Jim Marcus
Encyclopedia
James Marcus (born March 22, 1966) is a musician, artist, political activist, and respected typographer who is best known for his work as the lead singer and founder of the Industrial band Die Warzau
. He is credited as engineer, remixer, vocalist, songwriter, percussionist, drummer, bass player, pianist, keyboardist or artist on albums by Die Warzau
, Sister Machine Gun
, Björk
, Pigface
, Revenge
, Pansy Division
, The Swans, Haloblack, Chris Connelly
, KMFDM
, Skrew
, Machines of Loving Grace
, Stabbing Westward
, Gravity Kills
, Everplastic, Screaming Rachel, Dessau
, Chemlab
, The Final Cut
, Testify, Mindfunk, Little Louis and various other artists across many different genres. His work can be heard on some of the most popular tracks by many of these groups, such as the Pigface's "Asphole", "Aboriginal", "Steamroller", etc., KMFDM's "Light", Sister Machine gun's "Wired", "Lung", "Nothing", etc.
Despite a racy video that was banned on major media outlets and only played in clubs after midnight, the next single, “Welcome to America,” reached the number twelve spot on the Billboard dance charts.Later releases have gotten various degrees of play on various stations and channels. Songs such as Funkopolis, Red all over, Liberated, and All Good Girls mystify straightforward musical consumers even while becoming commonplace on dancefloors. The band is well known for its lack of subscription to any particular musical genre and refusal to accept label-level censorship.
Marcus has worked with all sorts of artists as well, outside of the band, including the Supergroup Pigface
. On the Invisible Records
Website, Martin Atkins
says this:
1991 Big Electric Metal Bass Face (Die Warzau), Atlantic
1994 Engine (Die Warzau), WaxTrax!/TVT
2004 Convenience (Die Warzau), Pulseblack Records
2006 Supergangbang (Die Warzau), Pulseblack Records (unreleased as of 12/31/09)
2007 Wonderland (Solo), Pulseblack Records (unreleased as of 12/31/09)
2008 Vinyl 88 (Die Warzau), Pulseblack Records
2010 Borghild (Die Warzau), Pulseblack Records (Promo Only Release)
, a font foundry he has been involved with since its inception. His designs, including such staple designer fonts as Aquiline, Lassigue D'Mato, and Liefendre are visible most notably in bookstores across many different covers. He is credited with being one of the first "grunge" typographers, developing fonts such as Escalido, Glue, Airflo and Toreador, that encouraged artists to step outside of comfortable design approaches and develop more uniquely troubled and chaotic works. His typefaces are used generously by artists such as Dave McKean
, whose work mixes multiple media and is a good example of this sort of chaotic refinement of artistic energy.
Die Warzau
Die Warzau was an industrial music band formed in 1987 by performance artists Jim Marcus and Van Christie.-History:...
. He is credited as engineer, remixer, vocalist, songwriter, percussionist, drummer, bass player, pianist, keyboardist or artist on albums by Die Warzau
Die Warzau
Die Warzau was an industrial music band formed in 1987 by performance artists Jim Marcus and Van Christie.-History:...
, Sister Machine Gun
Sister Machine Gun
-The early years:Sister Machine Gun was formed by Chris Randall and Guilherme Machado in New York City. They performed at New Jersey's Pipeline, and New York's Limelight. The band went on a short hiatus after Chris Randall joined KMFDM's tour as a stage technician. After the tour, Randall left...
, Björk
Björk
Björk Guðmundsdóttir , known as Björk , is an Icelandic singer-songwriter. Her eclectic musical style has achieved popular acknowledgement and popularity within many musical genres, such as rock, jazz, electronic dance music, classical and folk...
, Pigface
Pigface
Pigface is an industrial rock supergroup formed in 1990 by Martin Atkins and William Rieflin.-History:Pigface was formed from Ministry's The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste tour, which produced the In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up live album and video. For the tour, Al Jourgensen brought...
, Revenge
Revenge
Revenge is a harmful action against a person or group in response to a grievance, be it real or perceived. It is also called payback, retribution, retaliation or vengeance; it may be characterized, justly or unjustly, as a form of justice.-Function in society:Some societies believe that the...
