THROBBING GRISTLE

THROBBING GRISTLE formed as early as September 1975 but didn't release its official debut album "The Second Annual Report" until 1977 but the members spent plenty of time messing around with their experimental industrial sound art with one such session finding its way onto a cassette only release in 1976 titled MUSIC FROM THE DEATH FACTORY which featured the three founders along with German free improv experimentalist Albrect/d (Dietrich Albrecht). The one hour cassette featured lengthy side-long excursions into abstract surreal ventures into sound collages that featured a nascent THROBBING GRISTLE eking the most bizarre random noise effects from their equipment.

While Albrecht seemed to provide nothing more than twiddling knobs on an electronic thingamajigs, GPO offered some freakishly processed methods to torture a violin with the other members delivering a new bleaker British equivalent of the most outlandish kosmiche German Krautrock and progressive electronic courtesy of the German helper at hand no doubt. The so-called music is like a sonic representation of the stream of a fractured consciousness with oscillating warbling sounds in cahoots with creepy atmospheres and industrial noise effects. Free form and as abstract as it can possibly be, the nebulous flow of the Dada sound collage evokes the bleakest conditions in the darkest of nights thus the cheerful title!

This is for sure one of the most bizarre sound rides you could hope for and the beginning of what would become an entire industrial industry. It really doesn't get as outsider and underground than this. Hardly an essential listening experience even for those who crave these weird electronic experiments. THROBBING GRISTLE would find more focus on its debut album but for those who love to delve into the dark underbelly of where exactly all that bizarre freakishness emerged, MUSIC FROM THE DEATH FACTORY is the logical place to start beyond the act's main canon. In many ways this release sounds like a warm up of how to get the most out of the technology and all the possibilities that entailed. A fascinating and frightening sonic journey if you can possibly stomach it!

That said, I think the exercise reveals Throbbing Gristle as a band of emperors without clothes; it feels less than the sum of its parts, like their particular noise-sickness industrial schtick had already run its course. The impending breakup and reconfiguration into various subsequent projects could not have come at a better time.

We have the difficult problem of context in this recording. 1978's 'Hamburger Lady' - the burn victim song set the foundation in stone of all TG recordings henceforth. Therefore how do you satisfy the hardcore fans? A very troublesome quandary indeed.

The super opener 'Vow of Silence' is one way to start, where demented digitally treated vocals are splattered over 'Coil' mastermind Peter Christopherson's industrial electronics. What's created is a swirling devilish sound of impending catastrophe.

I'm feeling sea-sick already and we're only 7 minutes in. Such a pity then that 'Rabbit Snare' has such feeble vocals over the top of an otherwise great, creepy track. If only he'd used those famous Dalek effects on his voice this could have been fantastic. As it is, I cringe at the awful stringy and flimsy vocal power that P- Orridge delivers here.

The whole album has a very 'Coil' feel throughout. 'Chris and Cosey' - the other two members who've had a long musical career by themselves sound almost redundant throughout this recording. More than likely they were involved in the evaporated guitar tune 'Separated'. This sounds original TG more than most of these tracks.

'Almost a Kiss' is an incredibly weak track which should have been expunged from the outset. Dreadfully poor vocals are delivered through lips you can almost visualise as being the size of bananas as P-Orridge delivers some of the worst conventional, without treatment vocals I've ever heard. It's bloody torture in fact. A zero out of ten. How annoying then that it goes on for almost 7 minutes. This is the biggest 'spanner' in the works as mentioned in my intro as far as this album goes. Dreadful fare...

'Greasy Spoon' sounds very similar to 'It's in My Blood' from Coil's "Ape of Naples ' LP. No bad thing - as I love that track with it's deeply malevolent electronic throbbing vibe.

Genesis P-Orridge finally comes good with 'Lyre Lyre' (Liar, Liar geddit?) due to the immense distortion on his vocals. It sounds like the victims point of view whilst being stretched on the rack by the Spanish Inquisition as he threatens all sorts of eternal damnation. It's torture noise from hell.

There's one last great tune in the title track. Sounding just like a dirty, heavy "Coil' tune. It's therefore more 'Psychic TV' than Throbbing Gristle. This album is a real Rubik's cube of all 3 artists who went on to record after 1981. The overall feel is one of a 'Coil' album but with some 'Psychic TV' vocals which at times are excellent and at others, truly awful.

