There was a time before TG and a time after TG. They are not the same.
Is this really only the first year of the Trump administration? It feels like a lifetime has passed since the Cheeto Mussolini and his cabal of white supremacist billionaires retook the reigns of the Empire. On the Rebel side, there has been organisation against the racism, cruelty, and murderous intent of Trump, including some of the largest street demonstrations since the Vietnam War. We are entitled to ask of artists: in the face of this threat – which is playing out in many countries in different forms – what have you done?
Music can inspire and motivate. It can also divert and intoxicate. The response of some artists to the pressures put upon them has been to protect their careers and strangle the words in their throats. Others have valued their principles and humanity more than the ability to earn a few dollars.
The SXSW festival experienced unprecedented cancellations by artists who were unhappy about its connections to the arms industry. The London version of the event experienced resistance from artists who objected to it platforming the odious British war criminal, Tony Blair.
In Europe, Zanias took a courageous stand against the Amphi Festival when they threatened to censor her support for the cause of peace in the Middle East. Instead of bowing to their demand for silence, she acted with great integrity and said, “No!”
It will take more Zanias’ to effect change, but the crisis in music is part of the wider economic and political crisis affecting the whole world. When Spotify is reducing musicians to digital serfs, while its executives ally with the arms industry, who can afford to remain aloof? When the planet is being permanently polluted, who can be sanguine?
There are lost souls in the music scene who champion racism and misogyny, acting as cheerleaders for Tommy Robinson and Elon Musk. There are also voices raised to defend human rights and turn the tide against the brutality of the Trumps and Faragists. Assemblage 23 and Twice a Man are examples of the latter – and their output is significantly higher quality than the Depeche Mode imitators who seem to dominate the former camp.
There are people who demand that artists be silent about politics. These are the fools who complain about Heaven 17 reissuing “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang.” They brey to be entertained and soothed, as if the world’s problems can be solved by shouting over an Oasis concert while downing six pints of lager. Call that what you like, but don’t call it culture.
We’ve been here before. As Brecht wrote for a previous generation:
The demand of the times is not to stop writing love songs. It is to remember that love can encompass humanity, freedom, ecology, and peace. They are all under threat, and music has a role in the resistance. In a world threatened by the malign influence of the Empire, be a Rebel.
This year, we lost Douglas McCarthy (Nitzer Ebb), Steve Luscombe (Blancmange, East India Company), Dave Ball (Soft Cell, The Grid), Clem Burke (Blondie), and Mani (Stone Roses). This is your annual reminder to show your appreciation for artists while they are still with us.
25. Test Dept – Industrial Overture
The original politicised metal-bashers have mined the archives for a 4-CD collection, encompassing 40 live and studio tracks from the period, 1982-1985. Their vitality jumps from the bitstream with Stakhanovite efficiency.
24. Assemblage 23 – Overthrow
It’s been a good five years, but Tom Shear brought back Assemblage 23 with a set of energetic, body-moving tracks and messages shaped by the sharp divisions in American politics.
As Shear told ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK in a recent interview:
I’d say it’s in the ultra-wealthy’s best interests if we are fighting about something else rather than they are robbing everybody… the poor are getting poorer, the rich are getting richer… we are now seeing obscene wealth, like more money than anyone needs! I feel there are issues to deal with in immigration and racism but at the end of the day, those are tools being used by people who want to keep their way of life… it is greed at the end of the day!
23. Greenhaus feat. Dave Baker – Weightless
One of the surprises of the year was Dave Baker‘s turn at the mic with Greenhaus. He contributed to a number of songs, taking a break from his Lonelyklown project. Plaintive and poignant, the material had the emotional heft that Lily Allen only wishes she could offer.
22. Die Sexual – Desire
The Fabulous Florianos, Anton and Rossellini, return with more dark-electro deliciousness. Leave your crypt to dance and be seduced by the nocturnal offerings of Die Sexual.
21. Rohn-Lederman – Forbidden Planet
Emileigh Rohn and Jean-Marc Lederman paired up again for a moody, synth-driven album that doesn’t always resolve into melody or comfort. Forbidden Planet feels like drifting through synthetic spaces. It is unsettled and introspective – one to listen to while repairing your space station.
20. Thunder Bae – Mirage (All the Best)
The German songstress, Thunder Bae, stepped out with a sleek and minimal track that us dark but danceable. It doesn’t hit you over the head with Berghain beats – it seeps under your skin.
19. Anna von Hausswolff – Iconoclasts
Chased away from a French venue by Catholic fundamentalists, Anna von Hausswolff didn’t let anyone keep her from playing organ. The show must go on.
With this year’s Iconoclasts album, von Hausswolff gives the religious fanatics another kicking. The drones, organ, and expressive vocal treatments make for an unsettling experience that will have them clutching their rosaries even tighter.
