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For nearly three decades, Michael Contreras has been a pioneering force in the Industrial Noise scene, captivating audiences with his innovative use of multi-media art under monikers like Trucido, Death Squad, and MK9. Yet, one of his most subversive and daring projects, The Pain Factory, was almost lost to time. Produced between 1995 and 1997 while Contreras worked at San Francisco’s Public Access TV station, Channel 53, The Pain Factory pushed the boundaries of experimental music and film, delivering raw, controversial imagery and sounds to unsuspecting viewers. In a pre-internet world, this series offered a rare glimpse into the peak of the 1990s Noise scene, capturing the essence and avant-garde of the era’s most daring artists.
Now, after years of restoration, this groundbreaking work is being released as a 4-DVD set for the second time in 2024 (the first run of DVDs was in 2018). The Pain Factory DVD offers nearly 13 hours of performances, videos, and archival material that has been meticulously preserved for a new generation of viewers.
The release features a who’s who of 90s experimental musicians, featuring noise, industrial and experimental performances as well as interviews with the featured artists. Featured artists include Macronympha, Killer Bug, GX Jupitter-Larsen, Xome, MSBR, The Haters, Crawl Unit, Death Squad and many many more.
The man behind the wheel was Michael Contreras who in 1995, while working at San Francisco’s Channel 53, the city’s Public Access TV station, began producing a monthly show called The Pain Factory, aimed at showcasing Industrial, Noise, and Experimental music and film. At a time when the internet wasn’t yet a widespread platform for such content, public access television provided a rare and valuable outlet for controversial art. Contreras took full advantage of this opportunity, pushing boundaries with content that was confrontational and shocking to the point that the show attracted lawsuits and coverage in local media due to its extreme imagery.
The Pain Factory holds particular importance as a snapshot of the mid-1990s Noise scene, a time when the genre was at its most prolific, both in terms of volume and creativity, yet was vastly underdocumented. The series serves as a vital record of the era’s leading figures and the broad scope of the scene’s visual and musical output before strict rules and sub-genres began to emerge in the 2000s. Moreover, The Pain Factory wasn’t just a low-budget production—it was a full-fledged television show, with many performances recorded live in Channel 53’s studio, making it a high-quality capture of the period.
For those outside the Bay Area in the mid-1990s, The Pain Factory was virtually inaccessible. Only one set of original U-matic and S-VHS tapes exists, carefully preserved by Contreras over the years. The series was never widely distributed or made available online. After nearly two years of restoration work, Contreras has finally digitized the entire series, rescuing it from fading into obscurity. Now, this groundbreaking material is being officially released in collaboration with Spastik Kommunikations and Influencing Machine Records.
Check out the DVDs at the link below:
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