Shock Value and Cultural Appropriation in Experimental Music

I got a demo a couple of weeks ago.  I’ll start with the music; it was, at its heart, hip-hop, so to speak, it was hip-hop beats made with a lot of distorted industrial sounds. It definitely gave the sonic palette of 80s/90s noisy industrial, which is something I kind of grew up on in my teens. With that alone, I probably would’ve taken at least a track for a compilation, maybe even released an EP if the person was cool. I’m keeping them anonymous because I don’t have ill-will toward them; I’m only using this situation as an example.   

But this is what they wrote in the “A little bit about me”:

I’m a Portland native who started out with making noise and ambient projects, then shifted more into instrumental hip-hop but I still wanted to keep it unique to myself. I don’t do “type beats”. All my music is sample based and I love flipping stuff that’s not common in Hip-Hop such as SPK, Throbbing Gristle, Death in June, Les Rallizes Denudes, and really anything I can get my hands on. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Now, I like a lot of what’s in here.  I like the idea of exploring genres from different perspectives—sonically, philosophically, musically. And I generally like the influences they listed. But Death in June … for the uninitiated, check out this article from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Back in, I think 2016 or 17, when I first started playing a lot of shows in Portland, there were some people in the Industrial scene defending Death in June and Boyd Rice’ questionable behavior as aesthetic choices and shock value. Given that Soleilmoon Recordings is a PDX label I’m pretty sure some folks in the scene knew those guys.

I’ve been adjacent to Industrial, Noise, and Experimental music scenes since at least 1995, when I first got into all of this as a little teenager. Let me put a finer point on it: a little Black teenager in North Florida, which is basically southern Georgia. I, as a 15-year-old, proudly stated myself an industrial kid, with all the regalia and musical knowledge only to be told, by my fellow Industrial/Goth-adjacent kids, that I “cannot be Goth” because I am Black, or cracking other ‘jokes’ like that. It is annoying, to say the least, to have one’s identity questioned over the color of their skin, especially given that so much of the inspiration, aesthetic, and music of the dark sub-genres like goth and industrial comes directly from Black people. Hell, at the end of their life, Genesis P-Orridge, was connecting to African Voudon.

Which brings me back to this demo submission. In 2025, dropping Death in June as an influence/sample source is ridiculous to me. Everyone in the know in the Industrial/Noise music community knows or should know who these people are, what they’ve done over their careers, and how they’ve doubled down on their backwards beliefs. I get that it was for “shock value,” supposedly, allegedly. And I’ll freely admit that, at 15, edgy (or heterodox) things like that were exciting to me, even as a Black kid facing racism within the scene, the subversion thing felt cute and kitschy.  But as soon as I pulled my head out of the theoretical and existential ideas around this, I was faced with the reality of people who would rather see me working in a subservient role (or in a mugshot) rather than being in ‘their club’, dancing to ‘their music,’ and reveling in ‘their culture.’

So, when an artist approaches me, asking to release their music on my label, I’m going to take offence if they lead their introduction by name dropping Death in June. Why even say that? It’s 2025. Everyone knows what that signals, so I was going to let it go and move on. I get plenty of submissions and I only reply when I like the work and it fits the vibe of Heterodox Records. But I forgot we had a link to our Discord server on the website. This person joined the Discord and jumped right into chatting about how they submitted for the comp and their excitement to become part of our artistic community.

As soon as I saw them pop up, I let out a sigh because I realized I’d have to deal with this person. So I lead with a ‘hello welcome yada yada yada let’s talk about Death in June,’ and I dropped the Southern Poverty Law Center article. What followed was a long back-and-forth between the artist, other artists on the server, and myself, where the artist double downed on their use of Death in June, culminating in me writing this:

I mean, at this point, I’m just wondering what the point is to lead with that. Hate to drop the old person card, but I’ve been a fan and student of experimental electronic music for about 30 years. I know DIJ’s catalog fairly well and I’m very familiar with industrial, Neo folk, the history of sampling, and the sociopolitical impact – influence relationship in experimental music. DIJ offers nothing interesting or noteworthy to the milieu of experimental music. The industrial stuff was done way better and earlier by Chris and Cosey, to name an act that started at the same time as DIJ. Their story as individuals and their impact on experimental music is much more appealing and influential to our culture, and worth sharing. DIJ have relayed on the shock value of their political beliefs to maintain relevance and this discussion is the only somewhat unique aspect of the culture of experimental music they’ve contributed to.

In 2025 the only people who will welcome this are racists, edge lord accelerationists, and people who don’t really care about how the music and art that we make feeds back into culture. People sample funk/soul/jazz/world music because these artists display true musical genius, the only reason I can personally see to sample, and advertise that you’ve sampled DIJ is to borrow some of their edgelord shock value. If you have another take on this, I’d love to hear it. I’ve listened to your music and I do like it, you have a sound that does bring a unique voice, to PDX at least. Gritty industrial sound pallet with modern hip hop beats and vibe, love it. But leading with that, advertising that you’re sampling fascists kind of puts a damper on that whole thing. I’ve watched many people in the artistic communities that I’ve been a part of turn a blind eye or just LOL at this stuff since 1995. Many of those people are now people I can’t talk to because they were embraced by the right and now their ‘jokes’ aren’t jokes.

I’m sure there are many who would disagree with me about all of this stuff. Maybe they were just joking. Maybe it was just for shock value. Maybe I should just learn to take a joke. Maybe I should just be less sensitive about these topics …

But the truth is that while Gen-X and elder-millennial goths were having a good time joking about people like me being Black in the Industrial/Goth scenes and being low-key racist, they were also ignoring rising white supremacist culture, platforming racists, and letting all sorts of racist, misogynist, homophobic micro-aggressions run unchecked in their communities.

Over the past 30 years, we’ve all witnessed the rise of fascism and white supremacy in the alt-right in this country and across the world. We’ve also watched nearly every culturally relevant music genre being stolen and appropriated from Black people and other minorities in the underclasses. These things are intrinsically connected.

The somewhat common desire to consume and appropriate Black culture while turning a blind eye to white supremacy, fascism, and racism is American culture. The least I can do is gatekeep the artistic community I am forging and participating in from people who think this shit is just funny for shock-value LOLs and promote music that acknowledges these facts and looks to actually build something different in the future.

 I’m not trying to sit on a high horse or be pretentious. I run a small independent label that maybe 20 or 30 people actually pay attention to, but whoever those 20 or 30 people are, I want them to know that Heterodox Records is, always was, and always will be anti-fascist, anti-patriarchy, anti-homophobia, anti-white supremacy, and anti-asshole 4chan kids who think our culture and our lives are a joke.