Formed in 1980 from the ashes of the early Minimal Man, Factrix were a trio consisting of Bond Bergland (guitar), Cole Palme (electronics), and Joseph Jacobs (bass). Their habitat was the San Francisco clubs where the multimedia performances of their friends Monte Cazazza, Mark Pauline, Tana Emmolo-Smith, and Stefan Weisser took place. Their music was a surreal tangle of dissonances, distortions, and noises, directly recalling the English masters of industrial music and the more abstract vignettes of Pere Ubu: a continuous groan, a raw mass of psychic tensions, a distillation of dementia and despair.

The first pieces from 1980 retain the orthodox structure of the rock quartet, though disturbed by the ego-maniacal monologues of Bergland’s “radio-guitarre” and by a basic electronic idea that becomes increasingly complex: the macabre gait of A Night To Forget, the electronic pulse and animal howls of Subterfuge (on Live At Target), the metallic percussion of Empire Of Passion (the first single), and the series of radio disturbances in Splice Of Life.

Scheintot (Adolescent, 1981 – Superior Viaduct, 2012) is the collection of their most incisive nightmares, from the massive walls of distortion of Eerie Lights to the cataleptic polyrhythms of Heavy Breathing, from the funereal glissandos of Thin Line to the dark, perverse ritualism of Phantom Pain, from the lysergic deforming vortices of Over My Shoulder to the subdued symphonic hum of Snuff Box, culminating in the gothic and decadent Ballad Of The Grim Rider, the only tonal piece, half Lou Reed and half Syd Barrett. The atmosphere is dense and tense, homicidal and messianic. Palme’s trance-filtered singing, an incomprehensible misanthropic rant, is reduced to a mere whisper; Bergland’s radio-guitarre whirls madly, leaving a continuous and irritating noise on the grooves; Jacobs’ bass pulses darkly and obsessively. A violent impulse drives the music into dissonant landscapes and pornographic/macabre/hallucinogenic nightmares.

California Babylon (Subterranean, 1982 – Superior Viaduct, 2012), with Weisser, Cazazza, and Emmolo, by minimizing the use of the voice and applying every available electronic resource, reaches the maximum limit of sonic dissolution, while at the same time fusing nightmare and apocalypse, horror movies and premonitions of nuclear holocaust: Death By Hanging is a piercing hiss (Bergland is the Hendrix of the radio-guitarre), Poltergeist a muffled and horrifying industrial noise, Nancy's Little Gun a delirium of anti-percussionism, Lesbian a primitivist orgiastic ritual.

An apotheosis of the dark side of human nature, the subliminal music of Factrix is the most radical experiment in psychoanalytic deflagration of harmony.

After recording the album Unearth (Pathfinder, 1986), Bergland founded Saqqara Dogs with percussionist Hearn Gadbois and keyboardist Chris Cunningham and veered toward ethnic electronic music, achieving suggestive results in the nine minutes of Greenwich Mean Time on the debut EP World Crunch (1986), and in the occult pagan dances of Gregoriaan Stomp and Splatter Dance on the album Thirst (Pathfinder, 1987). By emphasizing references to “black” liturgy and softening the cacophonous sarabandes, Bergland steers his infernal music toward a soundtrack for sacrificial rites.

Artifact (Storm, 2003) collects Empire Of Passion, Scheintot and rarities.

Factrix and Italian duo Control Unit recorded Elegy For Rusted Souls (Backwards, 2013), the first Factrix album in 30 years.