The Top 100 Albums of the 1970s - #91 - Throbbing Gristle - 20 Jazz Funk Great (1978)

One of the reasons I chose this Top 100 list from Pitchfork Magazine instead of, say, Rolling Stone, is that they’re not afraid to include groups like Throbbing Gristle, bands that everybody hates and no one listens to, but which were undeniably important in the development of modern music.

For the record, I don’t hate Throbbing Gristle. I think they’re awesome.

I've already reviewed this album once for this blog, but for the sake of continuity and a fresh pair of ears, I am happy to do so again. Throbbing Gristle emerged out of the English working class, where poverty, post-colonialism, and a declining influence in the world left many young people feeling alienated and disaffected. Throbbing Gristle channeled their misanthropy and hopelessness into making "industrial music for industrial people," melding post-punk and proto-electronica into something that was as bleak and cold as their teenage surroundings.

20 Jazz Funk Greats is the band's third official album, and sees them branching out from their noisy and distorted roots, crafting some pretty sophisticated and moody music. The album obviously owes a debt to early lounge music, as evidenced both by the title track and the similar "Exotica" which recalls some of the sounds popularized by Les Baxter and Martin Denny, albeit in a more perverse way. In contrast to the in your face aggression of the first two albums, this album is more like David Lynch’s Blue Velvet: sinister depravity lurking underneath a seemingly benign exterior.

For example, Beachy Head sounds like a lovely spot to go for a stroll until you realize that it’s a leading spot for suicide jumpers in Britain. Hot on the Heels of Love resembles a perfectly pleasant dance track, but the deadpan delivery of the group's chanteuse, Cosey Fanni Tutti, is almost pleading: “waiting for help from above”. The way the line is said makes it clear that the wished for help is not coming.

Elsewhere, frontman Genesis P-Orridge is in characteristically creepy form, as he sings about "Persuasion" and "Convincing People" to do things it's clear that they're going to regret very soon. In fact, this could be seen as a sort of theme for the record, as it lures you in with its slick and subdued beats only to yield much that is deeply disturbing. Rather than bombard listeners with feedback and growling, 20 Jazz Funk Greats persuades them, although they may not enjoy having themselves persuaded in the long run. 

I would be remiss not to talk about Throbbing Gristle's influence. In addition to basically inventing the industrial genre single-handedly, and spawning future acts like Coil, Psychic TV, and Chris & Cosey, the band's electronic experiments and penchant for minimalism and mind-altering substances went a long way towards inspiring trance music, not to mention their contributions to numerous experimental artists who have collaborated with the band members over the years. Throbbing Gristle took punk's anarchy and turned it up to eleven, not in volume, but in anti-establishment aesthetics, leading many of us to question our very notions of what constitutes music. For that alone, they deserve a place in history.

Current 93 - Nature Unveiled (1984)

For me, at least, religious horror has always been a special kind of terrifying. Films like The Omen and The Exorcist were always far more frightening than simpler tales of hook-handed serial killers or more aggressive than average sharks. The kind of existential fear that comes from the unknown and unknowable realm of gods and the afterlife, utilized so effectively by Lovecraft and his contemporaries, taps into a far deeper level of the human psyche than more the more immediate and comprehensible threats of bodily harm.

It is appropriate, then, to round out our month of spooky records with one of Current 93's earliest efforts, a bleak and relentless patchwork of New Testament nightmares that could be described as an aural equivalent of the Book of Revelations. David Tibet, the creative force behind Current 93, has always had a fascination early Christianity and describes himself as a Gnostic, referring to the early sects of that religion that were shunned and quickly drummed out of existence by the Catholic Church in the first few centuries AD. Gnostic literature can get pretty wild, with a far greater penchant for the fantastic and otherworldly than the rest of the accepted Christian canon. Their somewhat darker outlook is perhaps understandable when one realizes that one of the central themes of Gnosticism is the idea of a wicked creator deity, the Demiurge (the Old Testament, vengeful God), who is separate from the pure and loving God of the New Testament.

With this little bit of backstory, we are at least a little more prepared for this noisy and disturbing record. A bed of sampled Gregorian chants floats eerily in the background, while discordant industrial noises clank and moan over them, punctuated by hellish growling and Tibet's strident vocals proclaiming that "Maldoror is dead" (a reference to Lautreamont's classic proto-surrealist, stream of consciousness novel that is itself quite unsettling.)