18. Cosey Fanni Tutti – 2t2
The irrepressible Cosey Fanni Tutti took some time away from writing books and scoring films to release an unbelievable solo album. The follow-up to her pre-pandemic record, TUTTI, 2t2 is invested with an emotional rawness and technical sophistication that few can match.
As we said in our review:
The layers are assembled with the technical skills and trade secrets that come from a half-century of experimentation, but the artistic quality is like nothing else on the scene.
17. Lau Nau and Sontag Shogun – Päiväkahvit
The prolific Lau Nau had two albums this year that warranted attention. She is currently touring her jazz album with Jonah Parzen-Johnson, which is excellent, but we were captivated by this work with Sontag Shogun. We love the Finnish composer and musician’s voice and delicate treatment of sounds, which is really like no other.
16. echoGenetic – Live in Chemnitz
Gareth Jones‘ experimental project, echoGenetic, had a rare outing in Germany for the MachineMan Festival. It quickly found its way to Bandcamp, as a teaser for an album coming in January 2026.
The performance unfolds as a shifting terrain of modular electronics: gritty pulses, corrosive noise, and dark ambient washes. In its immediacy, the release feels like a broadcast from the fringes of experimental sound – visceral, unpolished, and more alive for it.
15. Propaganda – A Secret Sense of Rhythm, A Secret Sense of Sin/Remix Encounters
Propaganda were the most majestic of 80s artists; their compositions a head above their rivals in the charts. A 6-CD box set, curated by Ian Peel, serves as their Collected Works from the ZTT era. Collectors will aready have most of the tracks, but who is complaining at getting them in one place?
The band also revealed a set of remixes of tracks from last year’s magnificent, eponymous comeback album. Rhys Fulber, Moby, and Pyrolator are among the artists who took a turn at playing with the material.
14. Twice a Man – The Coloured Breeze Is a New Dimension
The legendary Swedish artists return to express their concerns about the ravaging of the environment. We said:
As usual, the band makes great use of textures. As you listen to the album, you can find layers in the mix that demonstrate a subtlety that most of their peers lack. The naturalism of the material is combined with abstractions and sonic designs that imbue it with a warmth that is missing from a lot of electronic music. The Coloured Breeze… is an immensely human record with a humanistic message. To borrow from Brecht, again: “Change the world – it needs it.”
13. White Birches – A New Reign
The return of White Birches is more than welcome. A New Reign is a brooding, austere effort. The Swedish warm-wave duo wrap heavy bass and precise electronic percussion around icy synths and melancholic melodies. Vocalist Jenny Gabrielsson Mare delivers the material with a fragile touch, giving the songs a haunting air. The result is a set that leaves a lingering resonance.
12. I Satellite – Streamline
From Kalamazoo, where they make guitars, comes this eclectic and retro-sounding album from I Satellite. The material was created ages ago, using authentic analogue equipment (and no guitars!), but not assembled into album format until this year. Good things come to those who wait.
11. LIKK – Don’t Lie
Toril Lindqvist (Le Volt, Alice in Videoland) sounds angry. Really angry. This is a great, hard-edged dance track, with a strong message for someone who is in a whole heap of trouble.
10. Fragile Self – OCD
The packaging for the edition of OCD we received was too beautiful to open. That should not be surprising, coming from the duo of Anil Aykan and Jonathan Barnbrook.
What was surprising was how infectious the material was. Like the ticking of Poe’s heart, the sound stays with you even when the speakers are silent.
9. Zanias – Cataclysm
Zanias’ Cataclysm lands with razor-sharp emotional clarity. It is one of Zanias’ most fully-realized works: atmospheric, cathartic, and unafraid to stare directly into the storm.
It’s also a work of consciousness and conscience. As Zanias told White Light//White Heat:
I feel a strong responsibility to contribute something to the somewhat dwindling supply of hope in the world. In dark times like these, it’s so important for us to step up and play whatever role we can in changing things for the better, and artists have far more power than most of my peers realise. We are the creators of culture, and culture is a primary influence on behaviour. If we can create a culture that is hopeful, just and compassionate, then humanity might stand a chance of surviving the meta-crisis it has constructed for itself.
8. Psyche – Dance After Curfew
Born in Canada and tranferred to Europe, Psyche was inspired by the theatrics of Fad Gadget, the torch song flair of Soft Cell, and the horror film stylings of Nash the Slash. The bandaged alter ego of Toronto musician Jeff Plewman was a one-man band who played thrash with an electrified mandolin and hacked rhythm machines in unsettling ways.
To mark the launch of the documentary, Nash the Slash Rises Again, Psyche had a go at one of the great Torontanian’s dancefloor classics.
