20 Jazz Funk Greats [Remaster]

Performer: Throbbing Gristle
Distributor: Caroline Distribution

Notes: Throbbing Gristle: Cosey Fanni Tutti (vocals, guitar, synthesizer, cornet); Peter Christopherson (vocals, cornet, vibraphone); Chris Carter (vocals, synthesizer); Genesis P-Orridge (violin, synthesizer, vibraphone, bass). Throbbing Gristle: Cosey Fanni Tutti (vocals, guitar, cornet, synthesizer); Genesis P-Orridge (vocals, viola, synthesizer, vibraphone, bass guitar); Peter Christopherson (vocals, cornet, vibraphone, tapes); Chris Carter (vocals, synthesizer, sequencer). Though Throbbing Gristle's label, Industrial Records, inadvertently gave the music world a new genre heading, there's not much in the way of clanging pipes or steam-vent hiss on 20 JAZZ FUNK GREATS. Then again, you'll find no jazz (title track excepted), precious little funk, and only 13 songs here. "Maturing" beyond the performance-art outrages of COUM Transmissions, TG's Genesis P-Orridge, Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti, and Peter Christopherson take to cutting slabs of murky, artless, malevolent noise with such titles as "Zyklon-B Zombie" and "Maggot Death." GREATS slaps a sarcastic happy-face on the band's antisocial aesthetic. This is TG's "pop" album. The cover even shows them standing in a meadow, grinning ear-to-ear (or trying to). The cause of their amusement, however, is a nude female corpse splayed among the tall poppies. The creepy calm of "Tanith," the tortured synth-pop of "Still Walking," and "Hot On The Heels Of Love" capture the mood. Terminally sour P-Orridge's chanted litany of complaints ("What A Day") is pretty funny, and "Walkabout" is a lovely synth-strumental. But the voyeuristic aplomb with which he tears into "Persuasion," a grainy S&M script set to Gristle-y sound effects, is thoroughly unnerving.

Q (9/91) - 4 Stars - Excellent - "..travels between the melodic structures of a perverse Abba to the electronic austerity of Kraftwerk.."

Throbbing Gristle combined primitive electronics, tape loops, avant-garde techniques, and post-punk energy to create a dark, experimental sound that was a tremendous influence on industrial and electronic music from the 1980s on. They evolved from a mid-'70s London performance-art group, but by 1977 they were committing acts of sonic terrorism on vinyl. After disbanding in the early '80s, they splintered off into Psychic TV and Chris And Cosey, but reunited for a 2004 festival that was put together to pay tribute to Throbbing Gristle's long-lasting influence.

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