"We wanted to re-invest Rock music with content, motivation and risk. Our records were documents of attitudes and experiences and observations by us and other determinedly individual outsiders. Fashion was an enemy, style irrelevant."
Thus spoke THROBBING GRISTLE, describing the achievements of their 'pop career' after the fact. And they weren't wrong, because - during the period 1975 - 1981, TG (Genesis P.Orridge, Chris Carter, Peter Christopherson and Cosey Fanni Tutti) recorded some of the most weirdly subversive music ever commited to tape.
Resolutely underground and uncompromising in their advocation of total musical and personal freedom, TG set up their own imprint (Industrial Records), sent out regular pop profile communiques, released special limited edition, hand-assembled LPS, live cassettes and worked in an entirely independent way.
Commercially, they never really troubled the mainstream charts, but still built up a large following and left a bizarre, primarily electro-influenced legacy that continues to thrive to this day. The recent "Mutant TG" collection found their work largely successfully re-invented by the respected modern-day likes of Two Lone Swordsmen, Carl Craig and Basement Jaxx's Simon Ratcliffe.
So "The Taste Of TG" - housed in a suitably tasteful, cannibalistic sleeve by Peter Christopherson - is a timely compilation and if you were either too young or too scared to try thrashing around in TG'S strange, sometimes poisonous waters, then this is as good and straightforward an introduction as you're liable to get.
I should mention now, though, that while TG existed during both Punk and the immediate post-punk years, their music bears scant relation to the three-chord rebellion you might imagine. The opening "Industrial Introduction" is a spooked drone a la Cabaret Voltaire, who are probably about the closest contemporary influence you can detect here, and you can hear them filtering through again on the proto-synth pop and hypnotic disco textures of "Hot On The Heels Of Love."
|
On tracks like this, the dark, lithe and funky "Distant Dreams Pt.2" and the eerily memorable, Aleister Crowley-quoting single "United", TG sounded relatively poppy and approachable, while on "Something Came Over Me", they conjured up kooked, thinly-veiled innuendo-loaded funk delivered in Gen's mischievous, Manc-accented voice.
On these occasions, Throbbing Gristle met us halfway, bringing us their very own brand of danceable electro subversion, but elsewhere here you'll find serious challenges placed in your path. All three of the live tracks are murky, impenetrable and give you a frightening insight to the guerrilla raids TG described as 'gigs', although none of them are quite as frightening as the shrieking cacophony and musical malcontentment that is "We Hate You (Little Girls)", the creepy claustrophobia of the ultra-sick "Zyklon B Zombie" (a comment on the gas the Nazis used in concentration camps) and the warped-out electronica of "Hamburger Lady", where Gen intones from a letter about the plight of a woman with horrific fat burns in a treated, wraith-like voice. These 'tunes' (term very loosely employed) are indeed the aural equivalent of wheat being sorted from chaff and are way too much for your reviewer to contemplate.
Still, "The Taste Of TG" is on the whole an entirely worthwhile compilation, and with judicious use of the programming button there's still plenty here to both highlight the continuing importance of Throbbing Gristle's legacy and for you to gorge yourself silly on.
|