7. Die Krupps – Will nicht – MUSS! SINGLE OF THE YEAR
The end of Front 242 and the loss of DAF’s Gabil Delgado has left Die Krupps to carry the baton for the first generation of EBM acts. Their 2025 tour was a stormer, and the release of this thundering track proves that there is still creative fuel in the tank.
6. Covenant – Andreas EP OF THE YEAR
The five-track Andreas EP, conceived by Covenant as a tribute to their late bandmate, Andreas Catjar‑Danielsson, is a thoughtful reckoning with grief and memory. From the sparse, echoing cover of Lee Hazlewood’s “A Rider on a White Horse” to a mournful reinterpretation of Yazoo’s “Winter Kills,” the material has emotional weight from Catjar-Danielsson’s own contributions.
The recordings were laid down by the late keyboardist and guitarist alongside singer/producer Eskil Simonsson, and the tracks include songs Catjar-Danielsson co-wrote or championed. That fact turns the EP from a eulogy into a final statement: a farewell not just for the man, but his last creative voice with the band. The result is deeply human – and more powerful for refusing to dress up sorrow as anything else.
5. Mark Stewart – The Fateful Symmetry
The loss of Mark Stewart in 2024 was keenly felt. The big man was a potent voice against the Establishment and all of its trappings. The album he left behind, which Mute put out this year, was more sensitive and poignant than much of his earlier work; and Stewart’s rage came across more balanced and pointed. His words will ring in the ears of the last Emperor.
4. Emmon – ICON
The arrival of a new Emmon album was always going to be welcome; but, to borrow a line from Michael Caine, we only expected it to blow the bloody doors off. Instead, ICON came as a blast that cleared the ground with its rhythms, Some Great Reward soundscape, and stylish Emma Nylén vocals.
3. Kite – Kite on Ice
After the Royal Opera, with a 16-piece orchestra, and the Avicii Arena, with a legion of figure skaters, what spectacle can Kite offer next? Kite in Space?
The Swedish duo took over the hockey arena in Stockholm, earlier this year, for the most dynamic electronic music performance we have ever seen. The Pet Shop boys have costumes, and Jean-Michel Jarre has lights, but Kite went further with Nina Persson, Anna von Hausswolff, an array of video boxes, and dancing Zambonis.
The recording of the show is only one part of a multimedia campaign that includes a film and a book. The music is glorious and evocative; and, really, Kite deserve much more attention outside of their homeland.
1. Edvard Graham Lewis – Alreet? ALBUM OF THE YEAR (TIED)
We have two albums tied for first place this year. Graham Lewis‘ solo record, Alreet?, easily claims its position as a spectacular of sound design and leftfield pop. As we wrote in our original review:
The album opens with a swelling guitar tone and the observation, “You will not pass this way again.” Geography and grooves combine in “Kinds of Whether” with emphatic richness; fused by word play and rhythmic sensitivity. Pity Trent Reznor that he never managed to bottle the lightning of He Said the way he wanted. It shines from this vessel very brightly.
1. Page – Inget motstånd ALBUM OF THE YEAR (TIED)
Conny Plank might not have seen this coming, but Sweden’s Page pivoted, this year, towards the Krautrock sound he shaped in his kitchen. Inget motstånd [EN: No Resistor or No Resistance] is a circuit activated with the charges of Neu!, Harmonia, and even Kraftwerk. It is significant that Plank also worked with Ultravox, who have exerted a large influence on Eddie Bengtsson‘s stylistic choices for recent albums.
This album is pure Page with a Teutonic vibe. It deserves its place at the top of the chart because it is infectious and melodious; drawing inspiration from Moebius and Rodelius. A modern classic.
Armed with a soldering iron and a stack of ABBA singles, Chris Carter became one of the founders of Industrial Records, a member of Throbbing Gristle, and an innovator who has explored the extremities of sound. His legacy includes a music genre, a novel effects unit, and a body of work that is uniquely evocative.
Carter trained as a sound technician with various TV companies before joining TG. This practical experience gave him a foundation as a tinkerer and an income to purchase synthesisers and drum machines, which became his instrument of choice. One of Carter’s most famous creations was the Gristleizer, which processed sounds for TG on stage and in the studio.
When TG terminated its mission, Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti established themselves as a household and an act. The bedrock of the Chris & Cosey sound was the electronic pattern generation that Carter had developed for TG, fused with Cosey’s sensual vocals. The love affair between the duo provided inspiration, alongside the horror films and tabloid sensations that fed the industrial genre. They also launched a label (Conspiracy International) to release their own works and collaborations, and sometimes presented themselves as The Creative Technology Institute.