, Pansy Division
Pansy Division
Pansy Division is an American punk rock band that formed in San Francisco, California in 1991. Featuring primarily gay musicians and focusing mostly on gay-related themes, Pansy Division is one of the more melodic-oriented bands to emerge from the "queercore" movement that began in the 1980s.-Early...
, The Swans, Haloblack, Chris Connelly
Chris Connelly
Chris Connelly is a Scottish musician who became famous for his industrial music work of the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly his involvement with the Revolting Cocks and Ministry. He has since established himself as a talented alternative singer-songwriter...
, KMFDM
KMFDM
KMFDM is an industrial band led by German multi-instrumentalist Sascha Konietzko, who founded the group in 1984 as a performance art project...
, Skrew
Skrew
Skrew is an influential industrial metal band. Formed in 1990 and disbanded in 1998, the group announced its return in 2009.-Biography:Skrew was formed in 1990 in Austin, Texas, by Adam Grossman and Danny Lohner...
, Machines of Loving Grace
Machines of Loving Grace
Machines of Loving Grace was an industrial rock band from Tucson, Arizona.Named for a Richard Brautigan poem, they formed in 1989. The original lineup consisted of Scott Benzel , Stuart Kupers , and Mike Fisher , with Brad Kemp added shortly thereafter...
, Stabbing Westward
Stabbing Westward
Stabbing Westward was an American industrial rock and alternative rock band. They formed in 1985 in Chicago, Illinois and began recording in the 1990s. The band announced a dissolution in 2002.- Early years :...
, Gravity Kills
Gravity Kills
Gravity Kills is an American industrial rock band from Jefferson City, Missouri. Their music was described by one critic as "a blending of eerie industrial rock with a pop-infused melodic chorus and a bit of hard-core head banging."...
, Everplastic, Screaming Rachel, Dessau
Dessau
Dessau is a town in Germany on the junction of the rivers Mulde and Elbe, in the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt. Since 1 July 2007, it is part of the merged town Dessau-Roßlau. Population of Dessau proper: 77,973 .-Geography:...
, Chemlab
Chemlab
Chemlab is a coldwave and industrial rock band formed in Washington D.C., USA, in 1989 by Dylan Thomas More, Joe Frank , and Jared Louche . Influenced by the pioneers of the industrial genre, such as Throbbing Gristle, Chemlab mixed experimental sounds with rock and metal, which they dubbed...
, The Final Cut
The Final Cut (band)
The Final Cut is an industrial music group, consisting mainly of Detroit's Tony Srock.-Bio:The Final Cut has been an international underground electronic music enigma since emerging from the late 80's Detroit underground. Final Cut began when Anthony "Asrock" Srock, then a radio and club DJ, began...
, Testify, Mindfunk, Little Louis and various other artists across many different genres. His work can be heard on some of the most popular tracks by many of these groups, such as the Pigface's "Asphole", "Aboriginal", "Steamroller", etc., KMFDM's "Light", Sister Machine gun's "Wired", "Lung", "Nothing", etc.
Die Warzau
In the late eighties, Jim Marcus and his partner Van Christie were working as individual performance artists in Chicago, Illinois. Their early shows as the band kept their performance art roots and were less about music than destruction and visual mayhem, garnering attention from fans,members of the press, and police officers. Fiction Records, distributed in the United States by Polygram and at the time serving as home to bands like The Cure and Eat, added Die Warzau to its roster after a particularly destructive show created a minor PR blitz in the city. In 1988 the band’s first single, “I’ve Got to Make Sense,” reached number twenty-three on Billboard’s dance chart and topped college club charts across the country. Their next single “Land of the Free” climbed to the top spot on the Billboard dance charts and stayed on the import charts for a record thirty-six weeks (since Fiction was an English label, the record was an import release).Despite a racy video that was banned on major media outlets and only played in clubs after midnight, the next single, “Welcome to America,” reached the number twelve spot on the Billboard dance charts.Later releases have gotten various degrees of play on various stations and channels. Songs such as Funkopolis, Red all over, Liberated, and All Good Girls mystify straightforward musical consumers even while becoming commonplace on dancefloors. The band is well known for its lack of subscription to any particular musical genre and refusal to accept label-level censorship.