The album is broken up into two, side-long tracks, but it really sounds like a single piece of music. Tape manipulation stretches vocals out into deep bass groans. Christian themes are repeated throughout, with the title of side one referencing Golgotha, the place in which Christ was crucified. Although Nature Unveiled bears little resemblance musically to Current 93's later, folk-influenced work, thematically there is much in common, and the listener is always left feeling that the Apocalypse is just around the corner.

Towards the end of the album, the vocals fade away and are replaced by distant wailing and increasingly urgent sirens, a harbinger of imminent and inescapable doom. Then, suddenly, it's all over, the vision of the end of days complete.

Nature unveiled is a raw, powerful and extremely noisy record, and although Tibet and most of his collaborators drifted away from and ultimately rejected the "industrial" label, there is no doubt that this album remains one of the best and most effective examples of what industrial music was all about in the early eighties. Still, it will probably leave most people desperate to turn on all the lights and put on something a little more cheerful.

Throbbing Gristle - 20 Jazz Funk Greats (1978)

I owe all of you an apology for the inexcusable lack of updates. I could say that I've been busy with school and work and various side projects, all of which would be true, but the real reason is that I just haven't been motivated to write about music lately. Today, however, one of my favorite music related websites, Progarchives, decided to add Throbbing Gristle to their database (a poor decision, I think, but oh well) and I feel compelled to contribute a review.

Throbbing Gristle are frequently and quite correctly credited for inventing the genre we commonly know as "industrial." Their abrasive, post-punk, nihilist noisemaking ushered in a whole generation of lienated misanthropes who felt they could relate to machines better than to their fellow human beings. After several albums of relentlessly abrasive material, however, TG decided to go another direction on "20 Jazz Funk Greats." The title is obviously tongue in cheek, but there is a grain of truth behind it. This is certainly TG's jazziest, as well as their funkiest record. Most of the tracks are laid back and subtle. hey are still just as menacing as ever, but this time the threat is more akin to being slowly poisoned rather than stabbed in the face.

Chris Carter's subdued electronics, trending ever closer towards straightforward dance music are heavily utilized here, but everything sounds far away and cloaked in a mysterious English fog. Geneis P-Orridge is as creepy as ever with his deadpan ramblings, the standout being the genuinely disturbing "Convincing People." One track entitled "Exotica" gives a clue to the inspiration for the album. There is indeed an element of Martin Denny and Les Baxter's method of creating evocative palettes designed to take the listener away to distant and exotic locales, although here this time it will not be anywhere so safe and welcoming as Polynesia. There's even a vibraphone to complete the tribute.

My favorite track on the album is the borderline mainstream "Hot on the Heels of Love." It is a perfectly produced slice of rhythmic electronica that could easily have been a club hit. It also features the all too rarely heard oice of Cosey, the groups only female member, breathily repeating the words "hot on the heels of love / waiting for help from above" in a tantalizing whisper.

"20 Jazz Funk Greats" is not Throbbing Gristle's best work, but it is an easy jumping off point for beginners, who might be a little intimidated by the band's more aggressive material. More importantly, this is the album that really shows just how influential TG were. Together with Kraftwerk (and maybe Tangerine Dream and Gary Numan) this album played a defining role in shaping the sound of modern electronica.

Musique Concret - Bringing Up Baby (1981)

Very little is known about this album or the people who made it. It was released in 1981 on Steven Stapleton's United Dairies label and no one has heard anything from the band since. On the CD reissue, the notes claim that every effort was made to get in touch with the artists and that seem to have simply disappeared off the face of the Earth. The natural question is of course: what sort of music might these elusive people make?

The first half of the record is comprised of a four part suite entitled "Incidents in Rural Places." It's a delightfully pastoral bit of studio work, filled with tape manipulations and delay effects. It's vaguely Krautrocky, vaguely psychedelic and more than a little industrial, but it manages to remain relatively accessible throughout and in places is downright pretty. Vintage electronics are all over the place, although used largely for textures and backdrops rather than in a more traditionally musical context.

Things get even weirder on side two. The seven minute track "Organorgan" contains the only thing on the record that sounds like an actual musical instrument - a Hammond organ. It drones along methodically while more tape loops and sound collage strangeness happen around it. It's easy to see why the group took Musique Concret as their name.

Finally, the fourteen minute freakout "Wreath Pose at Sacrifice" concludes the album in a very raucous way. The first eight or nine minutes consist of increasingly bizarre sound collage material, eschewing even the barest semblance of musicality. Then, in a completely unexpected turn, a drum kit enters the mix playing in tight, psychedelic rhythm. There aren't many records that could make something so conventional seem so surprising. The drums hold down the beat for a while before being overwhelmed by swells of harsh feedback. At this point you'll be reminded of Whitehouse or early Merzbow more than anything else. At last, the track fades out with a sampled record of a female crooner and we're done!