C&C became Carter Tutti in the early 2000s, as the pair started to revisit and reinterpret their original works. New ideas and new technologies allowed them to pull apart their songs and reassemble them. At the same time, they found space to work on their own material. For Carter, that included a collaboration with Ian Boddy, the Small Moon EP, and the album, Chris Carter’s Chemistry Lessons, Volume 1.
Carter remains an in-demand remixer, having reworked songs for Erasure, S’Express, Lone Swordsman, Chris Liebing, and Factory Floor. He has also worked on the development of unique synth modules for Future Sound Systems. These include a Eurorack version of the Gristleizer, which allows owners to become “wreckers of civilisation” at home.
10. Throbbing Gristle – Adrenalin
With songs like “United” and “Hot on the Wheels of Love,” Throbbing Gristle were able to demonstrate serious electronic credentials. Although known best for putting into practice the slogan, “entertainment through pain,” the band were able to leverage Carter’s synth skills for sweet instrumentals and “Tesco disco” tracks.
Paired with “Distant Dreams (Part Two),” the “Adrenalin” single featured the modular and home-made kit that Carter had assembled in the band’s Hackney studio.
9. Throbbing Gristle – AB/7A
Carter’s love of ABBA is well-documented. It wasn’t through irony that he crafted this homage for the 1978 album, DOA.
8. Chris & Cosey – Just Like You
Throbbing Gristle contained the seeds of its own destruction. Like the Smurfs, there was only one female character, and her affections were reserved for Chris. That was an issue for the Genesis P-Orridge, with whom Cosey had been entangled from pre-TG days. A split occurred and the couple emerged as Chris & Cosey.
The first C&C album marked a change in direction. Without the baggage and compromised compromises of TG, Carter was able to give full throat to his synths. The result was a screaming, energetic sense of release.
7. Chris & Cosey – Mary
The European Rendezvous album captured Chris & Cosey playing live during their 1983 tour.
6. Chris Carter – Beat
Originally released as a cassette on TG’s Industrial Records label, Carter’s first solo album, The Space Between, included this excellent track.
5. Carter Tutti – Retrodect
The original version was released as a bonus track on the US version of the “Synaesthesia” single and the cassette edition. This take was included on the Carter Tutti Play Chris & Cosey album, released in 2016. One of the features of Chris & Cosey’s work has been the enthusiasm with which they return to their own material to dissect and rearrange it into new creations.
4. Erasure – Reason (Carter Tutti Remix)
Carter’s touch is sought after by electronic music artists for a twist on commerciality. Carter Tutti have done two remixes for Mute stalwarts, Erasure – the other being a take on “SOS” for the latter’s album, ABBA-esque.
3. Carter Tutti Void – V2
The Short Circuit Festival in 2011, celebrating Mute, provided the setting for a live collaboration between Carter Tutti and Nik Colk Void. The recordings were issued the following year as Transverse. Carter oversaw the technical side of the show, which maintained a balance between the three artists on a knife-edge.
2. Ian Boddy & Chris Carter – Caged
In 2000, Carter worked with British synthesist, Ian Boddy, on a set of songs that were cast as “proto-dub.” The album is being reissused by Mute imprint, The Grey Area, in a 25th anniversary edition with additiomal material.
1. Chris Carter – Moonlight
The romantic side of Carter’s work is essential to its force. Is it linked to his admiration for ABBA? Hard to tell, but Benny and Björn never got sounds from their synths like this.
Cosey Fanni Tutti knows something about noise. Whether as a member of the band, Throbbing Gristle, or one pole of the Chris & Cosey/Carter Tutti axis, she has made a firm mark in the inner ears of listeners while shaking the fillings from their teeth.
Her new album, 2t2 (see what she did there?), manipulates noises in the most fantastic ways – and not always with chest-compressing intensity. The recordings draw on electronic distortions and harsh oscillations even when there are subtle, sweet surprises to be found.
2t2 opens with “Curae,” which sounds like something Fever Ray would find affinity with, vocally. The layers are assembled with the technical skills and trade secrets that come from a half-century of experimentation, but the artistic quality is like nothing else on the scene.
“To Be” answers the Bard’s question with a danceable rhythm and layers of cornet, synth, and atmospheric vocals. It demands to be played loud.
“Stound” has distortion in spades, twirled like spaghetti around a fork. It is a stimulating track in the spirit of Chris & Cosey’s “Retrodect.” One of the features of Tutti’s music is that she knows how to build an excellent groove into something entrancing. It is worth the price of admission alone.
“Never the Same” picks up with Tutti’s intonations interacting with her cornet. There is so much atmosphere it has its own stratosphere. The cornet returns on “Stolen Time,” where it is balanced with guitar sounds exfiltrated from a Strange Cargo album. The drifting sounds describe the city at night – it is music to ride in cabs to.
