EBM

Zweite Jugend and Emmon Collaborate on Reimagined “Salz” Single

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

The German electronic body music (EBM) duo, Zweite Jugend, has collaborated with the Swedish electronic act, Emmon, on a reworked and reimagined version of the track “Salz.” The single is scheduled for worldwide release on 29 May 2026 via the independent record label, Icons Creating Evil Art.

The partnership between the two acts originated from their encounters on the European electro and EBM festival circuit, including performances at events like Synth i Molkom in Sweden. The collaborative version of “Salz” transforms Zweite Jugend’s original track into a more dancefloor-focused production, blending minimalist analogue EBM with modern electronic and darkwave elements.

Zweite Jugend, consisting of Marcel Lüke and Eli van Vegas, is known for their analogue-driven approach to EBM, with roots in projects like Combat Company. The duo has previously performed at festivals such as Wave Gotik Treffen, NCN Festival, and BIMFEST.

Emmon, the solo project of Swedish artist and producer Emma Nylén, is recognized for her fusion of EBM, techno, and darkwave. Her recent solo album, ICON, further established her presence in the contemporary Scandinavian electronic music scene.

Speaking on the collaboration, Emma Nylén stated that she was drawn to the original track’s raw energy and direct groove, which inspired her to add her vocals and contribute a club-oriented production style. Eli van Vegas added that the project offered a valuable perspective on collaborative creative processes and future artistic directions.

“Salz” will be available on all major digital streaming services and online stores. The release also includes an official visualizer hosted on YouTube.

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An Introduction to Electronic Body Music

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Electronic Body Music (EBM) is the motor that drives alternative dancefloors. Diesel-fuelled, aggressive, and sometimes sensual, EBM lives in the tension between discipline and release. Militant rhythms, shouted vocals, and a physicality that turns sound into motion are key features.

Since its emergence in the early 1980s, EBM has evolved, fractured, and reassembled, but its core DNA as a type of mutant disco remains unmistakable. What follows is a canonical (and, inevitably, debatable) introduction to the genre through ten acts who defined it.

Front 242 – Take One

Front 242
Front 242 (Photo: Krichan Wihlborg)

“Take One” is a telling entry point into Front 242 because it foregrounds their engineering mindset. Where later tracks leaned into anthemics, this piece operates like a controlled experiment in sequencing and tension. Patterns emerge, lock in, and subtly morph – not to entertain, but to condition the listener. This is where EBM becomes codified: strict tempo discipline, sample integration, and a focus on repetition as structural escalation.

Front 242’s importance cannot be overstated; they transformed scattered industrial and electronic practices into a coherent, exportable format. “Take One” highlights that their genius was not just sonic, but architectural: Front 242 built the system others would inhabit.

DAF – Goldenes Spielzeug

Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (DAF) remain the genre’s ideological ignition point. “Goldenes Spielzeug” strips music to its black-booted essentials: a driving electronic pulse; rhythms inspired by twitch of muscle and the flow of blood; and Gabi Delgado’s commanding vocal presence. There is no excess – only insistence. What makes DAF crucial is not just their minimalistic sound but their attitude: ambiguity; punk-inspired provocation; and a humanity that distinguishes them from the grid of the drum machine. This track exemplifies how EBM’s later rigidity originates in something far more unstable and human. Before the machines, there was impulse – and DAF captured it in its rawest form.

Portion Control – Raise the Pulse

Portion Control (Photo: Krichan Wihlborg)

Portion Control’s tape loops, sequencing experiments, and abrasive rhythmic structures prefigure the codification of EBM’s styles. In their first incarnation, they were less polished than their Belgian and German counterparts, but the nice young men from a south London cooking school were foundational at a systems level – they made EBM before it had a name.

“Raise the Pulse” is not EBM in its finalized state, but it contains its essential components: looped sequences, abrasive textures, and a relentless forward drive. The production is raw – almost unstable – reflecting a period where technology was being pushed beyond its intended limits. They established rhythmic and textural frameworks that later artists would refine into doctrine. The track feels less like a command and more like pressure building, which makes it invaluable in understanding how EBM evolved from experimentation into control.