There's no question that this is a strange oddity of a record and a nice addition to a collection, but there's also some great and unique music on it, particularly on side one. Side two has its moments to be sure, but the compositions simply don't feel as coherent or well thought out. This is a good buy for people who like the first few Nurse With Wound records and similarly unpredictable and noisy things.

Sleep Chamber - Satanic Sanction (1988)

Sleep Chamber are an American industrial group that focuses on ritualistic and occult music. Whereas other industrial groups in the late eighties were moving increasingly in the direction of either danceable electronica or guitar-dominated heavy metal, Sleep Chamber stays true to the original and frightening vision of pioneers like Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire.

The sounds on this record are those of haunted machines. Metallic clanking, droning atmospherics, repetitive rhythms and samples of sinister sounding voices. Everything I look for in industrial music! There are some strange scraping violin noises on "Ov This Flesh" as well, and I think the sampled vocal in the track entitled "Presence of the Magi" is that of the infamous occultist Aleister Crowley (later sampled by Fields of the Nephilim), but I can't be totally sure.

There is not a lot of variety of sound to be found here, with every track consisting mainly of murky, far away sounds of things that go bump in the night, but that's alright by me. The sound is very well crafted and the atmosphere it creates is one of exquisite spookiness. An excellent choice for Halloween. I only have the vinyl, but I understand that the CD reissue has an altered and considerably expanded tracklist, so that is nice.

You've Got Foetus On Your Breath - Ache (1982)

Jim Thirlwell is native Australian (now living in New York) who has recorded under many different names over the years: You've Got Foetus On Your Breath, Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel, Foetus Inc., Foetus Interruptus, and most recently, just plain old Foetus. In case these rather eccentric choices don't clue you in, the music (and possibly the man behind it) is nuts. This is the second full length Foetus album, and while there are many other great examples of this man's music, I'm rather fond of this one.

Thirlwell is nothing if not controversial. The red, white and black Soviet/Fascist inspired cover art would be a theme throughout much of his career, and it's as provocative as it is visually compelling. The music is no less confrontational, although there is a pronounced sense of fun that is largely absent from the industrial music of his contemporaries. And while we're on the subject, Foetus has longed been lumped into the industrial category because of his abrasive use of synthesizers and drum machines and the DIY, punk-like spirit of his music, but in truth the sound varies so much that any real attempt to pigeonhole it is futile. I stick with the industrial label for reasons of convention.

So what does it sound like? It's actually kind of difficult to say. Thirlwell employs a huge variety of sounds on his records. Cheap Casio synths and low rent drum machines dominate, peppered with horns, bass, the occasional sample and most important Thirlwell's hyperactive, paranoid voice alternately yelping and growling. The keyboards are commuonly microtuned just a hair away from standard tuning to add to the audience's discomfort. The pace is almost uniformly frantic and it will surely get your heart pumping faster, but Thirlwell steers clear of repetitive techno-like loops in favor of jittery, ever shifting rhythms and busy arrangements. If this sounds unpleasant, it's because I haven't yet mentioned Thirlwell's gift for catchy hooks. The songs are surprisingly infectious, and a ton of fun if you're in the mood.

Stylistically, the record (like all Foetus records) is all over the map. From the film noir atmospherics of "J. Q. Murder" to the intentionally obnoxious repetition of "Get Out Of My House" to the inexplicable fixation on the theme from "Rawhide" that shows up halfway through the album and refuses to go away, you never know quite what to expect. The highlight for me is tha album's final track, "Instead, I Became Anenome." It's such a bizarre, yet fun tune and the lyrics are exceptional.

Lyrics have always been an important part of the Foetus sound. Thirlwell excells at clever wordplay, punning and free association rhymes that come out of nowhere. Made up words like "antihistorectomy" are common as well.

So while not for the faint of heart, Foetus offers a guaranteed wild ride that, if it doesn't excite you, will at least annoy your neighbors.

Skinny Puppy - Bites (1985)

In this reviewer's opinion, Canadian industrial pioneers Skinny Puppy never improved upon their debut album, "Bites." The earliest bands in the genre took a wildly innovative, nihilistic approach to music, tearing down traditional structures and replacing them with harsh electronics and metallic banging sounds. Skinny Puppy gladly accepts the contributions of their predecessors, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle and Einstürzende Neubauten, but reign in some of the chaos by adding a level of sophisticated artistry to their compositions. That's not to say that the music is by any means bland, however. On the contrary, "Bites" is a record that is at times chilling and even terrifying, but it terrifies with a kind of suave grace.

