A Q&A with ISIL CEO about Cyberfunk
a #Raer interview with the head of Industrial Streaming Information Logistics
This past weekend I described the nebulous genre “cyberfunk” as a meta-genre of certain strands of mid-’80s aesthetics which have, over time, more or less shrunk from the public eye, marginalized in the shadow of much more widely accepted (though decreasingly effective) lenses as disco and techno. I’m sure this has provoked some questions for many of our readers. The CEO of Industrial Streaming Information Logistics (ISIL), a mysterious figure known only as “admin,” agreed to sit down for an interview to discuss some of the more controversial aspects of the Global Brand’s recent Cyberfunk compilation, Time To Make the World End, Vol II.
David: OK, first off: what is Industrial Streaming Information Logistics?
Admin, Industrial Streaming Information Logistics (ISIL): We’re a global brand with hands in many parts of exploiting the creative work of individuals to create perpetual growth for that brand. We are an importer/exporter. We control content. We create context.
D: I know you speak of your pioneering cyberfunk compilations as breaking new ground for the genre, but don’t you see examples of this sound already beginning to manifest, prior to your mixes—techno DJs playing industrial records, for example?
A: Although we’ve coined “cyberfunk” to describe this trend, I would not claim to have invented “audience interest” in any of it. I’m merely tapping an existing, albeit inchoate, audience desire, making explicit and cohesive through rhetorical convenience an unspoken, unnoticed commonality between disparate trends across many genres and audiences. In some cases—such as techno—it feels like DJs are beginning to grope in the dark towards a possible “out” for some of their more predictable maneuvers—albeit in more conservative ways. In other cases, certain styles seem to have reached an aesthetic dead end—such as a the niche art pop which has been kicking around through ‘nu disco,’ like Carly Rae, or indie pop which has revisited Gang of Four or Tom Tom Club ad nauseam for decades, and has been “on trend” since at least when I was at University twenty years ago. We think its time for new creative opportunities to enter the global marketplace. And I’m suggesting that here in the past lies a blueprint opening up a possible future, one that for younger audiences depends less on their own nostalgia, but in the raw materials of a forgotten past which predicted a real future.
D: But surely the genre of industrial itself is still popular, and has been for years, and you’re merely catching onto something that true believers have had some loyalty to for decades? Why act as if you’re discovering something new, when you’re “discovering” something which never went away?
A: Cyberfunk is not industrial music. For one thing, it incorporates a palette of styles which would never be included within that wheelhouse. For another, we are, as far as cyberfunk is concerned, selective, curatorial industrial music dilettantes with no pre-formed allegiance to the “real” “authentic” genre. We appreciate certain aspects of industrial music as a historic periodization, rather than an ongoing ethos, lifestyle, identity, or consumer brand. We are less invested in its genre codification beginning in the 1990s, and certainly, actively disinterested in its lean towards metal and alternative rock post-Nirvana/alt-rock ‘explosion.’ It abandoned some of its most interesting creative maneuvers and became more aesthetically limited to feed an unchanging, albeit loyal, fanbase. We believe our “dilettante-industrial” selectivity ironically offers more variety and a wider creative palette. We also have no per-se allegiance to “goth” as an identity—although we do appreciate the foregrounding of the political and personal affects, the attitude towards the wider world, which industrial introduced in contradistinction from other dance genres around the era. Furthermore, we find that the actual origins of industrial have been widely obscured; that most younger generations’ understanding of industrial begins and more or less ends with Trent Reznor, whose success in the 1990s we see as a delimiting pastiche of what made the genre interesting in the 1980s, yet who is popularly understood as a pioneer, rather than synthesist.
D: I get the formal sound you’re describing, but doesn’t it exist among dozens of ‘80s songs which are still popular to this day? How can this sound be “marginal” or “forgotten” if it includes wildly-popular music?
A: This is easily explained. It’s in those resonant shards of cyberfunk which exist in the present day that allow us to construct an archeology of cyberfunk in the first place. These are the breadcrumbs which lead us back to its authentic roots in a mid-’80s technology-zeitgeist. Without them, it would be truly lost. It is also true that these many exceptions are successful either in spite of their “dated” production; exist purely through “nostalgia,” which is driven by, as in all popular song, predominant topline melodic figures regardless of production. Or these songs so completely embody the cyberfunk ethos that it is their very singularity itself which allows them to stand apart—think Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5’s “The Message.” A perfect song, but one with few peers. Its producer became obscure to popular music relatively quickly. Only in the world of cyberfunk does he enter the pantheon of auteurs who drove its sound, and for records beyond the one for which he is most well-known.
D: Hip-hop makes up a substantial part of the cyberfunk sound as well. We’re celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. How can cyberfunk be based around a set of ‘marginalized’ sounds if it contains the DNA of the most widely-celebrated American art form since jazz?
