Cosey Fanni Tutti was given the name “Cosmosis” by Genesis P-Orridge, which was shortened to “Cosey,” when they were partners and members of the Hull performance-art group COUM Transmissions. She has made it her own ever since. “Cosey” was never one of Genesis’ products. She is the author of her own life and work, which have an intentional unity.
COUM achieved notoriety largely through Cosey’s actions. The group’s 1976 Prostitution show at the ICA caused a national scandal in the UK, with a Tory MP branding them “wreckers of civilization.” The performance and exhibitions were meant to include images of Cosey from “men’s magazines,” but the ICA kept them in a back room. Cosey had entered the world of pornography to subvert it; and the gallery’s timidity stood in contrast to her total commitment. In the end, civilization was not wrecked – it had a mirror turned to it.
That show marked the official live launch of the experimental and industrial band that Cosey cofounded with Chris Carter, Peter Christopherson and P-Orridge: Throbbing Gristle. She played guitar, cornet and tapes in TG before her split from Genesis led to the first dissolution of the band in 1981. Cosey left with her new partner and set up shop as Chris & Cosey. Together, they established a label, CTI, and worked with artists as diverse as Eurythmics, Lustmord, Robert Wyatt, Coil, Boyd Rice, and Monte Cazazza.
In May 2011, Chris and Cosey teamed up with Nik Colk Void for Mute’s Short Circuit festival at the Roundhouse. Their performance was recorded and released the following year as Transverse. Cosey’s vocals were a key to the performance, as they became another instrument that shaped the atmosphere. Sorry to the guys from Nitzer Ebb, who were in the queue but couldn’t be fit in, but it was captured by Mute.
Cosey then turned to the written word and work for films. Art Sex Music (Faber, 2017) drew on her diaries to set out her own account of a history usually told by others. Re-Sisters (Faber, 2022) braided her life with those of Delia Derbyshire and the medieval mystic Margery Kempe.
She scored and appeared in Caroline Catz’s Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and the Legendary Tapes, wrote and narrated her instalment of Peter Strickland’s The Thing series for Frieze, and features in Other, Like Me, Marcus Werner Hed and Dan Fox’s 2020 documentary on COUM and TG. Catz has now wrapped Art Sex Music, a feature documentary built from Cosey’s personal archive.
The art world has gradually caught up with the artist whose images once provoked such alarm. Work that challenged the boundaries of the gallery now forms part of its institutional history. The name of the Tory MP who smeared her is long forgotten. Genesis has joined the infinite beat. What we have left are the recordings – and Cosey, without the quotation marks.
10. Throbbing Gristle – Hometime
On D.o.A., each member of Throbbing Gristle took one solo track. “Hometime” is Cosey’s: entirely played, recorded, arranged and written by her.
Children’s voices drift through it over a slow wash of her guitar. On an album that includes “Hamburger Lady,” the domestic setting is the unnerving part. Three and a half minutes of ordinary life, played by an artist positioned by the media as its most terrifying opponent.
9. Throbbing Gristle – Hot on the Heels of Love
On 20 Jazz Funk Greats, Throbbing Gristle created a sensual electro-disco track that provided a frame for Cosey’s sensual vocals. They had come a long way since “Maggot Death.”
8. Cosey Fanni Tutti – The Secret Touch
Time to Tell was Cosey’s first solo release, recorded in her small Crouch End studio and issued through Ian Dobson’s zine Flowmotion as a cassette with an accompanying booklet. The music was composed to accompany her performance work, and the booklet reproduced a lecture she gave to fine-art students at Leeds Polytechnic, together with the subsequent question-and-answer session.
7. Chris & Cosey – October (Love Song)
Released as the duo’s first single, “October (Love Song)” put Chris & Cosey’s mutual affection on record. It also put an unexpectedly synthpop touch on the duo’s catalogue that didn’t touch the British charts but has become an evergreen track for compilations.
6. Chris & Cosey – Driving Blind
The opening track of Songs of Love & Lust set the tone with a repetitive sequencer line and Cosey’s sensuous vocals and cries. It’s a romantic statement with a hint of danger.
5. Chris & Cosey – Mary
European Rendezvous captured the duo’s 1983 tour as CTI, with John Lacey providing visuals for the accompanying Doublevision video. Lacey also collaborated on Elemental 7, recorded in 1982 and completed in 1983, whose soundtrack LP appeared in 1984.
“Mary” is a live document with a studio’s discipline. Three decades on, it turned up in Michel Gaubert’s soundtrack for the Dior Homme Summer 2015 show in Paris. Fashion has a good ear for cold glamour, and this one has aged into it.
4. Chris & Cosey – Sweet Surprise
The 12-inch single, “Sweet Surprise,” was written and made with Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart. Conspiracy International says it was recorded at the Eurythmics’ studio in Camden, The Church in Crouch End (where Depeche Mode’s Violator was mixed), and Chris & Cosey’s Norfolk studio between 1984 and 1985.
It carries more pop sheen than anything else Chris & Cosey released in the period, yet the guests sharpen the hook without taking it over. It also shows how far the couple had travelled from the TG rehearsal rooms in Beck Road.
3. Carter Tutti – Lost Bliss
Carter Tutti Plays Chris & Cosey rebuilt old songs from live arrangements. The original Chris & Cosey recording of “Lost Bliss” is collected on Collected Works 1981-2000.
In the 2015 version, Cosey’s vocal phrases slide over bright synth lines and a firm machine kick. Returning to old material has long been part of how the pair work. Here the revisit sounds like a sharper print from the same negative.
2. Cosey Fanni Tutti – Cornet Lament
Caroline Catz’s Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and the Legendary Tapes premiered at the London Film Festival in 2020 and reached BBC Four in 2021. Cosey composed the score after working through the Derbyshire tape archive and also appears in the film. The soundtrack album followed in September 2022, written, performed and produced by her, with Carter mastering.
“Cornet Lament” opens it. The cornet she played in TG returns as a mournful, unsteady line, set among tape treatments that nod to Derbyshire’s methods without copying them. The same research fed Re-Sisters, and the piece reads as a portrait of one woman by another with the tools of both.
1. Cosey Fanni Tutti – Stound
2t2 came after years of personal challenges, loss, and global turbulence. Cosey composed, performed and produced all of it as a deeply personal creation. On “Stound,” Cosey uses overtone chanting, which she has described as a way of reaching her inner core.
The voice comes from the chest and splits into harmonics, while distortion is wound tight around a driving groove. Our review of 2t2 heard the spirit of “Retrodect” in it. Nearly fifty years after “Hometime,” the voice is still hers and the framing is still hers. There is still no compromise – only resilience.