"Industrial Culture" spawned probably the most significant trajectory in the formation of ambient. The oxymoronic label perfectly captures the mixture of feelings for and against increased industrialization in England, reflecting the anxiety many youth felt about the perceived efforts of the government to promote longer work days, change the focus of schools from a liberal education to vocational training, and alienate people from each other. These misgivings were infused with the philosophical treatises of Nietzsche, Baudrillard, Sartre, and others. Contrary to much of the pop press coverage of the industrial "movement," it was not simply about making music with power tools and distorted amplification; rather, it was a highly intellectual, planned, and wide-ranging movement that embodied performance media of many forms, provocative videos, body art and literature. Though warehouses were a popular venue for performances, art schools, concert halls, and commercial television were also used as spaces for industrial art. This section will focus on the lives of several prominent industrial artists, several of whom went on to be founders of the ambient music scene, and show which philosophical tenets of the industrial movement were transferred to the ambient movement, and which were not.

As early as 1969, the group Coum Transmissions were performing their sonic experiments in British art schools. Along with Rhythm and Noise, another art school group, they represented the initial forays into noise exploration. By 1976, Throbbing Gristle had emerged as the band-structured incarnation of Coum Transmissions, and the performances had expanded from the guitar noise and percussion experiments of the early 1970s into a highly provocative performance art group that would routinely cause physical harm to the musicians -- and the audience. It was probably through these performances that the underground scenes of bondage, body scarification, body piercing, and other practices that today are part of the "modern primitive" way of life were exposed to the world. Although the bands didn't invent any of these forms of shock treatment, their extensive research in forensic pathology, the occult traditions of cultures past, tomes of mental illnesses, and the psychology of such disparate figures as Charles Manson and Adolph Hitler, and their treatment of such subjects in performance art gave fuel to the modern primitives and the skinheads.

Such images and performance manners were not completely new to industrial music; in fact, much of the imagery and performance mannerisms resemble events during the futurist art movement (1910-1930) and the beat generation and the danger music scenes of the 1950s. The reason for the resurgence of ideas in the early 1970s is fairly clear: The 1970s industrialists were taking classes with the 1950s beat artists, who in turn had been inspired by futurist manifestos such as those of Luigi Russolo, or the canonized works of Leger and other French surrealists. A common subtext of industrial music is the dehumanization of mankind as people begin to emulate the machines and factories they create, as depicted in 1928 with the vivid images of the popular cult film Ballet Mecanique. It is likely that such films were shown in art school classes. Industrial artist references to cut-up art and non-intentionality can surely be traced back at least that far.

The importance of the art school education on the industrialists has received little attention from the music press, even in such sophisticated monographs as the Industrial Culture Handbook. But if the anecdotes Simon Frith describes in his Art Into Pop about the classes of Gustav Metzger (one class on electric bass disassembly during performance; others on auto-destructive art) are any indication of what these artists were exposed to, it seems to be a natural progression from classroom to performance space. The image of industrial musicians is different from that of pop musicians because of the emphasis on philosophical and intellectual art,and there is evidence of this in the large amount of space the Industrial Culture Handbook devotes to the libraries of artists, and their interpretations of major philisophical tomes. Several of the artists on the Sub Rosa label released a two-CD tribute album to the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, citing his concept of rhizomes (from his book Mille Plateaux ) as the premise of the recording studio concept of the remix.