Portion Control evolved into something even harder, as they compressed the pop element of their sound under intense pressure into abrasive gems like “Deadstar” and “Amnesia.”

Nitzer Ebb – Let Beauty Loose

Nitzer Ebb
Nitzer Ebb (Photo: Simon Helm)

The purest distillation of EBM as physical command. Direct, aggressive, and built for bodies in motion – this album cut should have been a single expanded for the club. Nitzer Ebb built on the foundations laid by Portion Control and DAF, but they were there from the early days.

Skinny Puppy – Deep Down Trauma Hounds

Vancouver’s Skinny Puppy took the heavy duty beats and breaks of Portion Control and DAF, combined them with horror imagery and a sense of theatre, and captured a big-haired fan base tired of 80s plastic pop. There were touches of industrial music and LPD psychedelia in their works, but Skinny Puppy built their foundations on the pulsing basslines of EBM.

Front Line Assembly – The State

Front Line Assembly
Front Line Assembly (Photo: Simon Helm)

Refinement and futurism are the hallmarks of Front Line Assembly. Much more than a spin-off from Skinny Puppy, Bill Leeb created FLA to explore hard dance music with a cybernetic edge.

With “The State,” Front Line Assembly demonstrate how EBM evolves into something more expansive and cinematic. The sequencing remains disciplined, but the surrounding textures suggest scale and atmosphere. FLA smoothed the harsher edges without diluting the genre’s core mechanics. The track feels like a bridge: from strict EBM into electro-industrial and future-facing forms. It’s a study in how control can coexist with immersion.

Leæther Strip – Japanese Bodies

Leaether Strip (Photo: Marija Buljeta)

Denmark’s Leaether Strip is one of the constants on the EBM scene. Claus Larsen founded the act in 1988, and this track was released as a single in 1989. It set a template of aggressive beats and vocals that has been built upon and stripped down countless times in the intervening decades.

Over that time, Larsen has been particularly prolific – releasing original material and stunning covers of alternative pop tracks, while remixing just about everybody under the Sun.

Die Krupps – Robosapien

Die Krupps (Photo: Simon Helm)

Die Krupps expanded EBM’s sonic vocabulary by introducing metallic textures and industrial weight. “Robosapien” is rigid yet heavy – merging machine precision with a sense of physical mass. Their importance lies in hybridisation – the German heavyweights opened pathways toward industrial metal without abandoning EBM’s rhythmic discipline. The track reinforces the genre’s thematic fixation on machinery and control, but with added density and force.

Pouppée Fabrikk – Kick It

Poupee Fabrikk (Photo: Simon Helm)

“Kick It” is EBM reduced to pure impact. Pouppée Fabrikk strip away anything non-essential, leaving only pounding rhythms and stark command structures. Their importance lies in severity – they preserved the genre’s harshest, most uncompromising form during periods of stylistic drift. The track exemplifies discipline and force, reinforcing EBM’s identity as functional, physical music.

Spetsnaz – Apathy

The revivalists who proved the old formulas still hit just as hard in the 21st century. Sweden’s Spetsnaz are cold, stripped back, and punishing – a reminder of how severe EBM can be at its peak.

The act represents the genre’s modern reaffirmation. “Apathy” adheres strictly to classic EBM principles – rigid sequencing, commanding vocals, and relentless propulsion – but benefits from contemporary production clarity. Their importance lies in continuity: they proved the genre’s core formula remains effective without reinvention. The track is not nostalgic; it is declarative. EBM persists because its foundations remain intact.

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The Top Music Books of 2024

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

There were many good reads in 2024. These are the books that we chose to end the year with.

Electronic Body Music by Yuma Hampejs and Marcel Schulze

EBM needs no explanation for consistent readers of Cold War Night Life. For newcomers, it can be thought of as the mutation of disco into jagged beats and bass lines, merged with the aggression of punk.

