William Seward Burroughs II was an American writer and visual artist. He is widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature. Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays, and five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences; he was initially briefly known by the pen name William Lee. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, made many appearances in films, and created and exhibited thousands of visual artworks, including his celebrated "shotgun art".
Industrial music is a genre of music that draws on harsh, mechanical, transgressive, or provocative sounds and themes. AllMusic defines industrial music as the "most abrasive and aggressive fusion of rock and electronic music" that was "initially a blend of avant-garde electronics experiments and punk provocation." The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by members of Throbbing Gristle and Monte Cazazza. While the genre name originated with Throbbing Gristle's emergence in the United Kingdom, artists and labels vital to the genre also emerged in the United States and other countries.
Throbbing Gristle were an English music and visual arts group formed in Kingston upon Hull by Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti, later joined by Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson and Chris Carter. They are widely regarded as pioneers of industrial music. Evolving from the experimental performance art group COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle made their public debut in October 1976 in the COUM exhibition Prostitution, and released their debut single "United/Zyklon B Zombie" and debut album The Second Annual Report the following year. P-Orridge's lyrics mainly revolved around mysticism, extremist political ideologies, sexuality, dark or underground aspects of society, and idiosyncratic manipulation of language inspired by the techniques of William S. Burroughs.
Chaos magic, also spelled chaos magick, is a modern tradition of magic. Emerging in England in the 1970s as part of the wider neo-pagan and esoteric subculture, it drew heavily from the occult beliefs of artist Austin Osman Spare, expressed several decades earlier. It has been characterised as an invented religion, with some commentators drawing similarities between the movement and Discordianism. Magical organizations within this tradition include the Illuminates of Thanateros and Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth.
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge was an English singer-songwriter, musician, poet, performance artist, visual artist, and occultist who rose to notoriety as the founder of the COUM Transmissions artistic collective and lead vocalist of seminal industrial band Throbbing Gristle. They were also a founding member of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth occult group, and fronted the experimental pop rock band Psychic TV.
Psychic TV were an English experimental video art and music group, formed by performance artist Genesis P-Orridge and Scottish musician Alex Fergusson in 1981 after the break-up of Throbbing Gristle.
Vera Christiane Felscherinow is a German actress and musician who is best known for her contribution to the 1978 autobiographical book Christiane F., and the film and television miniseries based on the book, in which her teenage drug use is documented.
COUM Transmissions was a music and performance art collective who operated in the United Kingdom from 1969 through to 1976. The collective was influenced by the Dada and surrealism artistic movements, the writers of the Beat Generation, and underground music. COUM were openly confrontational and subversive, challenging aspects of conventional British society. Founded in Hull, Yorkshire, by Genesis P-Orridge, other prominent early members included Cosey Fanni Tutti and Spydeee Gasmantell. Part-time members included Tim Poston, Brook Menzies, Haydn Robb, Les Maull, Ray Harvey, John (Jonji) Smith, Foxtrot Echo, Fizzy Paet, and John Gunni Busck. Later members included Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson and Chris Carter, who together with P-Orridge and Tutti went on to found the pioneering industrial band Throbbing Gristle in 1976.
23 Skidoo are a British band playing a fusion of industrial, post-punk, funk, and world music.
Scott Treleaven is a Canadian artist whose work employs a variety of media including painting, collage, film, video, drawing, photography and installation.
Frank-Martin Strauß, better known as F.M. Einheit and also known as Mufti, is an industrial and electronic musician and actor from Germany.
The Nova Trilogy or The Cut-up Trilogy is a name commonly given by critics to a series of three experimental novels by William S. Burroughs.
Cold Spring is an independent record label based in Northamptonshire, England, specialising in "all forms of extreme media, but particularly: dark ambient, neo-classical/neo-folk, orchestral, power electronics/noise, Japanese noise, minimal, death industrial, dark soundtracks, experimental, obscure electronics from Russia, China, Japan, Poland and others."
Pagan Day (originally released as A Pagan Day (Pages From a Notebook)) is a 1984 album by English experimental band Psychic TV. The cover photograph is of Caresse P-Orridge taken by Andrew Rawling.
The Process was an art and philosophy collective formed in the early 1990s and birthed at the same time as, and with a subset of the same people from, the studio work for the Skinny Puppy album The Process. Early contributors included Nivek Ogre, Genesis P-Orridge, William Morrison, and Loki der Quaeler. The Process collective aimed to connect the international industrial music community via the nascent internet while ostensibly reviving the "deviant psychotherapy cult" Process Church of the Final Judgement.
This is a bibliography of the works of William S. Burroughs.
Dais Records is an American independent record label founded in August 2007 by musicians Gibby Miller and Ryan Martin, and based in Los Angeles, California, and Brooklyn, New York.
In chaos magic, playback is a form of magical practice developed by William S. Burroughs, primarily as a way of placing curses on people or places. Burroughs was a part of the chaos magic movement, and this technique – along with others such as the cut-up technique – were further developed and commented on by later chaos magicians such as Genesis P-Orridge, Phil Hine and Dave Lee.
Klaus Maeck is a German film producer. He is perhaps best remembered for his West German cyberpunk cult classic Decoder. His films have often played at the Berlin Film Festival. Prior to creating Decoder, he was a music and culture journalist in Hamburg, covering the advent of the industrial music scene in the city. His film "The Edge of Heaven" won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Screenplay.
Jürgen Muschalek, known as Muscha, was a German artist and film director. He is known for his cult classic film Decoder.
