THROBBING GRISTLE
TGCD1 /The Third Mind Movements
(Mute Records)
Sometimes the idea of a band is as important, no, MORE important, than the music they produce. Crass were one of those bands, with the anarchist ideals, visual aesthetic, and slogans they created far outlasting the music they produced, which hasn’t aged well. Throbbing Gristle were another. Live performances were patchy, sometimes poor, their prolific recorded output varied wildly too, but the idea of Throbbing Gristle, and of Industrial music, before it morphed into watered down electronic Heavy Metal, was totally compelling. Frightening and magnetic in equal measure, it generated imagery and iconography that evoked visions of an underground revolutionary thought army, breaking taboos, organising and agitating against the crushing normality of society at the end of the 1970s, in parallel with punk, but separate and very much more counter culture and subversive. There were no aspirations here to sign to CBS or EMI and appear on Top of The Pops or the cover of Smash Hits, as the majority of the first wave punk bands dreamt of. The label Throbbing Gristle coined was ‘industrial’, and in turn there was an Industrial Records label formed to put out the discordant anti-propaganda they prolifically produced. That, in turn, stimulated a whole scene that rapidly became international, but remained resolutely DIY. It was, in many ways, a closed club. You had to know people to find out what was going on. Performances were in warehouses, factories, railway arches, as well as schools, art colleges, and more conventional music venues. Music circulated on cassette, leaflets and manifestos were produced. It had a look. Militaristic, very male, brutal and mechanistic.
The lasting cultural impact that Throbbing Gristle and Industrial Records had has been well documented over the years in book and film, but a recent encounter I had whilst waiting outside a coffee shop in the centre of Norwich illustrates perfectly just how far their influence has spread. I had paused to make a call, and saw a gangly, long haired boy in his 20s approach. He was dressed conventionally for Norwich – semi Grunge/student garb – and looked both keen and clean. Politely he asked me where I had got the Throbbing Gristle T Shirt I was wearing from? The T Shirt had no band name or lettering of any sort on it, just a version of the TG lighting flash design, but he still recognised it from a distance, and wanted one of his own (it’s on Etsy, if you want one too). Throbbing Gristle formed in 1976 and yet, 48 years later, they are instantly recognisable to a 20 year old just from a T shirt design based on their logo. When that happens, you really know you have made it as a cultural icon!
That said, TGCD1, originally released on CD (hence the name!) in 1986 on Mute Record’s side label, The Grey Area, comprising 42 minutes of studio recordings recorded at TG’s Martello Street studio on a TEAC 8-Track recorder on 18 March 1979, is probably one of my favourites of theirs. Mute are re-releasing a whole bunch of Throbbing Gristle material, in fact I think the re-releases will never stop coming, as by the time they get to the end they will just start again with a fresh series. Composed as an exclusive piece of unreleased material for Throbbing Gristle’s first-ever CD release, TGCD1 grinds and weaves its way through two parts, guttural and mantra like, and with a distinctly live feel. Barely discernable cut ups, hums, synth whistles and burbles, clanking reverb drenched percussion, and violin saw guitars all merge as one. It is classic TG and sums up the appeal and threatening allure of early UK Industrial perfectly. It just sounds so different. Legions of copyists since haven’t diluted that one bit either. As TG instigator Genesis P Orridge writes in the sleeve notes “We describe rather than feel, we touch rather than explore, we lust rather than adore”
Fast forward to the band’s final US tour in 2009 after reforming - they would split for the final time the following year. ‘The Third Mind Movements ‘album, recorded during the ‘Desertshore’ sessions at the ICA, London several years earlier, comprised a series of six live recordings from the ICA shows, and was originally sold as an exclusive CD release for the 2009 tour. Reformations often result in a paler, older, tribute band version of the original, that can sour the memory and ruin the reputation of many a ground breaking band. Is that the case here? You may have guessed my answer. Rest assured, the passage of time hasn’t dulled the TG blade one bit. In fact, these two releases run fairly seamlessly together, with ‘The Third Mind Movements’ rhythmically the more complex and complete of the two. What TG lacked in drama in their live performances (their rhythmically and visually more dramatic contemporaries, SPK, Test Department, Cabaret Voltaire, Einsturzende Neubaten, and Whitehouse having rapidly eclipsed them for live excitement), they make up for as masters of ambience, for yes, TG always were an ambient band, working with heartbeat pulses, scrapes, horn blasts,thumps, and sound textures as the darker, more atonal, twin of Eno. The recordings, ideas, and images are what matters when it comes to TG. The mystique and confusion about them is endlessly fascinating and is constantly being re-interpreted and re-absorbed as an influence. Forget modern ‘Industrial’ bands - amateur Heavy Metal all. This is what Industrial was really all about and why if it hadn’t happened by itself, you’d have needed to step in and make it.
Essential Information
Main image by Paul Hartfield
Throbbing Gristle’s reissues series relaunches with ‘TGCD1’ and ‘The Third Mind Movements’ on CD and vinyl on 23 August 2024 on Mute Records
