Throbbing Gristle is the car accident I can’t look away from. Their place in the cannon of industrial and experimental music is firmly entrenched, their bona fides established by those deemed to be knowledgable in such things. Frankly I doubt I have anything to add to the conversation – I’m not going to bring some new, deep insights.
But… I continue to be almost morbidly fascinated by the band and sometimes find myself buying their releases. Recently I was fortunate enough to come across a handful of titles that had just been acquired by a shop and hadn’t yet made it out to the floor, so I snatched them up. And, you know, they sound like Throbbing Gristle. It’s almost hard to think of them creating “songs” as much as “compositions”, and that’s certainly true of the live 10″ S.O. 36 Berlin and its 25 minutes of a 1980 show.1 It’s impossible to discern any words from the vocalizations, which sonically combine with the instrumentation to create an overwhelming sense of pain, not physical so much as spiritual despair. Compelling? Yes. Something I’ll likely listen to again? Probably not, or at least not on any kind of regular basis. Albums like S.O. 36 Berlin are best, IMO, as tools to help the mind break free of what it thinks it knows about music and sound and art, a way to intentionally create an environment of discomfort to lean into. And that does in fact serve an important artistic purpose.
The most important aspect of my relationship with Throbbing Gristle over the years hasn’t been their output, or even Genesis P-Orridge’s later work with Psychic TV, but instead the music of the other members. I became a big fan of Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, and I also enjoy Peter Chistopherson’s work as part of Coil. This extends beyond music and into writing, with Cosey’s Art Sex Music and Re-Sisters both gracing my bookshelves (though I found Genesis’ own Thee Psychick Bible to be interminable…). So if nothing else, I have that to thank them for.
- OK, full disclosure. I was listening to the A side as I was writing this and when I went to flip it over I realized… I was spinning it at the wrong speed, 45rpm instead of 33 1/3. And, you know, since it’s Throbbing Gristle, I didn’t even notice. ↩︎