Throughout the first few songs frontman Nivek Ogre growls and shrieks his way through sheets of distorted keyboards and pounding drum machines. The songs are mostly danceable and believe it or not there are actually a few catchy tunes, most notably on the album opener "Assimilate." However, as the album progresses things start to get stranger and stranger. Not content to be merely fodder for goth club dance floors, the band engages in a heavy amount of experimentation. Strange little oddities start to crop up, beginning with the minimalist "Church in Hell," which is essentially just a repeated vocal sample with a gradually building backdrop of industrial noise. I should pause for a moment and mention that samples (mainly from obscure horror movies) are a huge part of Skinny Puppies sound, and they were one of the first bands to utilize them so heavily. It gives the album a very unique sound and was hugely influential on basically every electronica act ever.

Things continue to get weirder as the number of actual songs drops off and we are treated to more impressionistic miniatures built around atmospherics and movie samples. The two tracks "Film" and "Love" exemplify this short form experimentation perfectly, the latter opening with what sounds like a record being played backwards with a skip in the sound.

The original LP of "Bites" was only eight tracks long. Fortunately for us, the CD version contains more than twice that number, including some of the band's most interesting moments. At the end of the CD, the two tracks "The Centre Bullet" and "One Day" drone on in an almost pastoral vein for a good thirteen minutes. The music is calm and repetitive, but slightly unsettling, like a lullabye designed to produce nightmares. It's the most sedate you're ever likely to find Skinny Puppy, and one of my favorite parts of the record. In fact, it's hard for me to believe this wasn't the original tracklisting, because it works so perfectly as a way to wind down this fascinating album.

23 Skidoo - The Culling Is Coming (1983)

23 Skidoo's first album, "Seven Songs," is often cited as a major milestone in the field of industrial music, with its groundbreaking incorporation of funk motifs into the harsh electronic sound of industrial. With their second LP, "The Culling Is Coming," the band went in a completely different and unexpected direction, alienating almost all of their fans in the process. Good for them.

This album is divided into two very different halves, the order of which has been reversed from the original release for reasons that remain obscure. The first part of the CD (side B of the LP), subtitled "A Winter Ritual," consists of the band banging cheerfully away on Indonesian Gamelan instruments. It does not sound like Gamelan music, however, as none of the musicians really knows how to play these exotic instruments. The result is simple, ritualistic, repetitive and thoroughly hypnotic. I'll admit it took me a few listens to get into this, as it sounds completely different than pretty much everything else out there, but once you open up to it, it's really quite beautiful.

The second half of the CD (side A of the LP) is subtitled "A Summer Rite" and is of a completely different character. Recorded live, the music here is even less approachable than the preceeding tracks. It is noisy and consists largely of tape loops, electronic feedback and crude metallic banging. If you can get past the low fidelity recording, there's some pretty interesting stuff going on. After all, this is what industrial music is all about, right? The CD adds a twenty-seven minute bonus track (subtitled "An Autumn Journey") that is similar to the rest of the live material, but it features David Tibet of Current 93 fame on "Tibetan Horn" so that is pretty cool.

As dense and difficult as this album is, you have to give 23 Skidoo credit for bucking people's expectations and going out on a limb. Besides, most of the music is quite good, it just takes some getting used to.

Psychic TV - Those Who Do Not (1985)

This is a rerelease of a live album recoded in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1983. It was originally released in 1985, and then again in 1987 under the title "Live in Reykjavik." The most current CD release has a new cover (pictured) and adds to the original track list some bizarre experts of an Icelandic naming ritual. While the recording quality of these extra tracks is somewhat low-fi, the murky chanting and far away bells provide the perfect atmosphere for a Nordic Pagan ceremony, and they provide a nice break between the more traditional Psychic TV performances.

Since this was 1983, the band had not yet mrophed into the rather dull trance outfit that they would ultimately become, and there is still plenty of Throbbing Gristle style noisemaking present. However, this recording is generally more diverse than your average TG album, probably due to the impressive list of personel present. In addition to the usual suspects, you'll also find David Tibet, Alex Ferguson and John Balance. Practically the whole British industrial scene together on one album!

The music is generally what you would expect from these troublemakers. Genesis P-Orridge wails and drones on with his usual indecipherable ramblings while tape loops and drum machines chug along in the background. What makes this one of the more interesting PTV live releases is the other instruments used in creative ways. The aforementioned bells play a dominant roll, giving the album a rather mystical quality. The track "Burn Against Fears" contains a series of weird synthesizer washes that sound like a cross between Terry Riley and Thighpaulsandra, making for a standout if uncharacteristically subdued track.

