DESERTSHORE / THE FINAL REPORT

Over the course of Throbbing Gristle's second time together, mastermind Genesis P-Orridge found himself wishing to focus on non-musical projects like in the old COUM Transmissions days, leaving the rest of the band ample room to do as they wish even before P-Orrdige officially jumped ship to leave the band as X-TG. This album, comparable in construction to "The White Album", "Tanz der Lemminge", and "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below", is a posthumous monument to the crazy musical antics the group got up to. Disc One was the late great Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson's idea of a cover of and tribute to Nico's famed art album "Desertshore" that she made with John Cale, being crafted from an open studio session that lasted over three days, from there paired down and crossed with later rerecordings. Disc Two is "The Final Report", a collection of various excellent tracks the band recorded at other times. The album is as dark, eerie, strange, and perfect as any TG release, though now the band at times also takes a step back to do ambient tracks, themselves great. Most tracks are industrial goodness, with "Stasis", "What He Said", "Emerge To Space Jazz", "The Falconer", and "Afraid" being particular highlights. The last of these is a sterling cover of part of "Desertshore", with one of the many guests for the Desertshore Sessions, Sasha Grey, providing killer vocals, and the band's trademark Gristleizer making a triumphant return. "Abscheid"'s cover is one of the ambient/post-industrial leaning tracks, with Cosey Fanni-Tutti playing a killer guitar. Beautifully packaged by Sleazy to resemble the cassette cases of punk and industrial's heyday, this is a required listen for industrial people, and adventurous fans of prog electronic and the works of White Noise, Can, and Kluster should check this out.