There were hints of it in the works of Giorgio Moroder and Cerrone; nudged by the nature of 8-step sequencers into harder rhythms suitable for the dancefloor. The next steps were taken by those nice young men from Dusseldorf, Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft. True punks, they abandoned guitars for an MS20 and turned their sexual energy into a combination of grooves and growls that set the template for a new genre.

Yuma Hampejs and Marcel Schulze pick up the story at this point, describing the development of EBM and its influence around the world. Previously released in German, their book is now available to an international audience in English. Inspired by Bengt Rahm’s bible of Swedish poptronica, Den svenska synthen, it is a compendium of acts, large and small, who have made an impression on the scene.

With scores of photos by some of our favourite photographers, including Krichan Wihlborg and Jens Atterstrand, Electronic Body Music is a vital and thorough chronicle of a key subculture.

Fear of Music by David Stubbs

The core question posed by David Stubbs is why modern music provokes strong, negative reactions in people who admire modern visual arts. While a Rothko might draw sighs, a performance of Stockhausen might draw moans. Stubbs wants to understand why one is celebrated while another is derided, despite the conceptual similarities and even cross-overs between the different forms of expression.

Along the way, he traces the development of modern music, from Schoenberg to David Toop, and AMM to Aphex Twin. The influence of what used to be called New Music on pop music, including The Beatles and Pink Floyd, is evident; but why are experimental composers treated with disdain? The answer rather depends in who is making the criticism and the grounds for it.

Cornelius Cardew – himself a sometime member of the improv group, AMM – famously attacked Stockhausen from a Marxist position. In Stockhausen Serves Imperialism, a collection of writings setting avant-garde politics against avant-garde music, Cardew led the charge on the German composer. A former student of Stockhausen, Cardew took issue with his mystical methods and politically palliative intentions. Instead of fanning the flames of protest, Stockhausen appeared to him as a firefighter against the consciousness of the musical elite. The book was Cardew’s counterpunch.

To some extent, Cardew’s approach was influenced by the Maoist politics of the day. In 1974, a strident rejection of the past (even the near past) was consonant with the Cultural Revolution in China. The movement against the Vietnam War and the rise of national liberation movements provided part of the backdrop against which Stockhausen’s work could be evaluated. For composers inspired to “serve the people,” Stockhausen’s creations were both inadequate and inappropriate.

The other main tendency of criticism of Stockhausen is rooted in conservatism. The Tory newspapers were happy to print cartoons satirising his music, because it departed from the conventions of the past. Just as jazz and rock music were frowned upon by older generations, the use of electronics and unconventional notation provoked those unhappy with change. Their resort to (weak) humour could raise a smile only among the most philistine readers.

In reviewing the dialectic between modern art and modern music, Stubbs teases out the differences in the markets for, eg, framed Basquiats and Neubauten records. That they should be judged according to market criteria is a wonder; but possession, as they say, is nine tenths of the law. The former can be clearly owned, while the latter ends up as data in a huge pile at the end of the Spotify app.

This book raises as many questions as it answers – and it ends on one. The discussion hurtles from one end of your record collection to the other. Even if Stubbs doesn’t settle the matter definitively, the debate is made richer by the reading.

Strange Things Are Happening by Richard Norris

One of the hazards of having a musical career that crossed paths with Genesis P-Orridge is that it lives in the shadow of his ego. Another is that Genesis will have stolen your work, presented it to the world as his own, and then refused to let you have the royalties.

Richard Norris (The Grid, Beyond the Wizard’s Sleeve) survived the first of these. The second – wouldn’t you know it – stung him, as it has so many others.

There really should be a support group for the victims of Genesis’ drive-by lootings of intellectual property. Among the stories will be how he was present at the delivery of acid house and tried to put his name on the birth certificate. Norris is in the best position to recount it, and he does so here with humour and grace.

Other stories include anecdotes involving Joe Strummer, Rick Rubin, Damian Albarn, and Sky Saxon. Most people would be hard-pressed to pick Norris out of a line-up, but he has crossed paths and worked with some of the biggest names in music. Crucially, despite the presence of many things in his bloodstream, he has met every situation head-on.

