After nearly 30 years, there is a new Throbbing Gristle album.
Part Two: The Endless Not was released on April Second of this year. I feel like we've finally discovered the Philosopher's Stone or an alien broadcast from interstellar space. After teasing us for years with literally dozens of archival live releases, festivals that never happened, and one off live shows scattered around the globe, the girls, boys, and transsexuals of TG have shed the veil of mystery surrounding their existence and revived their muse; they're quieter now, perhaps, but as the late Jhonn Balance (bless his soul) observed, such an approach is perhaps required to make a point in these times of "too much shouting". So yes, the "music" has been turned down and jazzed up: but accordingly so, as things have changed. Genesis P-Orridge has developed breasts and has traded in all those jackboots and army uniforms for high heels and miniskirts. Close friends have fallen from banisters onto their heads and died. The United States is closer than it ever was to establishing a one world government. Scarlett Johansson is recording an album of Tom Waits covers. Plenty of fuel to add to the fire smoking the beast from its cave and bringing it once more to your local independent record store.
Part Two is as apt a title as any; addressing the "reunion" aspect of the release in the very name has the added effect of rendering criticism towards their getting back together completely redundant. Of course, there's also the band's reputation, the exciting occult references buried within the album (tracks like Above The Below, or the totems made of bone and 23 carat gold that were shipped with the special edition of the album), and the strength of the actual material to consider . Very similar to the later works of Coil - Sleazy's production work still oozes it's way through the speakers and into your inner ear - Genesis P has clearly taken much from his/her/it's frequent collaborations with William Breeze in Thee Majesty and their mid-90s PTV work, Orridge's vocal range and presence now suggesting both broken hearts and an aged illumination, as opposed to the teenage confrontationalisim of the transgendered band leader's work with TG in the 1970s, or the "Look Ma, it's Magick!" obviousness and overemotional theatrics of earlier Psychic TV. On "Rabbit Snare", Genesis slowly leers out at the audience in a simultaneously aggressive and pleading tone, "Are you scared? Why are you scared?", whilst Christopherson's electronics sweep around the ears like bats out of hell and the husband and wife duo of Chris and Cosey hold down the beat with some jazzy electric piano and a wheezing cornet. On "Almost a Kiss", the lead vocals have an almost Louis Armstrong rasp to them; Genesis P-Orridge has not released a more emotional piece of music since PTV's Stolen Kisses.
What strikes one most about the album is how well the band gels together after 27 years apart. As they've all been active solo artists, their individual sounds have grown both with the artists and with the technology developed in the last two decades; while there is an abundance of live instrumentation on the album, it's all been tweaked and stretched and sautéed by laptops until beyond recognition in most cases. On the first track, Vow of Silence, this is particularly true, a mass of loops and growls and terrible screeching that goes on for seven minutes, a kind of banishing preparing the listener for what's to come. When reality does leak through however, it is just as bleak and cold as the mountaintop gracing the cover of the album - the vocals in particular haunt one in a way not quantifiable except perhaps in terms of existential loss. Whatever it is TG has lost, however (lovers, friends, gender identity) the open-minded music enthusiast has equally gained in the release of this monumental achievement of sonic architecture.
If I were to compare Throbbing Gristle's new music to something, it would perhaps be this recently discovered decaying core of a comet, orbiting our solar system regularly every four years. Totally absent of anything resembling a tail or coma, this gloriously dead rock is silently hurtling through space at thousands of miles per hour, spectacular for its singularity. Not a showy creature, 070925_P/2007 R5 is the essentials of a comet boiled down to a hunk of black ice and dust only a few hundred feet in diameter; it is what it is, a signal of the coming universal entropy and the inevitability of time's fatal fingers wrapping around your neck. I think it's pretty, after a fashion.
Part Two: The Endless Not was released on April Second of this year. I feel like we've finally discovered the Philosopher's Stone or an alien broadcast from interstellar space. After teasing us for years with literally dozens of archival live releases, festivals that never happened, and one off live shows scattered around the globe, the girls, boys, and transsexuals of TG have shed the veil of mystery surrounding their existence and revived their muse; they're quieter now, perhaps, but as the late Jhonn Balance (bless his soul) observed, such an approach is perhaps required to make a point in these times of "too much shouting". So yes, the "music" has been turned down and jazzed up: but accordingly so, as things have changed. Genesis P-Orridge has developed breasts and has traded in all those jackboots and army uniforms for high heels and miniskirts. Close friends have fallen from banisters onto their heads and died. The United States is closer than it ever was to establishing a one world government. Scarlett Johansson is recording an album of Tom Waits covers. Plenty of fuel to add to the fire smoking the beast from its cave and bringing it once more to your local independent record store.
Part Two is as apt a title as any; addressing the "reunion" aspect of the release in the very name has the added effect of rendering criticism towards their getting back together completely redundant. Of course, there's also the band's reputation, the exciting occult references buried within the album (tracks like Above The Below, or the totems made of bone and 23 carat gold that were shipped with the special edition of the album), and the strength of the actual material to consider . Very similar to the later works of Coil - Sleazy's production work still oozes it's way through the speakers and into your inner ear - Genesis P has clearly taken much from his/her/it's frequent collaborations with William Breeze in Thee Majesty and their mid-90s PTV work, Orridge's vocal range and presence now suggesting both broken hearts and an aged illumination, as opposed to the teenage confrontationalisim of the transgendered band leader's work with TG in the 1970s, or the "Look Ma, it's Magick!" obviousness and overemotional theatrics of earlier Psychic TV. On "Rabbit Snare", Genesis slowly leers out at the audience in a simultaneously aggressive and pleading tone, "Are you scared? Why are you scared?", whilst Christopherson's electronics sweep around the ears like bats out of hell and the husband and wife duo of Chris and Cosey hold down the beat with some jazzy electric piano and a wheezing cornet. On "Almost a Kiss", the lead vocals have an almost Louis Armstrong rasp to them; Genesis P-Orridge has not released a more emotional piece of music since PTV's Stolen Kisses.
What strikes one most about the album is how well the band gels together after 27 years apart. As they've all been active solo artists, their individual sounds have grown both with the artists and with the technology developed in the last two decades; while there is an abundance of live instrumentation on the album, it's all been tweaked and stretched and sautéed by laptops until beyond recognition in most cases. On the first track, Vow of Silence, this is particularly true, a mass of loops and growls and terrible screeching that goes on for seven minutes, a kind of banishing preparing the listener for what's to come. When reality does leak through however, it is just as bleak and cold as the mountaintop gracing the cover of the album - the vocals in particular haunt one in a way not quantifiable except perhaps in terms of existential loss. Whatever it is TG has lost, however (lovers, friends, gender identity) the open-minded music enthusiast has equally gained in the release of this monumental achievement of sonic architecture.If I were to compare Throbbing Gristle's new music to something, it would perhaps be this recently discovered decaying core of a comet, orbiting our solar system regularly every four years. Totally absent of anything resembling a tail or coma, this gloriously dead rock is silently hurtling through space at thousands of miles per hour, spectacular for its singularity. Not a showy creature, 070925_P/2007 R5 is the essentials of a comet boiled down to a hunk of black ice and dust only a few hundred feet in diameter; it is what it is, a signal of the coming universal entropy and the inevitability of time's fatal fingers wrapping around your neck. I think it's pretty, after a fashion.
in other news:
HOLY FUCKING SHIT
NEW DEVO SONG
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Now playing: WormOuroboros03b
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