“Respair” goes Western with a harmonica and juddering scrapes. Once Upon a Time in King’s Lynn continues the theme of epic spaces, reimagined under the influence of Ennio Morricone. It’s an unexpected but striking turn.
“Threnody” swirls through space with lamentful harmonics. It’s the kind of track Omnisphere was designed for – cinematic, sweeping, and moody. What tools were actually deployed is undisclosed, but the late night sci-fi vibe is strong.
“Sonance” continues the theme with epic, extra-terrestrial resonance. It would work equally well as the soundtrack for the interior of an abandoned spaceship or a view to the horizon on a desert planet. Tutti’s film work, including Caroline Catz’s biopic about Delia Derbyshire, is a launch pad for these expeditions.
The album concludes with “Limbic,” which references the parts of the brain responsible for emotions. Industrial music – a genre rooted in and named for Tutti’s early work with Throbbing Gristle – always triggered responses. Some reacted with aggression, some with excitement – but indifference was never an option. That, as 2t2 reinforces, is the universal constant.
Cosey Fanni Tutti is an original. One of the organisers of Throbbing Gristle and a founder of Industrial Records, she contributed to the creation of a significant genre. By practising her art-as-life-as-art philosophy, she has spent half a century creating and performing in ways that shock, test, enquire – and entertain.
Tutti’s first solo album, Time to Tell (t2t), was released in 1983. She has now revealed plans for a new project, 2t2 (see what she did there?). It will come out on Conspiracy International on 13 June 2025 in several formats: vinyl, CD, and digitally (including Dolby Atmos / Spatial Audio).
The press release hints at the content:
Composed, performed and produced by Cosey Fanni Tutti, the 9-track album moves between propulsive beat constructions and expansive electronic explorations, continuing themes from 2019’s acclaimed album TUTTI. It is a personal reflection; a sonic realisation of her life, drawing on her powerful inner resolve and expressing it through music.
The album finds Cosey making sense of some very tough years, dealing with personal bereavements alongside swingeing world events that have impacted us all. Centring on her own strength and self will, the album’s two distinct sides – one rhythmic, one more meditative – are connected by an overwhelmingly positive mood.
She explains, “My overtone chanting on the track ‘Stound’ was part of that, tapping into the inner self, to the core of your being, emotionally, physically, allowing the sounds to permeate and soothe as well as create a sense of power, resistance and resilience to what we face.”
Even in the more melancholic moments, there’s a lightness that she explains is an “acknowledgement that it’s alright to be sad, that’s part of life, but there is so much joy too in our memories of people we lose and in the moments we share with each other. Joy is our resistance.”
Throbbing Gristle have released their final single and a unique box set as TG Berlin.
(Via Mute)
The new lavish Throbbing Gristle box set chronicling unreleased work recorded around a series of live events at the Berlin Volksbühne, TG BERLIN, is out today via Mute.
The Throbbing Gristle curated event saw the band perform a live set on New Year’s Eve and an improvised live soundtrack to a new 16mm print of Derek Jarman’s In The Shadow of the Sun (1981) on New Year’s Day, and, while the band were in Berlin, they recorded two final songs alongside a 48-minute piece of new music.
The box set – which comprises of 4 CDs, a Blu-ray, a 10” vinyl and a booklet featuring unseen photographs from the time by Paul Heartfield as well as new sleeve notes by the award winning Scottish visual artist Lucy McKenzie – collates both of these performances, alongside the TG Berlin Studio Session which is comprised of the final Throbbing Gristle single (two unreleased tracks, ‘Scabs & Saws’ and ‘Wotwududo’,) and an unreleased 48-minute piece titled ‘TG Berlin Studio Session 2005 – 2006’, recorded at Planet Roc studios during the time they were in the city.
TG Berlin will also include the “rehearsal” for In The Shadow of the Sun, recorded on New Year’s Day at the Volksbühne (“people’s theatre”). The performance of In The Shadow of the Sun was improvised, so the two documents offer a different perspective on the soundtrack to Jarman’s work.
The New Year’s Eve show previewed five songs from the band’s first album in 27 years, Part Two: The Endless Not, several years before its release, on a set list that included ‘Convincing People’, ‘Slug Bait’, and ‘Hamburger Lady’ (their first encore in 25/26 years, and what an encore!) – tracks that had lost none of their potency in the intervening years – plus the released track, ‘Splitting Sky’ and more. The performance is also included as a Blu-ray.
In 2004, Throbbing Gristle – Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (1950-2020) and Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson (1955-2010) – regrouped and the following six years became a period of renewed creativity for the band. Back in the studio after 20 years, they found group intuition when performing was intact, and their ability to break down barriers and forge connections with an audience was more powerful than ever.
