Nocturnal Emissions. Retrospective compilation CD. Mannequin MNQ102

The Nigel Ayers-led industrial pioneers have much in common with their better-known peers Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, and seemed to arrive at similar innovations in recorded sound and performance almost simultaneously and independently. Unlike both, Nocturnal Emissionshave survived as an ongoing and resolutely underground concern through the decades. This 22-track comp of their early work takes us through primitive electronics, rudimentary sampling, mangled tapes, textual invective, and lashings of Cold War unease and associated griminess.