The long-in-the-works documentary about the rise and fall of Chicago’s Wax Trax! Records retail shop and record label — home to Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Front 242 and more — will premiere with two special test screenings and panel discussions on April 1 in the Windy City.
On the eve of the Record Store Day release of a new Wax Trax! Records box set, the Lethal Amounts Gallery in Los Angeles will celebrate Ministry mastermind Al Jourgensen and his labelmates on the highly influential Chicago imprint via a new photo exhibit called “Without Sympathy: The Visceral Journey of Al Jourgensen.”
A trove of early Wax Trax! Records material from Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Pailhead, 1,000 Homo DJs, PTP and Acid Horse — including previously unreleased tracks and demos — will be compiled on a limited-edition 7CD/1LP box set to be released for Record Store Day next month in both the U.S. and the U.K.
One of Ministry’s earliest tracks — the oft-bootlegged “Same Old Madness,” which was recorded in 1982 and even has a video, but never was released — finally sees the official light of day on an expanded 2CD reissue of Al Jourgensen and Co.’s classic Wax Trax!-era compilation Twelve Inch Singles 1981-1984.
The recently resurrected Wax Trax! Records imprint next month will commemorate the 30th anniversary of Front 242’s first U.S. show by releasing a new 7-inch single featuring a pair of tracks recorded live by the EBM pioneers at concerts in Chicago in both 1984 and 2011.
Not only is Wax Trax! Records being reborn as a label, but the famed Chicago record store will return next month, too — for one day only. Julia Nash is planning a one-day Wax Trax! pop-up shop inside Windy City music venue Metro on June 15 to mark the label’s first release.
The legendary Wax Trax! Records imprint will be reborn this summer under the direction of Julia Nash — daughter of label co-founder Jim Nash — and will mark its resurrection with the release of a 12-inch single from Cocksure, the new project featuring label mainstay Chris Connelly and Acumen Nation’s Jason Novak.
Belgian EBM/New Beat outfit A Split-Second — a member of the hugely influential Wax Trax! Records stable in the late ’80s — will make a rare live appearance in New York City this December in what’s being billed as the group’s first U.S. appearance in about a quarter-century.
As we first reported back in February, legendary industrial label Wax Trax! Records is the subject of an upcoming documentary that promises to chronicle the “rise and fall” of the record store turned label via artist and employee interviews, home video clips and never-before-seen footage from the Wax Trax! vault.
Singer Chris Connelly and bassist/programmer Paul Barker — who played together in Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Pigface and various other Wax Trax! Records industrial-rock supergroups in the late ’80s and early ’90s — are writing and recording new music together as Bells Into Machines.
Fans still waiting for the long-promised DVD of 2011’s Wax Trax! Records Retrospectacle: 33⅓ Year Anniversary concert got good and bad news this week: While the concert film still isn’t finished, a new documentary is in the works that promises to chronicle the “rise and fall of Wax Trax! Records.”
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