It is HIGHLY recommended tp listen to the music on this YouTube playlist before or while reading this blog.

If you read my previous spotlight blog series you know that I’m exploring the so-called electronic Tribal Music genre & that I’m trying to introduce to you some alternatives to the painfully dominant Tribal-House genre & show you a wider range of Tribal Music alternatives. There are quite a few of them & this blog IS the right place to explore that.

In my 3rd spotlight series I’ll focus on a very interesting alternative Tribal Sub-Genre I would refer to as Industrial-Tribal or Industribal to make things short & funky….General characteristics of this genre would be a heavy use of drums & percussion with different elements of noise ( distorted percussion\vocals\instruments & sound effects ), ethnic instruments & dark ambient soundscapes. I’ll ignore the dark symbolism & imagery which is very characteristic of this genre & I’ll try to focus on the musical content & its Tribal influences.

We begin our sonic journey with 2 tracks from  This Morn’ Omina who are great representatives of this genre & have released quite a few albums since 1996.This Belgium based group formed by Mika Goedrijk introduces a very powerful combination of tribal rhythms & ritualistic drum loops with minimal techno elements & dark industrial vocals & texts. The opening track NIGUNNUM ( does it have anything to do with the Hebrew word Nigunim ? ) is a great example of TMO‘s music. Dark, intense & powerful techno-tribal ritual. The acoustic tribal drums along with the electronic distorted sounds & the beautiful noise textures create a powerful digital tribal ritual. The 2nd track nemai with its hypnotic percussion tribal loop takes us to another journey through noise & rhythm. The video clip is both minimal & musical & serves as a great accompaniment to the music.

We continue our sonic journey with Geomatic from Holland. Alternate Universe takes us to a middle eastern tribal trip. Enjoy the melody, the drums & the beautiful dark atmospheric soundscapes.

Tzolk’in. The basic cycle of the Mayan calendar. A great collaboration between Flint Glass & Empusae both produce their own unique kind of dark ambient. Mayan ancestors are awakening in this great piece to perform their ritual of The Sixth Sun. Modern Mayan electronic ritual.

Maduro’s piece Shimmer Sustain is taking a different path. We remain in the dark & noisy tribal-universe but the downtempo vibe & tabla-like sound give this piece a far eastern quality. Along with the noise loops & melodies & the middle eastern Darbuka loops we’re traveling between alien tribal worlds in the Maduro sonic space.

Na-Hag is Andriy Symonovych from Ukraine. Na-Hag means ‘Driver’ in Hebrew. It seems that many of the Industrial-Tribal artists are attracted to the Jewish-Hebrew mysticism known as Kabbalah which means to receive in Hebrew. The Fall I Need A Sole track by Na-Hag creates an interesting atmospheric & menacing dark tribal ambient with great middle eastern rhythms & loops. All of this elements together create a unique industribal amalgam. The old black & white movies imagery adds a unique quality to this alienated ritual.

La Nicotina by Tribal AD is another great atmospheric tribal track & maybe the most melodic in this playlist. Enjoy this melodic industribal trip.

Muslimgauze was the musical project of the British producer Bryan Jones. With a great obsession to the Muslim world & Palestinian struggle in particular many of his works have heavy middle eastern instrumentation elements. In this meditative piece Deceiver he makes an interesting minimal use of middle eastern drum loops , many noise & vocal ambient loops that sound like they were taken from middle east region & then they are heavily distorted.I would describe this as a mix of middle eastern music-concrete with heavy electronic ambient & noise soundscapes.

I finish this sonic trip with TMO‘s full album The Drake Equation released on Ant-Zen label in 2004. An intense tribal-noise mix to finish our industrial-tribal journey. I hope you enjoyed the trip :-). A more comprehensive industribal playlist can be found here :

Please feel free to leave your feedback, comments, questions & insights.