to take shape. The sparkling dance for gothic nightclubs in Haydn, influenced by Sisters Of Mercy, represents a high point in Attrition’s career.
The CD version includes the singles Haydn from 1988 and Turn To Gold from 1989. The first focuses entirely on the eponymous track, one of their aces. The second delivers at least three gems: Sideways Glance, another of their most seductive dances; the more complex To The Devil (even featuring Caribbean-inspired passages); and Take Five.

1988 was therefore Bowes’ golden year. That professional sound would conclude its arc with the album A Tricky Business (Contempo, 1991) (Projekt, 1995). The staccato phrases that had appeared on the previous album take center stage in the professional sound of Thin Red Line and Something In My Eye (the two singles). Bowes had finally realized his dream of creating “authorial” synth-pop—a pop that thrives on supernatural suspense, violent seismic shocks, martial effects, and his detached vocal delivery. The highlights of this sonic montage are the classical-style arrangement of A Girl Called Harmony and the score of Legitimate Sun, with Berio-like solfeggio and “Verdian” choruses. The oriental-tinged Under The Bridge and the minimalist loop of Resurrection close the album on notes of further renewal.

Recollection 84-89 (Projekt, 1990) is an anthology collecting some rarities that appeared only on compilations (such as the demonic Monkey In A Bin from 1987) along with tracks from the group’s entire pre-1990 output.

The duo would return in the 1990s, matured and refined in a gothic key, with Hidden Agenda (Hyperium), and with the five ambient suites of Ephemera, a remix of the old Death House.

Bowes reached his formal peak in the field of robotic-industrial dance music with 3 Arms And A Dead Cert (Hyperium, 1996). The wails of Julia Waller became an additional instrument, as did the viola, which makes fleeting, spectral appearances throughout the album.
The record opens with a harder, almost techno rhythm in White Men Talk, featuring soprano vocalizations over a driving drum machine, with a romantic viola backdrop, and sinuous, vaguely Middle Eastern electronic litanies. Cosmetic Citizen follows with a more agile and graceful rhythm, no less overwhelming, and a more classical vocal line, seemingly directed by Berio. The treatment of voices becomes a central feature of much of the album, starting with One Of These Mornings, perhaps the most complex experiment despite its superficial appearance as mechanical techno.
The album’s two research themes—rhythms and voices—recede into the background compared to the true tour de force moments, appearing near the end almost as casual appendages, but in reality serving as documents of lucid compositional madness. Bowes invents avant-garde gothic in the dissonant kammerspiel of Predicament and the dadaist piece of the title track, songs that employ a wide array of daring sonic gestures. The latter gradually takes shape through a magma of operatic vocalizations, violin minimalism, and unhinged cadences, culminating in a solemn and apocalyptic crescendo. Not coincidentally, the collection closes with a Prelude of chamber music for strings.

And so, completing a progression that had gone far beyond what Bowes had originally planned, Etude (Projekt, 1997) is essentially a classical music album. In reality, the pieces are drawn from previous records; they are simply arranged in the way it had made sense to arrange them from the start. The turning point was the hiring of violinist Franck Dematteis, already present on 3 Arms. The result is music filled with elegance and melancholy—and the sense that Bowes had wasted a career.
The EP Eternity (Projekt, 1997) simply remixes four of the tracks from Etude into a danceable form, thus representing the secular version of the album. Notably, I Am appears in a house version.