Available on: Conspiracy International reissues
We’re not quite at the Merzbow in DJ Mag stage yet – probably thankfully – but if you’re looking for evidence of the continued acceptability of the avant-garde and it’s increased influence on popular culture, you need only look at Throbbing Gristle. Their music undeniably ground-breaking, diverse and transgressive as it is, they’ve somehow been latched onto as a name to drop when referencing the ultra-cool obscure past you had whilst secretly you were listening to Erasure. It’s difficult to cover any new ground in approaching them too – cue references to COUM Transmissions, tampons, phone box sex ads, Nicholas Fairbairn MP frothing to an ejaculatory frenzy, ad nauseum.
Which is not to denigrate how important TG were on British underground/left-of-centre music making, of course; but there are other, more fertile furrows to plough in the search for truly pioneering experimental British music. Not least of which comes in the work that followed TG from it’s constituent parts, some of which, to my ears, eclipses the original body of work in scale and scope.
Two of the group’s four members managed to gain the most attention; Genesis P-Orridge using his own persona as the focus for the various, diverse satellites that orbited him on the one hand, and the late Peter Christopherson creating truly epic, vastly strange and magickal music as one of the lynchpins of Coil. It’s easy to see why these two caught the attention – Gen’s flamboyant, scabrous image coupled with the whiff of cult involvement and, eventually, exile through tabloid shock-horror on the one hand, and on the other the undeniable outre weirdness of Coil’s music which came hand in hand (sometimes very heavily) with ritual and mystery. However throughout the eighties the other two, Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, quietly worked away at producing some of the better odd pop music of the decade. Neither extrovert nor completely new, their albums were nevertheless a darker counterpart to the better known popular songs of the time – and yet they maintained a melodic, accessible edge that in a parallel universe would have propelled them to the top of the charts (it’s interesting for example to compare them with Eurythmics, whom they resemble in several ways, and even recorded with – how much better would the film adaptation of 1984 have been with a Chris and Cosey soundtrack?)
Reissues of their four best known and most influential albums have come at an apposite time, when a dark british esoteric current is running through so much music from the leftfield to the mainstream – a thread that can start at Mordant Music, Hype Williams and Forest Swords and go all the way up to alleged masonic and illuminati symbolism in Lady Gaga’s videos, depending on how much acid you’ve consumed. Heartbeat (1981) and Trance (1982) appeared remastered on coloured vinyl last year, and this year it’s the turn of the more developed Exotica (1987) and Songs Of Love and Lust (1984). Coupled with the well-timed reissue of Carter’s solo The Spaces Between on Optimo Music last year, the time is ripe to re-investigate.
For my ears, Exotica has fared least well in the ensuing years, which is not to say that it’s without merit – you can hear massive swathes of influence throughout it on everything from Factory pop to UK electro and breakbeat. This is immediately apparent on instrumental opener ‘Confession’, which pits naive keyboard lines redolent of Yazoo up against tough DMX beats, backed with triggered voice samples – reminiscent of Depth Charge or Meat Beat Manifesto. The insistent sample triggers continue in ‘Arcade’, with Cosey’s deadpan vocals acting as loops themselves before echoing off in spirals. The title track starts off with a Martin Denny sounding Easy Listening prelude, before setting itself squarely into a late ’80s syn drum and synth lead counterpoint routine. It’s here that the age starts to show – it’s great pop music sure, but you find yourelf longing for some of the wilful structural invention or unique sounds of the artists’ previous work. ‘Vengeance’ and ‘Dancing On Your Grave’ are in a similar vein, with the added attraction of brief abstarct intros, and the latter does twist the laser synth to almost discordant levels to accompany its darker lyrical tone. ‘BeatBeatBeat’ distills all the previous tropes – the insistent fairlight sample stabs, drum machine beats and vocals – and coheres them into the most satisfactory whole; by halfway through it’s all combined into a rolling funk-laden electro monster. The final track ‘Dr John (Sleeping Stephen)’ is something else entirely – an amazing dark bass driven atmospheric track, topped with a prose recitation redolent of TG from Cosey touching on death and suicide. By a very long way the album’s highlight, it’s also highly contemporary sounding and a testament to the pair’s enduring influence.
Songs of Love and Lust, as the earlier of the two, necessarily has a less produced, stripped down sound, and definitely benefits from this. The percussion, rather than the heavy New York sounding drums of ‘Exotica’, is instead precise teutonic electro, clipped and full of cutting treble. What’s really interesting, particularly on opener ‘Driving Blind’, are the similarities to Coil – the weird glitching rolls in the background, the sudden changes of phrasing in the vocals, and the rough way the vocals suddenly loop. Things get even more prescient on ‘Love Cuts’, as the first minute could be a Drexciya track – synth swoops, live cut-in drums, an acidic bass and sharp snares all lead in to chorused vocals to brilliant effect. ‘Walking Through Heaven’, perhaps one of their best known tracks, is an amazing 5 minutes of shimmering, cascading synth pulses and stringswith percussion rattling in the background and wordless whoops overhead – cinematic and beautiful, it’s certainly the highlight of the whole set. ‘Lament’ and ‘Talk to Me’ are more conventional “songs”, with the former a ballad of sorts and the latter a lead-in to the sort of material featured on Exotica.
The last quarter of the album is given over to two overtly experimental tracks, and two straight instrumental electro-sounding heavy hitters. ‘Raining Tears Of Blood’ lurches along slowly with echoed vocals, wails and synth buzzes adding to the uneasy feel, whilst ‘Gardens Of The Pure’ is another track that could have been touched by the hand of UR, not sounding dissimilar from tracks on the Interstellar Fugitives album – a 4/4 beat anchors weird looped riffs, shouted refrains and tight filtered hi-hats. It’s completely brilliant, and a show of Chris and Cosey’s grasp of dancefloor dynamics in addition to songwriting. By comparison the last two tracks on the album, while excellent, pale in comparison. As a whole though, Songs of Love and Lust, with it’s diversity and range of ideas, is a salutory reminder that there’s amazing influential music which could slip of the radar, unjustly passed over in favour of better known work from the same era.
Ratings: Exotica 3.5/5, Songs of Love and Lust 4.5/5
Ruaridh Law