Now, it could very well be their influences still managing to talk for themselves: roll call reveals White Noise's deconstruction of their own happy psychedelic electro on the second side of "An Electric Storm", K Kluster's minimalist mechanical musics that were as much a precursor to industrial as to their own later work as C Cluster, and Can's "Aumgn" and "Peking O", where they let themselves experiment with soundscapes outright engineered for introducing listeners to the sounds of madness, plus some conceptual and performance tips from Zappa, Beefheart, and Morrison. What TG made is best compared to the two cited Can tracks, which were the least prog but the most radical pieces they ever made. And from there, further musical influence came from John Cage and the concrete composers, and further conceptual influence from the likes of William S. Burroughs, first compiling the library of transgression behind industrial.

Ultimately, though, I conclude the connection is pretty strong, and what TG made, especially here, is something like an errant Hull sourced answer by the Dusseldorf School to Tangerine Dream and the rest of the one in Berlin. Think of this as a pitch dark "Zeit". That is the unique thing about early industrial: it was a unique stepping off point from not just electronica but also psychedelia and, I would now say, the fringes of prog.

More importantly, of course, is the music. The sounds. This album is nothing short of a grand, all encompassing portrait of a dark world not completely of P-Orridge's, Fanni-Tutti's, Christopherson's, and Carter's own designs. This record is the founder of not just industrial, but also of the grand tradition within industrial of debuts being spectacular mission statements - "Mix-Up", "Birthdeath Experience", "Kollaps", "Laibach", "Pretty Hate Machine". Through judicious choices and playing, the band achieved music that sounds like an inexorable march through the mirror of our world they set up. Gristleised guitars sound like mechanical thunder on "Slug Bait - Southampton", and then go martial on "Maggot Death - Rat Club". Sickly synths move the experience forward even in the album's slowest and otherwise quietest moments. P-Orridge was happy to recite lyrics about war crimes and how much the audience sucked, and they had samples to top even that. And "After Cease To Exist" achieves a heck of a balance: ever gripping, yet often too quiet, in that haunting sense.

And special mention goes to the samples, what helps achieve the soundscapes in the greatest, scariest, and most unique way. Random sounds, out of place dance tunes, horrified and horrible people, with placement and even juxtaposition to die for. John hit upon a great concrete soundscape like this with "Revolution 9" - perhaps another influence - and Steven Stapleton would do plenty of great work like this as Nurse With Wound, but TG's concrete side really sticks out. It's what I stay for and what I envy.

Altogether, I can conclude by saying a few concise things about this beast. Still one of the greatest of all industrial albums. A unique and excellent experimental record. A terrifying, dour, off, and yet addictive soundscape. A mission statement. A monument to what transgressive art can be. A prog album that isn't prog. Industrial people - if you haven't, listen to this. Adventurous progheads - perhaps you won't like this, but if you're feeling really open minded, you might find something or other in here.

It's dark, it's creepy, it's unsettling. All played in that unorthodox manner that only TG could. Four untrained musicians that simply knew the type of sound and atmosphere they wanted to create and got out there and did it.

CD1 is full of discordant guitar, cornets, home made synths, rhythm tapes and the odd violin. A really odd mixture at face value, but one that bears fruit. That is - fruit that's decayed and crawling with maggots. this would have made a really good horror soundtrack to David Lynch's 'Eraserhead'

There's next to no vocals present on this album which leads me to believe that it was really just a studio jam with no real direction. Just an experiment to see what the outcome would be with four very different heads playing live simultaneously.

The liner photos show disturbing images of Vietnamese prisoners, Japanese sexual bondage and a Nazi Death Camp. I should have expected nothing less. If that was done now it would appear cheap, derivative and done for shock value only. Back then it must have been downright odd and macabre.

This isn't as good as their studio recordings which sound more fleshed out, but it gives a good indication of how they sounded live and is far more precise in having been recorded on 'Teac' 8 track in a studio environment.

The lengthy outro is lifted from '20 jazz Funk Greats - Convincing People'. A classic non sexy slab of sleaze. A constant one note keyboard stab is engulfed by malfunctioning guitars and a doom laden bass line. Chris Carter's keyboards are twisted, dysfunctional and unpleasant.

All of which just goes to prove that they really were one of a kind.

Recorded in 5 days, one day per body section, it's laid down without any pre-planned idea and laid directly onto tape without fuss. That damn hospital dialysis machine 'bleep' far outstays its welcome during the 15 minute opener 'Medicine'. There's enormous amounts of distorted effects on vocals throughout, creating that 'Throbbing gristle' sound you'd come to expect. unfortunately, there's very little coherence to proceedings. 15 minutes in and things finally kick off with coronet deconstruction and a cool drum machine which is the TG trademark.

