Throbbing Gristle ~ A Taste Of TG, Mutant
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...’