Throbbing Gristle
Tue 19 May 2009
Old School Sound Techs
Last month Throbbing Gristle released a brand new album exclusively to those who attended their 2009 USA tour. All the original members were present and reports suggest that the band sounded as fresh as they did thirty years ago. Luckily for fans, a few copies of the new album are still available for purchase from the band’s online store.
Personally I knew very little about Throbbing Gristle before hearing a couple of songs from the new album The Third Mind Movement, but I felt compelled to learn more about the band. I now know that the band broke up in 1981, a few years before I was born. It wasn’t until 2004 that the band came together again to record a new album; 2007’s Part Two: The Endless Not.
So the history goes like this. Throbbing Gristle formed in London in the mid-1970s when a performance art group founded by Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti changed their name from COUM Transmissions to Throbbing Gristle. Diving into the 70’s alt music underground, Throbbing Gristle set themselves on a path to explore the different properties of experimental noise. Their most famous achievement is pioneering the use of pre-recorded tape-based samples to create loud distorted noise. They were possibly one of the most wildly inaccessible bands of their generation, even more so than many Kraut-rock bands that later pioneered the use of electronic music, bringing electronic music into the mainstream. Throbbing Gristle never tried to make popular music in any form, instead they encouraged the audience to take from the music their own emotions and form their own opinions about the bands unique sound.
Throughout their time together as a band, between 1975 to 1981, Throbbing Gristle released four albums, scattered a number of singles and released three audio cassettes. All were released on the band’s own label, Industrial Records. After their split in 1981, a number of Throbbing Gristle albums emerged via other record labels, this included a live album of Throbbing Gristle’s last live performance in San Francisco in May 1981; a score to a super-8 film released in 1980 and the band’s final studio album titled Journey Through A Body.
In the years between Throbbing Gristle (1981-2004), all the band members worked on other projects. Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti started their own project simply titled Chris and Cosey. They also started the Conspiracy International record label. Genesis P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson founded the visual art group Psychic TV and later Christopherson was a member of Coil.
In 2009 Throbbing Gristle is back, bringing with them the sound of the past and so much more. They have some very exciting shows planned, including their first ever show in Scotland. The show is set to run in two parts; the first is an accompaniment to a short film by Cerith Wynn Evans; the second set includes music from the band’s back catalogue. They will perform the film score again in Copenhagen. Not much information is known yet about the future of the band beyond these shows, but fingers crossed we will get to hear more from one of the worlds most eclectic exponents of experimental noise.
Throbbing Gristle- Not That I Am: Mp3
Posted by Nick Fulton under UK
May 25th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
was pretension or ignorance the reason you failed to mention their (quite critically acclaimed, in fact) kora remix album? it was only released like, 2 months ago.
May 25th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
The reason I didn’t mention it is because Throbbing Gristle had nothing to do with the Kora remix album. It was Cabaret Voltaire who made it.
May 26th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
lolol
my bad. so right. blame sleep deprivation.
July 29th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Judging from the tone of the initial post, its probably more aposite to blame pretension or ignorance. Most likely both.