Throbbing Gristle

Cosey Reveals New Album

by coldwarnightlife November 1, 2018

written by coldwarnightlife

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Cosey Fanni Tutti, the cofounder of Throbbing Gristle and legendary performance artist, has announced a new solo album.

TUTTI, coming on Conspiracy International on 8 Febaury 2019, is the first album from the Norfolk-based musician since 1982’s Time to Tell. Like that project, TUTTI is part of her art as life/life as art ethos.

The album will feature eight tracks, which were originally developed for the autobiographical film, Harmonic Coumaction, and were performed as part of Hull UK City of Culture 2017.

The first fragment to be heard from TUTTI combines her horn with electronic pulses in a dramatic rush.

TUTTI can be pre-ordered from Cargo.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

November 1, 2018

Rough and Ready: Carter, Tutti, Miller

by coldwarnightlife November 6, 2017

written by coldwarnightlife

November opened with Chris Carter taking to the stage at Rough Trade in London to demonstrate the new TG-ONE synth module from Tiptop Audio. Filled to the brim with samples from Throbbing Gristle’s recordings, as selected and processed by Carter, the unit allowed him to generate a show in the TG style. Due to the random looping feature of the module, the show can never be reproduced in the same form.

The occasion of the performance was a signing event for the 40th anniversary reissue of TG’s classic album, Second Annual Report. It also provided an opportunity for Carter and his partner, Cosey Fanni Tutti, to reminisce about their careers in music. They were joined on stage by Daniel Miller, whose Mute label is releasing Carter’s forthcoming solo album, for a relaxed conversation about modulars and the early days of industrial music.

The relationship between Miller and Throbbing Gristle goes back a long way – further, actually, than Miller recalled. His memory of chaos at TG shows, including one featuring Robert Rental & The Normal, was vivid, but Carter surprised Miller with an anecdote about visiting Mute’s original base in Temple Fortune when “TVOD/Warm Leatherette” was being recorded. “I met your mum!”

As they warmed up, the anecdotes started to flow. It came out that Miller met Robert Rental at a TG concert in July of 1978 where chairs were thrown in a Situationist cause. Also that Rental’s girlfriend worked with Thomas Leer’s at the Virgin store on Oxford Street. Miller recalled seeing a Peter Gabriel quote on a TG album there to the effect that it was the best thing ever (“I wasn’t sure if it was a piss-take or not!”). This was news to Tutti and Carter, but the dots were connected through TG member Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson’s work for Gabriel as a visual artist.

Further connections arose from events at the Cryptic One Club, which was organised by the promoters, Final Solution. After TG played a notorious event – which featured Tina Turner’s doormen, who had been recruited as celebrity heavies – Miller and Robert Rental were separately asked to play at the club. Neither wanted to perform separately, so they teamed up as Robert Rental & The Normal, sharing a bill with TG.

The duo joined the Rough Trade tour with Stiff Little Fingers, recording a one-sided live LP for Rough Trade’s US label. There was a TG connection there, too: Carter had built a Gristleizer effects unit for Rental, which he used to process the sound of his Wasp synth.

The discussion moved on to modular kit. Carter explained that, in 1999, he had a mid-life crisis and sold off his old analogue and modular equipment; but, within a year, he was rebuilding his collection. Carter’s latest solo album, which comes out in March, has been made with his rebuilt modular collection. It was also revealed that a new version of the Gristleizer, designed for Eurorack systems, is on its way.

For fans of industrial and electronic music, the evening was very special. Carter’s demonstration and the open conversation between three legends showed that the DIY post-punk spirit that motivated them at the end of the 1970s is still vital today. It also put their imprimatur on the burgeoning modular scene. TG might be finished as a band, but its subversive and animating influence is undiminished, even after four decades.

November 6, 2017

Very Friendly: Cosey at the ICA

by coldwarnightlife October 27, 2016

written by coldwarnightlife

Cosi Fanni Tutti What abuse has not been hurled at Throbbing Gristle and its members? The legendary godparents of industrial music have been called “wreckers of civilisation” in Hansard, declared “vile” by the red topped British press and physically attacked by audiences.

Certainly, TG were sonic extremists who dabbled in totalitarian imagery, caused riots and generated outrage. At the same time, their live performances borrowed something from jazz improvisation and the band was made up of some very gentle souls.