Electricity and Ghosts by John Foxx

John Foxx first came to public attention as the punk who fronted Ultravox! (while they still had the exclamation mark). He went on to release Metamatic – the album Gary Numan dreamed about when he slept. More music followed, but part of Foxx’s joy came from creating the cover art for his recordings.

Electricity and Ghosts: The Visual Art of John Foxx collects many of Foxx’s graphic works for the first time. Designed with Jonathan Barnbrook, who has worked on packaging for John Foxx & The Maths, it is a reminder of the multiple dimensions that Foxx has inhabited since art school. As a maker of plastic art, collages, and film, Foxx was never going to be content to focus on only one medium.

Foxx’s work as a book designer for major imprints is lesser-known, but it has been staring out from shelves since the mid-90s. His use of Shreddies cereal on the cover art for “Endlessly” emerges as a previously obscure detail. His notebook sketches are shown for the first time. We might never see Foxx singing in concert again; but, with this book, his position as a total artist is reinforced.

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The Best Music Books of 2023

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

There were many excellent records released in 2023, but it was also a good year for books about music. From the graphic wizardry of Brian Griffin’s MODE to the scrapbook of Yello, there was something for every bookshelf. We have collected our favourites below.

Brian Griffin, MODE

More than anyone else, perhaps, Brian Griffin created the image of Depeche Mode over their first five albums. At a time when they were capable of issuing an album a year, developing their style with each release, Griffin’s images were the best-known and most-distinctive features of their branding. From a plastic-wrapped lawn ornament to a monumental banner-draped building, Depeche Mode were defined by his eye and the lens of his camera.

Griffin’s best-known shot for Depeche Mode is the stunning picture of a peasant in a field, made for A Broken Frame. It became a sensation and one of the best-recognised photographs of the 1980s.

MODE collects these images, as well as other shots from the sessions and for promotional materials in a limited edition, finely-crafted book. A living archive, it is structured around an interview made for Radio Virus in Sweden. Gareth Jones, who produced three of the five albums with Daniel Miller, provides an introduction.

MODE is an essential read for any fan of the band or music photography.

Robert Görl and Hanna Rollmann, The Voice That Dwells Within

Robert Goerl and Hanna RollmannIn 1989, Robert Görl was nearly killed in a car crash. The founder of Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft survived but was left in hospital with a shattered body. It could have been the end of Görl’s career in music; but, instead, it marked a kind of rebirth.

Together with Dr Hanna Rollmann, Görl has written a book that traces his path from the clinic to spiritual healing in a compelling and dream-like style. Visions appear of the founding of DAF, the band moving to an Earl’s Court basement flat, adventures in New York, and romance in Thailand. Along the way, companions leave notes with their names, hoping for calls that do not come.

DAF changed the face of music with sequencers and Görl’s drumming. They sang in German and avoided the rock-and-roll conventions of Anglo-American music. With a punk spirit, they created a sound that influenced generations of musicians with proto-techno, EBM and Hi-NRG styles. With this book, Görl fills in the missing details of the band’s history and offers insights into a uniquely productive creative partnership.

Wesley Doyle, Conform to Deform

The truth is that Stevo Pearce, the founder of Some Bizarre and legendary Soft Cell manager, has more personality than his body can handle. It bursts out in moments of wildness that surprise and scare record company executives. With a love of the surreal and MDMA, Stevo (no one uses his last name other than his bank manager) took a duo from Leeds to global stardom while creating a label that gave obscure industrial acts access to major label resources.

The suits thought Stevo had a good ear for the underground, and they let him release important records by Cabaret Voltaire, Neubauten, Psychic TV, and Coil. Along the way, there were enormous quantities of drugs, episodes of violence, amazing works of art, outrageous lies, and epic attempts to humiliate the record companies that made it all possible.

Doyle has created a brilliant oral history from interviews with the artists who made music for Some Bizarre. Conform to Deform brings to life the controversies and accomplishments of one of the strangest and most influential labels – and its singular boss. 

