Throbbing Gristle
Before techno was a gleam in Juan Atkins’ eye,
before Fad Gadget cut himself onstage, before Nine Inch
Nails and Swans, Throbbing Gristle were formed in 1975
as the musical arm of COUM Transmissions. The group
comprised Cosi Fanni Tutti, Genesis P. Orridge, Chris
Carter and Peter Christopherson. The aim of both units
was to publicly confront and explore a wide range of
social taboos including cruelty, murder, the Holocaust,
paedophilia and sado-masochism. The fact that they ran
their own record company (Industrial Records) meant
that their work could be produced without interference,
at least prior to its release. The group were inevitably
the subject of tabloid hysteria and were even branded
‘wreckers of civilisation’ (surely to their
great pleasure) by a Tory MP. If you want to do your
homework on Throbbing Gristle – and it’s
recommended - the best resource is Jon Whitney’s
website at: http://www.brainwashed.com/tg/
as well as the official website at: http://throbbing-gristle.com/.
If you’re wondering what the tower is at the top
of the latter’s webpage, it’s a deathcamp
chimney.
Throbbing Gristle is a particularly memorable moniker,
redolent simultaneously of ardent desire and its inverse,
insensate horror. Apart from a particular configuration
of the stars, it’s not clear why 2004 sees the
one-off reunion of the group (perhaps fittingly at a
holiday camp), together with the release of the two
discs under consideration here. However, now is as good
a time as any to learn about or revisit a group who
are recognised to have been tremendously influential
- it’s difficult to imagine groups such as Laibach,
Cabaret Voltaire and Add N To (X) existing without them
– and also not entirely assimilated into the mainstream
unlike most of their peers.
The Taste Of Throbbing Gristle
With the fetish/rinse programme set seemingly innately
for a 25 year cycle the sound of this selection of morsels
cut free from their host cadavers may find extra f(l)avour
with new audiences. Throbbing Gristle’s soundworld
revolves predominantly around clashing analogue synthesizers
which threaten to detune or fracture from moment to
moment. Sounds are harsh, piercing, clangourous. There’s
an industrial/clinical edge which is surely rooted in
the blare and worry of hazard warnings: klaxons, geiger
counters and the like. The effect is chilly and sinister,
like the feel of a dentist’s theatre whose central
heating has broken down. The acknowledged influence
of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin is recognisable
in the group’s deployment of sound, both synthetic
and vocal, as terror instrument.
Tracks alternate between smoggy live recordings specked
with the jeering of Orridge’s audience baiting
and songs that sound like electrical nursery rhymes
subjected to unwanted corruption. Lyrics are delivered
with varying degrees of insouciance or mania by different
group members – for the latter in particular try
We Hate You (Little Girls). Orridge’s
rendition of the following lines is particularly naughty
schoolboy like:
'Something came over me
Was it white and sticky?
I don’t know what it was
My daddy didn’t like it,
but I do it anyway
Well I rather liked it'
Each time Fanni Tutti whispers ‘hot on the heels
of love’ lovingly in your ear an electronic whip
lashes out. Those heels are surely very high, shiny
and sharp and their owner is dying to press them into
your chest or other more tender parts of your anatomy.
Alienating though some of the group’s subject
matter may be, the collection finishes on an almost
unbearably poignant note when Orridge introduces His
Arm Was Her Leg:
' This is a little song... I was born in Manchester...
in Victoria Park near Moss-side. The first thing I remember
is playing in a pothole in the rain and getting me white
socks dirty and getting belted when I went home... so
this is a little extra song for Manchester... it’s
for the good missionaries who are here tonight. Hello
Manchester...'
What follows is a fuzzed and phased rhythm guitar workout
over which Orridge sings through distorting filters.
There’s a genuine anger here and elsewhere at
the cruelty inflicted by society upon both the innocent
and the depraved and what becomes of those corrupted
souls in the aftermath of such mistreatment. That anger
is surely deeper and darker than that of the Sex Pistols
with whom they share a snarling anger and is a worthy
contemporary of the dark creations in PIL’s Metal
Box.
His Arm Was Her Leg’s naked confession
combined with the group’s black humour (witness
the title and cover art of their 20 Jazz Funk Greats)
serves as necessary balance to Throbbing Gristle’s
examination of parts of humanity’s makeup which
most would prefer to ignore or censor. These investigations
into the dark side of the soul frequently betray moments
of bleak beauty. Ultimately it’s up to each listener
to make up their own mind about TG. Some will decide
that their work is exploitative and depraved while others
will spy a rare degree of courage in their facing down
and exploration of such difficult subject matter.
Necessary like an enema or similar bitter medicine,
A Taste Of... serves as a useful initiation
for the curious and the adventurous.
Mutant
The prospect of a remix album of Throbbing
Gristle’s music initially appears incongruous
verging on redundant. Yet Kraftwerk’s
The Mix served to update an important back-catalogue
and ultimately spurred that group on to new and useful
work. Whether or not Mutant will have the same
effect remains to be seen. One of the group’s
primary slogans was ‘industrial music for industrial
people’. Do these remixes serve to reposition
TG’s music into a more contemporary ‘Post-industrial
music for post-industrial people’? Facelifts upon
the aging are almost always obvious and often look grotesque.
These remixes try, and pretty much succeed, in having
their cake and eating it. They take the facelifts –
which are sympathetically done by retaining the predominantly
mid-paced tempos of the originals – while indulging
in affairs with musics half their age. The implication
of this type of remix is that the actual sound of popular
music does age and that timelessness is a rare, perhaps
non-existent, commodity. Throbbing Gristle, ever the
pragmatists, are surely aware of this and keen to exploit
opportunity to the full.
Of the eight remixes, two hail from Throbbing Gristle,
two are delivered by Carl Craig, and one each by Motor,
Two Lone Swordsmen, Hedonastik and Simon Ratcliffe (half
of Basement Jaxx). These remixes succeed in making TG’s
music shinier (think the glint of steel rather than
the gloss of plastic) and more contemporary sounding.
How delectable it would be for one of these tracks (my
vote goes to Simon Ratcliffe’s lovely version
of Hot On The Heels Of Love) to float into
the charts and then to be played on Top Of The Pops,
danceable and just a little anonymous but with a dark
aura shining from its edges. Throbbing Gristle’s
music gains immeasurably from understanding that aura.
The fact that there has been no attempt to shoehorn
the group’s legacy into a series of soundbites
on the packaging of the cd is ultimately commendable:
trying to do so would have served to diminish the group’s
significance and concomitant impact. The only text on
the digipak sleeve apart from the track and remix details
is the following placed in the centre of the flap on
a plain grey background: “Some copy about why
we are important from lots of famous people.”
Nice.
If you’re new to Throbbing Gristle, Mutant
is recommended as a starting point, beyond which the
next stepping stone into their dark maw would be A
Taste Of...
Colin Buttimer
|
