12 Episodes - 4 DVD Set (Professionally Printed)
16 Page Full Color Booklet
13 Hours Of Archival Footage
Edition of 350
The Pain Factory (1995-1997)
For
about three decades, Michael Contreras has been one of the most
consistently intriguing artists in the Industrial Noise scene, beginning
under the name Trucido, then as Death Squad, and most recently as MK9.
Anyone who has followed his prolific output through the years has
recognized Contreras’ versatile use of multi-media elements, including
text, photography, performance, and video. Another major piece of his
body of work was almost lost, however, nearly forgotten since the
mid-1990s: The Pain Factory.
In 1995, Contreras, then an
employee at Channel 53, San Francisco’s Public Access TV station,
decided to curate and produce a monthly TV show showcasing
Industrial/Noise/Experimental music and film. It is difficult to
understate how subversive The Pain Factory series was. In the
pre-internet era, public access TV provided the only platform by which
controversial imagery and art could be broadcast to the world at large,
and Contreras maximized the use of this peculiar medium, pushing the
boundaries in ways that were unfathomable at the time. Contreras, and
the artists whose work he projected over the airwaves to often
unsuspecting viewers, were unconstrained and confrontational—so much so
that the show was threatened with lawsuits and featured in local papers
due to the extremity of the imagery.
The Pain Factory is also
notable because it offers a snapshot of the mid-1990s Noise scene. The
years 1995-1997 arguably represented the scene’s peak output, in terms
of quantity and quality, and yet, it was strikingly underdocumented. The
Pain Factory offers a unique record of the musical and visual activity
of some of the era’s most significant figures and captures the aesthetic
breadth of the Noise scene at large in that era, before rote adherence
to self-imposed rules and sub-categories became the new norm in the
2000s. The quality is also impressive. These aren’t basement camcorder
videos; The Pain Factory was a legitimate television broadcast program,
and many of the performances featured here were recorded live in the
Channel 53 TV studio.
Unless you lived in the Bay Area during
the mid-1990s, it was impossible to see The Pain Factory. Only a single
set of U-matic and S-VHS tapes exists, which Contreras himself kept safe
through the years. The show was never widely tape-traded and has never
made its way onto the internet. Contreras has spent nearly two years
restoring and digitizing the entire series in an effort to rescue them
from analog oblivion. It is, therefore, a major revelation to finally
see an official presentation of this material, jointly released by
Contreras’ own Spastik Kommunikations label and Influencing Machine
Records.
This 4-DVD set features 16 page full-color booklet with
original flyers and artwork and liner notes by G.X. Jupitter-Larsen,
Scott Arford, J. Campbell, Jeff Gunn and Michael Contreras. It contains
approximately 13 hours of footage, including nearly every performance
and video submission broadcast as part of The Pain Factory series:
Killer
Bug - Xome - Stimbox - Seethe - Flat Tire - Fin - Taint - Crawl Unit -
Nihil - Spastic Colon - Macronympha - The Haters - Rotten Jesus - Big
City Orchestra - Radiosonde - Death Squad - MSBR - Scott Arford - Frank
Moore - Glass Crash - The Amputease - Dahmer Spectacle - Electronic
Karma Sutra - Not Breathing - Dr. Crystal Mess - YAU - Scott Arford -
Instagon - Anal Sadist - Stimbox - Genetic Death Cell - Hungry Ghost -
GX Jupitter-Larsen - Sirvix - Loaded - Death Squad - Moe! Staiano -
UBZUB - Air-o-gant - Death Keeps Me Awake - Instagon - Chris Cobb &
Yael Bartana - Seedmouth
YouTube Promo 1
https://youtu.be/waqrYyFZAq0
YouTube Promo 2
https://youtu.be/u7a1OEavYjk
45.00€
In Stock
Format: 4x DVD
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