A: 1980s hip-hop is, to many people, a joke. Witness Donald Glover’s 2011 comedy special Weirdo, for a telling audience applause break in which the people’s disdain for rap’s early days is made crystal-clear:
1980s hip-hop is, at best, paid lip service, particularly the early-mid ‘80s variety, by all but the most devoted fans of history. Even Industrial Streaming Information Logistics’s corporate rivals, such as Spotify, have treated the era as theoretically important, but primarily as the foundation of its “true” artistic peak in the mid-1990s. Our corporate rival Netflix unveiled a history of hip-hop entitled Hip-Hop Evolution, whose history of the early Def Jam sound tells the story of how Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons bankrolled the sound of its early peak commercial era with barely a mention of the producer who actually pioneered the sound—the businessmen are at its center.
There are two different eras in which the hip-hop history industrial complex has done a disservice to the the auteurs of cyberfunk. First, for older millennials, the sound was dated due to the seismic effects of the release of The Chronic. Older millennials often felt an obligation to learn and know the canon, much as they should eat their vegetables, and many adherents of hip-hop from the CD era have extensive knowledge of ‘80s pioneers as filtered through an album-centric, 5-mic lens which really only begins with Rakim, as proto-Nas, then 1988 as ‘year zero’—the dawn of more complex sampling styles, the “organic” feel of production which peaks somewhere in the mid-1990s with what is now considered the “dad rap canon.” 1980s rap always felt a bit oversold—we were told about how important Adidas shell toe sneakers were, at a time when the biggest consumers of shell toes were fans of Nu-Metal. 1980s hip-hop was understood in a shallow way, drained it of its cool, of its energy, its authenticity, and transformed it into a history lesson, one which deified certain bronzed touchpoints but seemed oblivious to the actual cultural texture. Thus as a source of mockery for comedians, the class clowns of cultural commentary.
For younger millennials and zoomers, interfacing with 1980s rap is even worse. To the average zoomer consumer, rap music peaked in the 1990s, or a few years later with Madvilliany. The 1980s is a black box which, in an abstract sense, ‘inspired’ their current reality, and is valued only inasmuch as it led to the things they already know they like. When the pioneers touch their lips it may as well operate as a prayer to ward off their parents. Here is where Industrial Streaming Information Logistics comes in. It is in our market interest to advise our audience to recognize the value in music which has been treated as valueless; that that very ‘valuelessness’ is what allowed the sound, now obscure, to accrete value, that its rarity in the soup of popular music has given it a greater sensuous appeal due to its unique, now lost qualities. In other words, young millennials have it exactly backwards—this music has value because it did not lead to our present reality, because it contains lessons, affects, attitudes, creative blueprints which have been otherwise lost to time.
D: “1980s pop” is a category which has been a part of our present reality since at least the mid 1990s, when it was marketed via infomercials to a younger generation who saw it as a source of catchy, humorously dated aesthetics. It’s a style that’s been revisited for kitsch value, for its sophistication, and everything in between. Its medium-defining auteur-superstars are discussed as among the most important cultural figures of our society. Acts like Sade—once oddly divisive among “cool” listeners—have grown into even more wildly popular cultural icons, for broad audiences which might have ignored her at her peak. What sort of pop could possibly still be considered “marginalized”?
A: It is 1980s pop, the third primary leg of cyberfunk’s tripod, which gives it its greatest power through its most elusive qualities. Pop itself is not a genre, really; its a set of strategies, ways of linking unlinked audiences, methods of creating reach from art which otherwise preaches only to the converted. Here, somewhat ironically, is where subgenres gain their most subversive power. It is difficult to pin down exactly which pop may qualify as cyberfunk, because you know it when you see it. In part the genre is defined by what it’s not—so an absence of many qualities makes it more apt to qualify. Perhaps the easiest example, of course, is something like Sly Fox’s 1985 top ten hit “Let’s Go All The Way,” which qualifies on a number of levels.
For one, it samples the Boogie Boys’ cyberfunk classic “A Fly Girl,” itself inspiration for cyberfunk classic “A Fly Guy” by Pebblee-Poo. For another, the song never really got its due on ‘80s revivalist reassessments; its seldom heard on retro radio alongside Toto’s “Africa” or The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me Baby.” Finally, its subject matter (“we can make a better way”) almost sounds as if it were advocating revolution—all the way—and explicit radical politics in a dystopian society are a common affect of cyberfunk. This style quickly became culturally recherché in the neoliberal ‘90s, and has only recently come back into vogue through the American slide into fascism, where it now seems less alarmist. As a corporate entity, of course, we don’t support armed revolution, but we do advocate profiting from its sensuous appeal.
All that said, the elusive nature of ‘80s pop offers a wide aesthetic net into which many different songs can fit. Songs with certain kitsch qualities which haven’t been overplayed in intervening years; music which sits along more unfashionable creative axes of the mid-’80s. Bands like Fishbone, whose style feels a permanent relic of the time. From a DJing perspective, finding elusive cyberfunk pop records is fun, because these become a centerpiece or lynchpin moment of any DJ mix, which is otherwise dominated by repetitive grooves, disruptive sound effects, cacophonous drum machines, orchestra hits, and other percussive forces intended to unsettle and engage the listener. When a popular or pop records ‘fits’ into these mixes, it must be used selectively, towards a purpose, an oasis of melodic reward and lyrical intention which feels bolder, more deliberate, thanks to its context.