This new box set, the latest release in an ongoing collaboration with Mute, is a compelling document of Throbbing Gristle performing and recording as a four-piece with a renewed vigour. From the opening beats and serrated electronics of one of their final tracks recorded together, ‘Scabs & Saws’, it’s clear that TG are not revisiting ground already tread, but bringing two decades of individual experience back into the studio to create a new exploration of sound. The vocals have a different depth, the groove is deeper, and the atmosphere has lost none of its potency.
TG BERLIN BOX SET
CD1 – TG Berlin
Live at the Volksbühne Berlin, New Year’s Eve 2005
Trumpet Herald
Convincing People
Splitting Sky
Slug Bait
Rabbit Snare
Almost A Kiss
Greasy Poo
Endless Not
Vow of Silence
PA Destroyer
Hamburger Lady
CD2 – In the Shadow of the Sun
Live at the Volksbühne Berlin, New Year’s Day, 2006
In the Shadow of the Sun Live – 49:29
CD3 – In the Shadow of the Sun
Rehearsal at the Volksbühne Berlin, New Year’s Day 2006
In the Shadow of the Sun Rehearsal – 49:12
CD4 – TG Berlin Studio Session (2005 – 2006)
TG Berlin – 48:22
Scabs & Saws 11:02
Wotwududo 7:07
Recorded late December 2005 to early January 2006 at Planet Roc (Funkhaus), Berlin
10” vinyl – The Final Throbbing Gristle single
Side A
Scabs & Saws 11:02
Side B
Wotwududo 7:07
Blu-ray
Throbbing Gristle Live at the Volksbühne Berlin, New Year’s Eve 2005
Trumpet Herald
Convincing People
Splitting Sky
Slug Bait
Rabbit Snare
Almost a Kiss
Greasy Poo
The Endless Not
Vow of Silence
PA Destroyer
Hamburger Lady
(Photos: Paul Heartfield)
Throbbing Gristle terminated their original mission in 1981. The rock and roll cliche version is that the band broke up over a girl. The deeper reality is that Genesis P-Orridge, the band’s lead vocalist, was a complex character with some truly dark features. The “girl” in question (she shies from gender labels) was Cosey Fanni-Tutti. The guitarist and one-time UFO album cover model brought them to light in her writings: she was trafficked, physically assaulted, and subjected to mental abuse by P-Orridge during their time together. To twist a phrase attributed to the latter, TG was a challenging organisation for challenging people.
At the same time, TG was a creative force that blew holes in the rock establishment. The band created an independent label to release their own music and that of like-minded artists. They wrote with synthesisers and made songs inspired by ABBA, while mining true crime subcultures and inflicting tinnitus on their audiences. Their sense of humour and exploitation of “indecency” won them fans and enemies in equal proportions.
Mute, which has quietly acquired large swathes of the industrial music back catalogue, has announced two reissues from TG’s archives. The first is a relaunch of TGCD1 with a vinyl option. The second is a CD and vinyl releasd of The Third Mind Movements. The latter was previously only available as merch on TG’s final US tour in 2009. Both are available from 23 (see what they did there?) August 2024.
Mute tell us:
TGCD1 comprises 42 minutes of studio recordings, recorded at TG’s infamous Martello Street studio on a TEAC 8-Track recorder on 18 March 1979. The release, which comes with a booklet featuring the original 1986 sleeve notes by the band, was an exclusive piece of unreleased material for Throbbing Gristle’s first-ever CD release, and today, the record’s dark sound stands as a significant chapter in their discography.
In 2004 Chris Carter, Peter Christopherson, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti regrouped – 23 years after their mission was originally terminated – and between 2004 and 2007 the band released Part Two: The Endless Not, TG Now and A Souvenir of Camber Sands – all recently reissued via Mute.
The Third Mind Movements – available for the first time on vinyl and commercially for the first time on CD – was initially an exclusive CD release for the band’s final US tour in 2009 – they would split for the final time the following year. The tour, which saw them perform in the US for the first time in 28 years, included their first shows in NY and an appearance at Coachella festival. The Third Mind Movements album, recorded during the Desertshore sessions at the ICA, London several years earlier – a series of six live recordings from the ICA attended by an attentive audience – journeys through manipulated, time-stretched and distorted samples, with rhythmical breakbeats and hypnotic oscillations of electronics.
The ICA sessions were a unique and fascinating experience. An audience was assembled near Buckingham Palace, composed of refugees from Thee Temple of Psychick Youth and curious office workers. They were able to observe the band in action from seats overlooking work tables. Considering that TG had been maligned in the press and Parliament as “wreckers of civilisation,” the domestic scenery and polite interactions of the event turned a mirror on TG’s critics. As they consumed fantastic quantities of snacks and lashings of milky tea, TG turned Nico into something new and created new material of their own.