It's easy to hear bits and pieces of other bands from the time scattered throughout. Some of the bell playing could have come right off of Coil's first couple of albums, and the tape loops in the title track sound just like the sort of things 23 Skidoo were doing. It's easy to write P-Orridge off as a deranged nut (which he is) but there's no denying how incredibly influential he was on an entire genre of music. Listening to early PTV live albums offers great insight into the development of Industrial as we know it today.

Einstürzende Neubauten - Silence Is Sexy (2000)

It's clear that these German industrial pioneers have matured a lot since their humble beginnings nearly thirty years ago. In the early days, they collected various scraps of metal and concrete and banged them together for their (and our) amusement. They haven't lost any of their scrap metal, but now they use it to make actual songs, and catchy ones at that.

Not to imply that this is in any way poppy; it's still arty and difficult and sometimes downright disturbing, but now there is a sense of genuine craftsmanship in every track. Frontman Blixa Bargeld has obviously been honing his lyrical skills as well, since the words on the album display far more subtlety and depth than on earlier releases such as Halber Mensch, or even the groundbreaking Haus Der Lüge. Some of the songs are in German, and some are in English, but all are enjoyable.

The mood of Silence is Sexy is notably restrained and a bit morose. Blixa's voice resembles a whisper far more often than a scream. The result of this is a lingering tension that gradually builds and is sustained for most of the album. You keep expecting things to explode, but they almost never do. The notable and awesome exception to this is the standout track "Redukt." It begins with a simple 4/4 rhythm coming from what sounds like an anvil. This is accompanied by long and wordy verses in German, all subdued and held back by the unceasing metal banging. The track is ten minutes long and this pattern continues for a really long time, but just when you think are no more surprises, the roaring, single-word chorus comes blasting out like the wrath of God. If you're not prepared for it, the sudden change in volume can be hard on the ears, but the effect is marvelous.

The other song I want to mention is the sole track on the second disc. "Pelikanol" is a twenty minute industrial nightmare that relies on repetition, a lopsided washing machinee rhythm, creepy words and long drones provided by Bargeld's voice. It almost sounds like Krautrock with its steady (albeit warped) groove and trance inducing drones, and it's probably my favorite track on the disc. It just goes to show you not to write off a great band, simply because they've been around for a few decades.

Coil - How To Destroy Angels (1992)

This is the first Coil record I ever bought, and as such it holds a rather special place in my collection. It contains a number of remixes and reworkings of one of the band's earliest tracks "How To Destroy Angels." The original piece was made entirely with gongs and other metallic percussion and is one of the landmark achievements of early industrial music. Here, we have a variety of studio manipulations that surpass the earlier version in imagination and atmosphere.

"The Sleeper," at a mere two minutes, isolates and focuses on a weird pulsing sound like a wet jumprope being swung around. "Dismal Orb" strips away all but the most minimal of textures and simply hangs in the air, like swamp gas.

"Tectonic Plates" is a highlight, filled with violent scraping and grinding noises. It lives up to its title completely, as it conjures up images of vast rock formations smashing against each other under the mounting pressure of liquid magma. The vast array of effects the band is able to achieve from such simple source material is astonishing.

The album also includes a full length remix of the original sixteen minute "How To Destroy Angels" by Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound.) Unfortunately, the remixing is too subtle to really be noticeable unless you listen to the two side by side. The upside of this is that listeners who have been unable to acquire the the compilation "Unnatural History," on which the original track appears, now have a chance to hear it.

The album concludes with one second of silence, entitled "Absolute Elsewhere." This is a reference to the original one-sided vinyl, on which the blank side was labeled with this title. This albums is often referred to as an EP, owing to it's rather specific nature, but its length spans a good fifty minutes. More than satisfactory, considering the quality of the material.

SPK - Leichenschrei (1982)

SPK were an Australian Industrial group that allegedly met each other while working at a mental asylum. I don't know whether this story is true, but the music on this album certainly doesn't hurt its case.

Consisting of a mishmash of metallic clanking, tape loops, disturbing spoken word stories, breaking glass and women screaming, Leichenschrei is the stuff of nightmares. The influence of such pioneers as Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle is heard throughout, although SPK clearly have a style all their own. There's never a dull moment, and I wouldn't hesitate to rate this up with Throbbing Gristle's D.O.A as one of the finest records of the genre.