While their rock contemporaries indulged in heroin and trashed hotel rooms to impress the NME, TG always seemed to prefer a nice cup of tea and a sit-down. They might have been cast as culture destroyers by the tabloids and malicious politicians, but off-stage they were more likely to be found in the drawing room having a Bourbon biscuit or soldering circuits than corrupting the nation’s youth.

That isn’t to say they were closeted Laura Ashley milkmaids, but those who shouted the loudest about TG were usually the ones least equipped to critique either their art or lifestyles. They also missed the humanity at the root of its members’ actions.

An anecdote: at the end of the Carter Tutti Void debut at the Short Circuit festival, back in 2014, a skinhead called out in a gentle way, “Thank you very much!” Cosey Fanni Tutti (TG, Chris & Cosey, CTI, Carter Tutti), a former stripper and tampon exhibitor, acknowledged the gentleman with a generous smile, equally politely, from the stage. While the sound from the speakers might have blasted musical conventions to pieces, civility and kindness were in greater evidence in the interaction between Cosey and the audience than at any opera with its boorish, bourgeois followers.

14725667_663350257158515_3622581661426742613_n Fast forward to the last months of 2016 and here is Cosey in the refined space of a modern art gallery: bespectacled, sensibly dressed and surrounded by clippings from her short career as a sex worker. She’s here to read from her forthcoming book, Art Sex Music. Pictures last as long as they can be reproduced, but memories fade more quickly; so all of the audience’s attention is on Cosey as a storyteller, instead of the exposed and manipulated mammaries displayed on the walls.

We have to wait until April 2017 for the book, but on the available evidence it will be a corker. For the evening’s event, Cosey selects a passage dealing with the infamous Prostitution show that took place at the ICA in 1976. We learn that the event was the subject of internal sabotage, as a carefully misplaced screwdriver nearly wrecked the PA, while the performance by COUM – the art collective that became TG – degenerated into a melee that ended with Genesis P-Orridge being led to Charing Cross A&E.

There, the doctors fussed over GPO’s supposed wounds – which were really fake blood from the act – while showing little interest in his actual injury. It comes across as less of a comment on the NHS than a metaphor for how the band was treated by the press.

Cosey’s account is humorous, detailed and warm. Her reading is followed by a Q&A, in which we learn that, following the chaos of the Prostitution show, she asked Sotheby’s to value a used tampon exhibited as part of the event. It was worth £80, the famous auctioneers decided. “I was very, very fertile then,” Cosey recalls.

The book will be easier to acquire and cheaper to own, but we expect it will be no less desirable as an artifact of a very provocative period.

Art Sex Music by Cosey Fanni Tutti is published by Faber & Faber with a first edition expected in April 2017.

October 27, 2016

Industrial Film for Industrial People

by coldwarnightlife May 20, 2015

written by coldwarnightlife

BFI, London
8 May 2015

The world premiere of a new feature film about industrial music brought out members of Throbbing Gristle and Test Dept, along with a tattooed and booted audience keen to see footage of TG, Non and Z’ev. What they got was a 52 minute trawl through the archives, original interview footage, a live Q&A with the film-makers and Chris & Cosey, and a DJ set from the original British metal-bashers.

Industrial Soundtrack for the Urban Decay is a French independent production, created by Amelie Ravalec and Travis Collins. Its premise is that industrial music – the experimental style that is characterised by harsh sounds, cut-up lyrics, the use of found sound, and so on – was born amidst urban decline as the counterculture of factory workers or unemployed youth. The story is told by many of the prime movers from the scene, including Genesis P-Orridge, Chris & Cosey, Boyd Rice, Stephen Mallinder, Graeme Revell and Dirk Ivens. Most of the interviewees are from the UK, so their reactions to the Thatchist police state of the 1980s are key to the narrative, but there is also space given to Vale from Re:Search and the Belgian founder of Sordide Sentimental, who publicised the industrial scene for the love of its art.