The gristle throbbed on and off after that. Again, a “girl” was involved. Maybe more than one. These releases are relics, but they don’t belong in a museum.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Norfolk’s best-loved industrial musicians have announced a series of remastered limited edition vinyl releases. Chris & Cosey, the influential duo who split from Throbbing Gristle, have revealed that Elemental 7 will appear on green vinyl. It will be accompanied by Muzik Fantastique! on pink vinyl and Feral Vapours of the Silver Ether on yellow vinyl. Their own CTI label will handle the releases, which are marked for 24 March 2023.
With its grid of video monitors on the cover, Elemental 7 is instantly recognisable as the soundtrack for the film by John Lacy and CTI. It was originally released on the Doublevision, the label set up by Cabaret Voltaire. Truth be told, the visuals were of their time, but the extraordinary soundtrack had more life on the LP. “Dancing Ghosts” is particularly notable for its combination of the Roland TB303 bass sequencer and TR808 drum machine in combination – one of the first tracks to use the gear and one of Chris & Cosey’s best loved songs.
Muzik Fantastique! is an extraordinary album. First released in 1992, it put to shame the acid house pretenders of the day with their newly discovered synth tools. The lead track, “Fantastique,” features one of Cosey’s most iconic vocal performances, while Chris Carter’s instrumentation is in top form. Songs like “Afrakira” and “Apocalypso” venture into world music, while sounding innovative throughout.
The last release in this series, Feral Vapours of the Silver Ether, was the second studio album by Carter Tutti, the act that followed Chris & Cosey. The Carter Tutti material is typically more ambient and down-tempo, compared to the duo’s previous work, and Feral Vapours… marks a step change from the other two albums being pressed by CTI. Not previously available on vinyl, it weaves filigree electro-acoustic sounds with thoroughly sensitive – organic – compositions.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
As the half of Soft Cell charged with operating the machines, Dave Ball has played a crucial role in the popularisation of electronic pop music. With Ball leering on the keyboards and Marc Almond prowling with his microphone, Soft Cell was a futuristic panto made with equal measures of soul and sleaze. They looked like they were lifted from Soho but delivered in a spaceship, issuing melodic hooks like lighting bolts. They introduced the synth duo to the mainstream with their UK Number One, “Tainted Love”–a cover of the soul classic originally performed by Gloria Jones–and subverted all expectations from then on. Soft Cell came and went as an act, but Ball continued to innovate with experimental collaborations and dance music: from Psychic TV to Kylie, he has added electricity to the acts that followed in their footsteps.
Ball was raised in Blackpool, a town on Britain’s left coast that was also the hometown of Chris Lowe, his counterpart in the Pet Shop Boys. He left its faded seaside glamour to attend Leeds Polytechnic, where he met his future musical partner, Almond. They started working together in 1977, rescuing disco from the jaws of punk, and released their first EP, Mutant Moments, the next year using money from Ball’s mother. The result was more industrial/Suicide-influenced than anything that followed, but it caught the attention of the emerging electronic influencers in London. One of them was an eccentric DJ called Stevo, who built a relationship with the band that took them to major label heaven and global success. Another was Daniel Miller, who produced the act’s first singles, “A Man Could Get Lost” and “Memorabilia” for Stevo’s label, Some Bizarre.
Soft Cell’s success was rapid and quickly outgrew the creative relationship between Ball and Almond. Easy access to drugs didn’t help, and it had fallen apart by 1984. It would take until 2001 for the act to release new material, but the hiatus didn’t leave Ball without interesting projects. From a solo album in 1983 to the acid house craze, he always found relevant and creative personalities to work with. There were no publishing royalties from “Tainted Love,” due to a lack of foresight by Some Bizarre, but there were always new ideas to be explored. Soft Cell have now returned with new management, selling keychains and working with the Pet Shop Boys, but the ideas keep coming.
(Photo of Dave Ball by Peter Ashworth)
10. Soft Cell – Martin
As the Mutant Moments EP revealed, Soft Cell were not all sweetness and light. They were happy to explore themes of horror, mental illness and danger. Early copies of Soft Cell’s second album, The Art of Falling Apart, came with a bonus 12″ featuring this tribute to the George Romero film of the same name. Recording of the album had been difficult, and producer Mike Thorne recalled that “Martin” injected a sense of fun to the proceedings. He described it as “a monstrously over-the-top extravaganza,” and he wasn’t wrong. It was the aggressive, experimental spine that held the Soft Cell monster erect.
This is a live version, as performed on The Tube in 1983. As a bonus, we have included one of the bands most heavily influenced by Soft Cell, Psyche, performing a delicious cover version at a Cold War Night Life event.
