MUSIC FROM THE DEATH FACTORY

THROBBING GRISTLE is one of the pioneers of the strange underground world of experimental industrial and electronic music that it developed from its association with the COUM Transmissions music the performance art collective that was influenced by Dada and surrealist artistic expressions. After ending the project completely, the trio of Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti and Peter Christopherson went on to form THROBBING GRISTLE where they would lay down some of the most influential freeform expressions that took the 1960s experiments of AMM into the darker industrial and electronic ambient world of the 1970s.

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!