It's a pity that it all sounds so end of the road. You can hear it all too clearly. The inventiveness and bile has been squeezed out of them. You can tell they just want to part ways. 'Journey Through a Body' is limp in a way I would never have thought possible from these four musicians who, despite being poles apart, sound disinterested in the outcome of this recording.

There are however some terrifying moments towards the end with female screams and bloated bass distortion. But it's really just a last 'Hurrah'. Even Chris Carter's piano outro sounds like a goodbye and farewell to all things 'Throbbing Gristle'..

Maybe they'd heard the new kids on the block 'Nurse With Wound' and gave up?

As a fan of the industrial sounds of the latest Gary Numan sounds I had to try this dark and disturbing artist Throbbing Gristle and this album looked as good as any. Well, it was dark and disturbing but not totally unlistenable unlike other disturbia I have heard and avoided. TG begin this joyous romp into excess with printer data sounds of I.B.M and then move into a deep recurrent synth throb and manic caterwauling on Hit by a Rock. United is a 17 second ultra sped up version of a fairly decent 4 minute song. I prefer the long version but it is interesting that the band decided to speed it up out of recognition, though it would have been fun to slow it down back in the days of vinyl by hand spinning the disc.

Next is the Valley of the Shadow of Death which is an incessant synth drone and some odd taped conversations that are unintelligible but have some expletives and sounds in the background may be military effects. Not sure about what that is saying. Next is the Dead on Arrival that is really industrial sounding like machines in some kind of hospital. I like the synth patterns and overall atmosphere but there is not enough variation and someone tell P-Orridge to stop tooting like a maniac. Weeping is the next one and it is a morbid study in suicidal thoughts with lyrics that defy explanation "My arm is torn open like a wound, My universe is coming from my mouth, I spent a year or two, listening to you, Discrediting myself for you, You didn't see me on the floor weeping, You didn't see me lying by the door, You didn't see me swallowing my tablets, You can't look inside my eyes no more." The sounds on this are very weird and even remind me of Oriental plucking guitar reverberations and some off key violin screeches.

Hamburger Lady is a classic from Throbbing Gristle that I knew about even before I knew they existed as it is controversial for its portrayal of a lady mutilated and burnt and the term was how the police referred to the poor burns victim. The lyrics are morose reverberated by Genesis P-Orridge and the slices of guitar by Cosey Fanni Tutt are wonderfully dark. This is as dark as it gets for this band apart from Slug Bait which I care not to hear again. Hometime is an unusual atmospheric piece with some nice little girl talking but we hope she is safe, though the album cover has an unsettling look to it, especially the insert photo of the little girl lifting her dress. Of course the band are out to shock and we can add our own interpretations and as much as I try I cannot hear anything particularly odd about the girl's rantings, though that may be the point.

AB/7A is an excellent synth piece that motorvates along like vintage Kraftwerk and is certainly one of the more electronic passages of music on the album. E-Coli returns to grim moody themes with a pulsing synth, off key sustained toots and some eerie effects. Throughout this slow moving music is a lecture by some physician speaking of the effects of deadly bacteria. The mood is really brought down low after the previous bright synth driven track. It is remarkable how each track is completely different. Next is Death Threats which is a phone message of some bloke who wants to end the "industrial world" of the band, and some weird woman who wants to set some bad hoodlums onto P-Orridge for some reason; quite nasty really considering it is a real phone call from some deranged woman. Up next is Walls of Sound that is really a noise distorted with screeches and static, quite a kick in the guts after all the other tracks and again stands out as completely diverse from other tracks. Moving on to Blood on the Floor, which is droning vocals and a synth sound and mercifully is ended after a minute.

2 bonus tracks appear and they are both unsettling and perhaps did not make it to the 1978 album because they are so over the top. We hate You (Little girls) is a throwback to the album cover image. Can you imagine that girl sitting there and hearing this screaming maniac yelling their lung raw about how much they hate her.

At the end of the album I feel as though I have heard something that must not be ignored as it is so ground breaking and yet it was not really an enjoyable experience and purposefully so. This type of music exists and if you dig hard you can find some really disturbing stuff out there such as Nurses with Wounds, Frankie Suicide and this. Perhaps that is what the music industry needs to set it in its place. This off kilter music must balance out all the commercial music. It can't all be radio friendly commercial and it can't all be industrial noise; there must always be balance. Somehow Throbbing Gristle draw me in the way that The Residents draw me into their dark universe. I prefer The Residents for their humourous approach and the problem I have personally with Throbbing Gristle is not that they do not deserve recognition as artists breaking the barriers, but the problem for me is that the music is so tuneless, forgettable, weirdly morbid and deeply depressing. If that is the type of music you desire than this is the perfect band for you.