Send "Throbbing Gristle " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Yea yea twist again better than we did last summer, laughing in the face of all rock and roll historians collectors revivalists purists inquisition members puritans bores creeps and not forgetting the fussy midgets with obscene hairdos." So wrote Claude Bessy in the liner notes to Throbbing Gristle's Greatest Hits, one of the five classic Throbbing Gristle albums Industrial Records have just reissued, and which now sit upon my desk, uncanny and accusatory, over 30 years after that pre-emptive fit of snark. Throbbing Gristle were never meant to be reliable, but here they come again, ready to be harvested by the very culture industry they alternately solicited and spat upon so long ago.Permit me to adjust my obscene hairdo and offer those of you not already in the know some history: In their first incarnation as the Death Factory, they were the house band for Coum Transmissions, an abject performance-art troupe whose presentation of used tampons, anal syringes, and pornography featuring band member Cosey Fanny Tutti in the ICA gallery for their "Prostitution" show in 1976 earned them tabloid infamy and denunciations in Parliament as "wreckers of civilization." So far, so punk. But the music of the Death Factory, soon re-named Throbbing Gristle after a Yorkshire slang term for an erection, was a horse of a different color: "industrial music for industrial people," a dystopian, negative form of what the band itself called "post-psychedelic trash." While the rest of the Class of '77 pogoed steadily, Throbbing Gristle blew hot and cold, a passive-aggressive tug of war between the sharp and the slimy: The formal elegance of Chris Carter's synthesizers are scrawled upon by Genesis P-Orridge's bass riffs and Cosey Fanni Tutti's fuzz guitar freakouts, spiced with violin and dubby honks of cornet. This already pungent stew is spiked with taped material selected by Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson-- excerpts of everyday intimacy and true crime verité-- and the arsenic tang of Genesis' vocals, either sung in a soft sort of sprechstimme or howled into effects. On their debut, The Second Annual Report, the music alternately chugged along like a squelchy, crude cop of the Velvet Underground, or stretched out into malingering new age, like a syphilitic Tangerine Dream. But they got both more virulent and more ambitious with time, upping the hostility and dread on D.O.A, taking a kitsch detour toward mutant disco on 20 Jazz Funk Greats, auto-cannibalizing their catalog in the live-in-the-studio ritual recording of Heathen Earth, and reasserting a strangely forceful collection of avant garde anti-pop for a Greatest Hits package revealingly subtitled Entertainment Through Pain, which collates their singles output as a quiver of tense stabs at accessibility....full text |
| Seattlepi |
| After the metal machine clang of Second Annual Report, and the dissolute extremities of D.O.A., Throbbing Gristle presented the world with their third and final album 20 Jazz Funk Greats. It is a nearly perfect perversion of everything they had come to stand for. From the smiling faces on the cover, to the deceptively "accessible" songs inside, the record proved that the only constant for T.G. was change. At the time, even the few people who considered themselves fans hated it. Of course now, 20 Jazz Funk Greats is hailed as a masterpiece. 'Twas ever thus. The signs that something is different in T.G.-land are there immediately. Just look at the cover. First of all, who the hell are those four nattily-dressed people smiling back at the camera? And what are they doing looking so happy at a post-card perfect spot on the cliffs? And what is that they arrived in, a Range Rover? Wealthy little buggers too! A little investigation reveals some interesting details however. The site they chose for the cover is called Beachy Head, a favored spot in England for suicides. In fact, in the alternate cover printed inside of the CD reissue, we find the four (still smiling) members of T.G. standing around a dead body that sunny afternoon. But they wisely chose to go with an image of simple, effortless affluence - which must have pissed off their camo-clad followers to no end. The conceptual idea of going from extremely avant-garde music, to radio-friendly pop in one fell swoop is a great one. But it wasn't something T.G. could ever fully embrace I guess. They just couldn't help themselves, and 20 Jazz Funk Greats wound up with the most varied music of their short, fascinating career. The K-Tel Records-inspired title track opens things up, and it is as unexpectedly alien to the usual T.G. sound as one could imagine. Actually, a precedent was set back in 1977 with their non-LP single "United," but they had released nothing as commercial as that song since. "20 Jazz Funk Greats" is not a tune that one would expect to hear on the radio, except maybe in an alternate universe of mutant disco-oids. The primitive drum machine and effects coupled with the repeated moans of "Tonight," and "Yes," add up to a Throbbing Gristle night at Studio 54--and it is as weird as one could ever hope it to be....full text |
| Sputnikmusic |
| Throbbing Gristle was formed in London, UK in 1976 out of the ashes of international performance art group COUM Transmissions. Founding members Cosey Fanni Tutti, Chris Carter, Peter Christopherson and Genesis P-Orridge, as well as artist Monte Cazazza (a collaborator and friend of the band), coined the phrase “Industrial Music For Industrial People” to describe the dehumanization and mechanization of music making they in part wanted to evoke. Aside from inventing a completely new musical genre (industrial music) Throbbing Gristle also founded their own record label, Industrial Records, which became home to artists such as Cabaret Voltaire, Clock DVA, SPK, William S. Burroughs and Monte Cazazza. Throbbing Gristle were dubbed “wreckers of civilisation” by Tory MP Nicholas Fairbairn because of their 1976 exhibition “Prostitution” at the I.C.A. in London. After terminating their first mission in 1981, TG split and the members went their seperate ways. Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti went on to form chris and cosey and started their label CTI (Conspiracy International) and recently Carter Tutti. Genesis P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson (Sleazy) went on to found Psychic TV; later Sleazy and fellow PTV member Jhonn Balance left PTV to form Coil. Genesis P-Orridge still remains active with PTV3 and Thee Majesty....full text |
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