The term, industrial music, came from Throbbing Gristle, who created the Industrial Records label to issue their own music and that of artists like Thomas Leer and Robert Rental, Monte Cazzaza or Sweden’s Leather Nun. Adopting the communications style of corporations and popular culture reference points like Greatest Hits albums, they subverted the mainstream by injecting themselves into it. In the film, P-Orridge explains the coining of the term as a branding exercise, alongside the adoption of the band’s lightning flash logo, but the film and its participants steer clear of any pedantic discussion about what is truly industrial.

There is little in the film that will surprise long-time followers, and footage from the Rough Trade tour showing Robert Rental perfoming with Daniel Miller or clips of Cabaret Voltaire’s TV appearances, promoting their first album for a major label, can be easily found on Youtube. Fans who know the music will appreciate hearing “their” genre used in a feature film, but it rolls past quickly in a blizzard of clips that don’t always correspond to the soundtrack. Completists will point out that the film misses the chance to look at artists like Zoviet France, Muslimgauze or Severed Heads, so that the picture is somewhat distorted for less-informed viewers, but the producers explained that they were constrained by their budget and chose to focus on the artists they were able to interview.

The choice of several tracks from CV’s Crackdown album invites questions about the interface between industrial music and pop, but the opportunity is passed over. That is unfortunate, as many of the artists being highlighted made material intended for a more commercial audience – SPK’s “Metal Dance,” much of CV’s later output, Chris & Cosey’s “October Love Song” or Test Dept’s “New World Order” all provide examples – and it would have been interesting to hear their views about the creative limits of each genre.

Those quibbles aside, Industrial Soundtrack for the Urban Decay is an entertaining, accessible and informative run-through of industrial music’s history. Its running time means it can be squeezed onto Sky Arts, but for now look out for it on the festival circuit.

May 20, 2015

The Cassandra Complex: Still Kicking

by coldwarnightlife February 14, 2015

written by coldwarnightlife

The Cassandra Complex were founded in Leeds in 1980. The original cyberpunks, they combined a driving rock sound with electronic instruments that became a template for successive generations of artists. With the band in Stockholm for Bodyfest 2014, CWNL’s Anders Junfjärd sat down with singer and founder member, Rodney Orpheus, together with guitarist Andy Booth, to catch up on three decades of fighting against sleep and below-standard alternative music.

Leeds was the home of Fad Gadget and Soft Cell. Did you feel an affinity for those artists when you were starting out?

[Rodney] I met Marc and Dave from Soft Cell briefly when we first started, but they left Leeds just after we arrived, so we never really had much contact with them. There were some other great bands in Leeds in that period. The Sisters of Mercy started just before us. The Three Johns started about the same time as us, and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry started just after us, I think. Then, of course, The Mission came just after The Sisters broke up. So, there was a lot of cross-pollination, because our studio was next door to where one of The Three Johns lived, and Wayne Hussey lived about four doors down on my street, so I used to see Wayne walk past the house every day going to the shop beside my house.

So, there were a couple of square kilometers in Leeds that had somewhere like two hundred bands in it at the time. It was ridiculous – everybody was in a band. So, a lot of cross-pollination went back and forth between all the different musicians and bands. I worked with The Sisters, you [to Andy] worked with how many other bands. Then we had things like MDMA and Utah Saints coming up after that, who were ex-Cassandra Complex people.

Cassandra_2 Germany has become a second home for many alternative artists, such as Psyche. What is it that makes the German soil better for growing artists outside of the American-influenced mainstream?

[Rodney] The reason we moved to Germany was very simple – for tax reasons. Germany is where our music was accepted the most. We were relatively big stars in Germany, and we were still living in England. The problem was, when we played in Germany – we played a lot of concerts and big festivals – because we were living abroad, the German government took twenty percent of all the money before we even got it and kept it. When we went back to the UK, the UK government taxed us on the money we had left. Twenty percent is a lot of money, if you are a starving rock musician. By moving to Germany, we could keep that extra twenty percent of the money. That was the difference between starving and eating. So, given that choice, eating was sounding like a good alternative.

As it happened, I lived in Hamburg for many years, because I really liked Hamburg – it’s a really good city. That’s how I met Volker and Axel, for example – who still live in Hamburg. So, Hamburg is still our second home. And, of course, other musicians from England – famously, Andy Eldridge – moved to Hamburg, as well. It had a good vibe, a good atmosphere, and was less boring than Leeds.