9. M.E.S.H. – Meet Every Situation Head-On
Genesis P-Orridge was a counterculture figure with a distinctive presence in the 1980s. After Throbbing Gristle imploded, he founded Psychic TV with Alex Fergusson of Alternative Television. Genesis claimed to have invented acid house with his compilation album, Jack the Tab, which featured a number of acts organised for the purpose. Ball and Richard Norris contributed to the process with “Meet Every Situation Head On,” which led to them working together as the Grid, one of Ball’s more successful projects outside of Soft Cell.
8. Psychic TV – Money for E
Ecstacy use is said to be one of the things that broke up Soft Cell. It is, perhaps, then, ironic that Ball remixed “Money for E” for Psychic TV. This is one of the more successful attempts to rework PTV’s acid-house material; and it shows Ball displaying an innate sense for the dancefloor while being respectful of Fred Giannelli’s original material.
7. Kylie Minogue – Breathe
For someone who mixed with Genesis’ Temple crowd, Ball has had some unexpectedly commercial turns. In 1994, he worked on Billie Ray Martin’s “Your Loving Arms.” A few years later, he was in the arms of Kylie Minogue’s record label, who brought him in to produce three songs on her album, Impossible Princess. This one became a Top 20 single in the UK.
It isn’t, perhaps, surprising to find Minogue working with a producer outside of the commercial mainstream–it was around this time that she was emerging from her indie phase, which saw her working with Nick Cave–but Ball and collaborator Ingo Vauk weren’t necessarily the obvious choice. It worked well for the Australian pop icon, even with a old school synth opening to thrill Moog enthusiasts.
6. David Bowie – Hallo Spaceboy (Lost in Space Mix)
Described by Bowie as “Jim Morrison meets industrial,” this track was originally crafted with Brian Eno for the Outside album in 1995. The official single went to the Pet Shop Boys for their contribution before being released, but this remix by Ball and Vauk made it fit for the dancefloor.
5. The Grid – Swamp Thing
On paper, mixing banjo and samples from old records shouldn’t have been much cop. The novelty paid off, however, for Ball and collaborator Richard Norris, with a top ten single around the world. You can probably still find sealed copies in discount bins, but there is no doubting Ball’s ability to make a hit from the things he found lying around the yard.
4. Other People – Have a Nice Day!
An oddity in the Ball canon, this was a collaboration between Ball and his wife, Gini, together with Andy Astle. With sampled voices, a chugging bass line, sirens, and a repetitive vocal, it came out in the same year as Propaganda’s “Mabuse” and Depeche Mode’s “People Are People” – there was clearly something industrial in the air.
3. Vicious Pink Phenomena – My Private Tokyo
Originally the backing singers for Soft Cell’s live shows, Vicious Pink Phenomena were the duo of Josephine Warden and Brian Moss. With Warden all Euro and Moss all electro, they were too sexy to stand behind Almond forever. Two Ball-helmed singles led to an album of stuttering greatness, but it started for them with this studio work.
2. Client – In It for the Money (The Grid Static in the Attic Mix)
Sarah Blackwood‘s sabbatical from Dubstar led to an outing as Client, the first signing for Andy Fletcher’s Toast Hawaii label. The St. John’s Wood/Notting Hill set took them to heart, and the act’s showbiz connections led to some interesting collaborations. Ball contributed to this one as part of a Grid remix, showing that his finger was never far from the beating pulse of underground music.
1. Soft Cell – Sex Dwarf
In the Soft Cell canon, there are many influential songs to choose from. The best representation of them, however, is in the banned video for “Sex Dwarf”–an over-the-top fantasy of drama and sleaze that reaches comic book proportions. The duo did excess to excess, and the swooping synths left a trail of wine bottles, wrappers and hair products behind them that still hasn’t been properly cleaned up.
Chris Carter has been called a “wrecker of civilisation,” but he is also responsible for some of the most romantic electronic music ever made.
From that description, Chris & Cosey fans might immediately think of “October Love Song” or “Walking through Heaven,” but Carter’s solo instrumental work also fits the bill. “Moonlight,” one of the tracks from his solo album, Mondo Beat, is one of the most heart-pulling songs ever made using voltage controlled oscillators.
For softies of a certain age, Mondo Beat is on re-release as part of a new box set from Mute. Miscellany collects four albums of music from Carter’s solo repetoire (although, curiously, not 1980’s The Space Between), including Disobedient, Small Moon, and a compilation of unheard tracks from the archives, including “Variables” (below).
The last of these will be of particular interest to fans and collectors, as it excavates material recorded between 1973 and 1977 – the point at which the Gristle started to throb in earnest.
The package comes in two flavours: a six-record vinyl set and a four CD edition. It is released on 7 December 2018 via Mute.
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