Cosey Fanni Tutti, Re-Sisters

The intersection of three lives – Cosey Fanni Tutti, Delia Derbyshire, and Margery Kempe – is explored with references to music, feminism, and marginalisation. Tutti, once denounced in Parliament as a “wrecker of civilisation,” is making a film version of her book, Art, Sex, Music, while contributing to another about Derbyshire’s complex life. At the same time, she is reading the story of the 15th century local mystic, Kempe. Similarities emerge about places, situations, and struggles.

Tutti was a founder of COUM and Throbbing Gristle. She told that story in her first book, including the abuse that she experienced at the hands of Genesis P-Orridge. In Re-Sisters, we find Tutti being blocked from using the music she contributed to by P-Orridge’s estate. It is just one example of how others refuse to accept her voice. Whether from Members of Parliament or family members, there is determined resistance against Tutti being herself. Through her story, we learn how Derbyshire and Kempe experienced similar challenges. Overcoming them is the only choice.

Yuma Hampejs and Marcel Schulze, Elektronische Körpermusik

The history of electronic body music really began with DAF. Gabi Delgado sang, while Robert Görl played drums. They used sequencers to play the bass lines and pulses that completed their sound, and the feeling was harder than their disco precedents. The approach was functional but also stylistic. In Elektronische Körpermusik, Hampejs and Schulze explore these origins but also celebrate the movement that grew from it.

The book is an ambitious attempt to cover a lot of ground, so Belgian club nights and Swedish radio shows rub shoulders with generations of bands, from Nitzer Ebb to Zweite Jugend. Like Bengt Rahm’s bible of the Swedish electronic music scene, Den svenska synthen, the book offers both breadth and depth in its coverage of an essential musical movement.

Simon Helm, Walking in Their Shoes

Written by our Editor, Walking in Their Shoes traces the path of Depeche Mode as they played and recorded in London. It locates the venues and studios where the band developed their sound and built their audience. It also includes key locations in Mute Records’ history, such as the Decoy Avenue house where the label was founded. Pictures and public transport details help orient fans visiting the sites. It is the best way to experience London in the footsteps of the band.

 

Audrey Golden, I Thought I Heard You Speak: Women at Factory Records

Audrey GoldenIf you believe the conventional history, Factory was a group of men making things. There was Tony Wilson, the hero of every story. Rob Gretton, the drug-hoovering manager. Peter Saville, the graphic designer with no sense of time. Barney and Hooky from New Order sulking or scheming like schoolboys. Mike Pickering in the booth at the Haçienda. Everywhere and always, if there was a face to the label and its spin-offs, it belonged to a man.

Audrey Golden sets out to correct the picture with an oral history collected from the women of Factory. From Lindsay Reade (Wilson’s former partner and Factory employee) to Nikki Kefalis (Factory PR and founder of Out Promotion), Golden has tracked down the personalities who did the work, offered the ideas, and found the resources that others have claimed credit for.

There are some gaps – the absence of Martha Ladly jumps out – but this book restores the voices of the participants and fills in the blanks left by XY-biased narratives.

Boris Blank and Dieter Meier, Oh Yeah

The use of a Yello track in the teen comedy, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, gave the obscure Swiss act a hit. By that point the duo of Dieter Meier and Boris Blank, Yello had grown up on the same label as The Residents and were a stable in the record collections of underground DJs. The inclusion of “Oh Yeah,” with Meier’s processed intonation suggesting male lust, opened the money tap and took the band into the mainstream.

Oh Yeah, the book, is drawn from Blank’s archives. It features cuttings from newspapers, press releases, unseen photographs, and notes by Blank and Meier. Yello were from a privileged background, which gave them access to equipment like the Fairlight and opportunities that their contemporaries could only dream of. But it was their love of sounds taken from different cultures, the voices of singers like Shirley Bassey and Billy Mackenzie, and a feeling for rhythms that set them apart.

Placed next to Yello, Kraftwerk seem too serious and Depeche Mode appear naïve. Yello dress like aristocrats and play cards like James Bond. At the same time, they maintain a surrealistic edge. Like the 3D picture disc of “I Love You” that came out in 1983, they have a groove and a sense of humour that are captured perfectly in the book.

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