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Rating: Essential History of Electronic Music
IX. Throbbing Gristle and the First Industrial Era
The point is that in the experience of Throbbing Gristle noise became the word.
Aiming to irremediably affect the contemporary cultural scene and beyond, the intuition of the London collective was sparked by the new "industrial" conception of modern music, an impromptu sfraghís of an ensemble that first in the world thought to transfer to recorded tape the devouring conflict between the industrial monster and man. Resurrected from the lascivious ashes of Coum Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle developed a new radical aesthetic capable of incorporating art, music, and acting: the "total" theater of Genesis P. Orridge, leader of the collective, took shape in an apocalyptic representation where the obscene, mostly perpetrated by Orridge himself and the lustful partner Cosey Fanni Tutti, embodied the roughest forms of fetishistic pornography. Power of the grotesque: not since the times of Aeschylus' Eumenides had the epiphany of the tragic, a cloaca of urine, blood, and enemas, so vividly emerged, where the dramatic experience of the audience could, akin to the disorientation of the impatient attendees of Greek theater, find a cathartic requiem.
The generic dissonance did not spare sound, initiated by the electronic experiments of Chris Carter: in its "concrete" matrix, the music of Throbbing Gristle was a brutally atonal experience. In the first documented discography that gained recognition in September 1977, with the sole exception of the martial robotic of the concluding "United," the sound of "Second Annual Report" appeared as a jagged and muddy sonic magma where one could only discern the orgiastic charge of the total experience that tracks like "Maggot Death" and "Slug Bait" brought with them in theatrical performances. The equipment, rarely acoustic (Fanni Tutti sketched atonal guitar sequences and Porridge echoed them with the bass, while Cristopherson amused himself with horns), was enriched by synthesizers crafted by Carter's creative genius, including the inevitable magnetic tape, the indiscreet collector of the concrete experiences of the four Londoners. It was the first brick of the "Death Factory," the recording studio of the London quartet that in a short time would realize the war machine in their own hands. Moving away from the barren and inhospitable land of "Second Annual Report," Throbbing took more care in the record aspect by conceiving a sound exquisitely prepared for the tape: the result was "D.O.A. - Third And Final Annual Report," a second work already miles away from the sound of the previous work; metallic components, bolts, braces, washers of a massive and huffing industrial machine. While "Weeping" danced, swaying in a catatonic mood, "Hometime" lingered in the limbo of consciousness among children's voices and synth's languors before giving way to the surprising dance evolution of "AB/7A," so ethereal as to no longer appear linked to the Throbbing sound. The only granite "Walls Of Sound" referred back to the monolithic beginnings, lending itself to the usual cliché composed of noisy radiations and dissonant synth carpets; the remaining production, while still predominantly atonal and monotonous, nevertheless presented itself in a more conventional guise. Substantially industrial music had found its definitive dimension, emerging from the fleeting spontaneity of theatrical representation. The picture was thus completed by subsequent works "20 Jazz Funk Greats" and "Heathen Earth," still fragmentary manifestations of the anguished lament of man crushed by the machine. The script remained the same: where Fanni and Genesis hinted at playing winds and strings, Carter covered the entire musical knowledge with his synthesizers with the valuable help of Cristopherson's effects. The reification of industrial noise had become evident in music.
In 1981, after two more studio works, Throbbing decided by mutual consent to conclude their journey, an excellent measure of the temporary value of their remarkable artistic career. The industrial apocalypse will hang like a sword of Damocles over the heads of many musical interpreters from the '80s to the present day.
Since it is neither music, nor art, nor rhetoric, but all these things put together, it still permeates the gloomy air of London, often releasing the ashen clouds of the Death Factory.
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