Marcus has worked with all sorts of artists as well, outside of the band, including the Supergroup Pigface
Pigface
Pigface is an industrial rock supergroup formed in 1990 by Martin Atkins and William Rieflin.-History:Pigface was formed from Ministry's The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste tour, which produced the In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up live album and video. For the tour, Al Jourgensen brought...
. On the Invisible Records
Invisible Records
Invisible Records is a Chicago based record label founded by Martin Atkins to support and distribute the works of artists who preferred to work with a smaller, artist driven label.-Artist Roster:* Ashtrayhead* Attrition* Bagman* Bizarre Sex Trio...
Website, Martin Atkins
Martin Atkins
Martin Clive Atkins is an English drummer and session musician, best known for his work in post-punk and industrial groups including Public Image Ltd., Ministry, Pigface, and Killing Joke...
says this:
"Notes from thee Underground - A wide array of participants, as Pigface began to pick up steam. Louis Svitek of Ministry, Jim Marcus of Die Warzau, Ogre, Genesis, Flea for fuck's sake!
"I think one of the landmark tracks on Notes... has to be Asphole. The Pigface experience on every level, in multicolored 3D scratch-and-sniff (and then wish you hadn't). Originally called Taiko, it was just a mad, mad, afternoon out at Halsted St.'s Chicago Trax. We hired 6 Taiko drummers to ceremonially perform in the big live room, along with a backing track we created. Jim Marcus (of Die Warzau) was instrumental and catalystic in the tracks inception. I remember sitting back in one of the chairs (that always seemed to be broken) watching all these guys hammering away on the huge drums, and thinking how lucky I was to be enjoying this moment."
Politics
He leans politically far to the left and has been an outspoken proponent of gay rights and civil disobedience (Die Warzau's first t-shirt released for the album "convenience" had the slogan "Gay Soldiers Died, Too" on the front). He is well known for not playing shows sponsored by alcohol or tobacco companies and openly advocating that young men not register for the war, which Marcus considers illegal. He has spoken out openly against the death penalty and organized religion and, in the early Nineties collected 1200 signatures urging the Pope of the Catholic Church to disband the church due to offenses against human dignity. He is a proponent of sex education as a means to promote consensuality and safety. In March 2011 he was in the news for performing a live sex demonstration in front of a college level human sexuality class at Northwestern University in order to showcase the reality of Female vaginal g-spot orgasm. Using a mechanical device he stimulated a female participant, giving her a g-spot orgasm. While no member of the class complained, some individuals outside the class alerted the media and made it an issue.Discography (incomplete)
1989 Disco Rigido (Die Warzau), Polygram/Fiction1991 Big Electric Metal Bass Face (Die Warzau), Atlantic
1994 Engine (Die Warzau), WaxTrax!/TVT
2004 Convenience (Die Warzau), Pulseblack Records
2006 Supergangbang (Die Warzau), Pulseblack Records (unreleased as of 12/31/09)
2007 Wonderland (Solo), Pulseblack Records (unreleased as of 12/31/09)
2008 Vinyl 88 (Die Warzau), Pulseblack Records
2010 Borghild (Die Warzau), Pulseblack Records (Promo Only Release)
Typography
He has designed over 100 commercially available typefaces for various foundries, but has a concentration of work available through T-26T-26
The T-26 tank was a Soviet light infantry tank used during many conflicts of the 1930s as well as during World War II. It was a development of the British Vickers 6-Ton tank and is widely considered one of the most successful tank designs of the 1930s....
, a font foundry he has been involved with since its inception. His designs, including such staple designer fonts as Aquiline, Lassigue D'Mato, and Liefendre are visible most notably in bookstores across many different covers. He is credited with being one of the first "grunge" typographers, developing fonts such as Escalido, Glue, Airflo and Toreador, that encouraged artists to step outside of comfortable design approaches and develop more uniquely troubled and chaotic works. His typefaces are used generously by artists such as Dave McKean
Dave McKean
David McKean is an English illustrator, photographer, comic book artist, graphic designer, filmmaker and musician....
, whose work mixes multiple media and is a good example of this sort of chaotic refinement of artistic energy.