With downloading and YouTube making your music freely available, is it still possible for musicians to make a living with their music?

[Andy] No – from touring.

[Rodney] I do a lot of music industry conferences, speaking on panels – from a production and technology side, which is my other career. Andy, Volker and I are all heavily involved in the music industry.

[Andy] We all are. All our jobs are related to the music industry.

[Rodney] We sure as hell don’t make enough money out of the Cassandra Complex!

The internet had a lot of promise in liberating music – and it did, and I’m very happy about this and think it is a wonderful thing – but the days of selling an album are over. If you take a band like U2 – arguably, the biggest and most successful band in the world, and they decided to give their new album away. If the biggest band in the world can make no money – [they are] giving their stuff away – then that should be a message to everybody else. So, if you want to be in the music business to make a living, forget it. Just forget it! It’s not going to happen. Unless you are unbelievably lucky. You’d be better off putting your money in the lotto – you have more chance of winning.

[Andy] I’ve acted as a lawyer for hundreds of bands, and I always say to them at the start, “Don’t stop your job until this really pays for itself.” Because you might get some money and think, “Oh, I’m a professional musician!” You can’t!

Don’t quit your day job

[Andy] Not until you can.

[Rodney] Here [indicating Andy] is a very successful music business lawyer; so trust us, we know this.

Cassandra_3 You covered Throbbing Gristle, back in the 80s, with “Something Came Over Me.” What other bands are an influence on you?

[Rodney] We’ve covered a lot of bands who have been influences on us. Suicide, obviously. We’ve done “Frankie Teardrop” – we play that live quite frequently. They were a huge influence on us. Alan Vega was a very big influence on me as a singer.

[Andy] When we started, Suicide was the band we all really liked.

[Rodney] Throbbing Gristle, obviously – we are big fans of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV. I’m very happy that Genesis and I are very good friends now, and I got to meet Sleazy before his death and spent some time with him. Chris & Cosey – I really love those guys, they are amazing. Who else are big influences on us? A lot of early punk bands – I mean, we were punk. Buzzcocks were a huge influence I would say on songwriting, and they are still amazing songwriters. Velvet Underground – gigantic influence. Hawkwind – which most people wouldn’t get, but there’s a lot of psychedelia and improvisation in what we do – that comes a lot from that Hawkwind-y kind of vibe, I think. Wire – a big influence. Who else?

[Andy] Cabaret Voltaire…

[Rodney] My favourite band ever! Cabaret Voltaire were a gigantic influence on us and me personally. They were my favourite band for many, many, many years, and when I met them it was just an amazing experience for me.

[Andy] The interesting thing is, you don’t always end up sounding like the things that you are influenced by.

[Rodney] That’s right. I don’t think that we sound like Cabaret Voltaire.

[Andy] Or the Buzzcocks. Well, we know where we’ve stolen things from.

[Rodney] Obviously, Joy Division, New Order – huge influences.

You invented cyberpunk.

[Rodney] Yeah, we did. You know what was really weird the other day? Somebody on Facebook posted some clips from the Billy Idol cyberpunk album. I thought it was so f—ing bad. He was trying so hard to rip us off and just missed it completely.

Have you won the war against sleep?

[Rodney] At our age?

[Andy] Yeah, we’re still here!

[Rodney] We’re still here and we’re still kicking ass. It amazes me that we are still around – me and him [indicating Andy] started together thirty years ago. This is our thirtieth anniversary show tonight, which is amazing.

[Andy] We don’t look that old, let’s face it.

[Rodney] Well, I do. It was really good – we were doing “Motherad” earlier on in the sound-check and I suddenly had a flashback to doing it in a studio in 1986. This is twenty-eight years ago. I remember what it was like the first time I sang it in the studio – we effectively wrote it in the studio. We’re still doing it and it still sounds amazing. I think we still sound very vibrant.

What is great, but is also kind of sad, is I think we sounded a lot more alive and vibrant and modern than most of the other bands – hearing new bands – who just sound old and tired. I hear so many new bands and there is nothing original in what they are doing whatsoever, which is kind of scary, because we are huge music fans. That’s how we started playing – because we loved music. As Andy said to me yesterday, we still have another great album left in us, so we’re not finished yet.

February 14, 2015

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