Customer Reviews

Grief

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Wow! A new Throbbing Gristle release! Hardly. This is a great example of what I've always felt about TG. Weird and scary, but also a bit of a prank. This disc - not old, clearly a recent side-scrape of the Throbbing Gristle (media/aural) barrel - is only for TG fanatics. I am one of that lot, so I'll give up the punchline. This CD contains interviews with Genesis P'Orridge, Japanese/Russian & 'cut-up'/'found sound'/ambient noise. The trickery lies with the mixing, like the Velvet Underground's "Gift".

SPOILER: if you want to hear the intersting thoughts of Genesis, shift your stereo Balance knob to hard left. If you want to hear Throbbing Gristle demos, switch your Balance knob to hard right. Either way, it's a pain. Throbbing Gristle in a nutshell. There's no music of worth here, and you'd be mad to make this one of your first TG purchases.

'Grief' was originally put out as a bootleg,but BEFORE the label Thirsty Ear put it out as a legit release,the UK label Yeeah!/Almafame had released it on theirs.'Grief' is a rather strange CD to have a copy of.If you're a new/er Gristle fan,you might want to check out a few of their main lp's/reissues FIRST.Then,if you like what you hear,go ahead and get 'Grief'.Two cuts here of lengthy(how would one put it?)indepth sound collages.I liked "Camera"(24:29)a bit better than I did "Telephone"(23:03).But,then again,Throbbing Gristle has always been considered to be,like mutated industrial.Their line-up(sometimes I have a tough time remembering)is:Genesis P-Orridge-bass&clarinet,Chris Carter-keyboards&synthesizer,Peter Christopherson-sound effects and Casey Fanni Tutti-guitar&vocals.Their influences come from Faust,Can and Silver Apples.Could appeal to fans of Clock DVA,Front Line Assembly and Controlled Bleeding.Pretty much aimed toward completists.

Rubbish - sounds like a tape put together by a TG fan in about 1985 or thereabouts. Basically, this is some interviews with G P-O and radio programmes in a variety of languages mixed with some TG live pieces and put into split stereo. That makes it sound vaguely interesting, but it's not. Not one for TG obsessives, or anyone really.
A real rip-off to reissue this on CD, esp as there are a load of great TG concert tapes around that have yet to make the transfer to CD (ok, i know they're on the boxset, but who the [...] has the time or money for that?).
I took this back to the shop and exchanged it immediately, and i have a high tolerance for TG bilge.

There is no information on the sleeve of this CD, and I won't pretend to know a whole lot about it's contents, but purely from a listening standpoint, here is my impression: This is an interesting CD as it appears to be a string of interviews with Throbbing Gristle (Mostly Genesis P-Orridge talking) set to classic TG-brand music. I didn't immediately care for it at first, but it improves with repeated listenings, and is very interesting to listen to (even if it's a little hard to follow at times). The voices in the interviews are sometimes modified (echoed so that you hear each word 2 or 3 times), so you have to REALLY listen to hear what they are talking about. And some of the topics are quite interesting. Genesis talks of being arrested for sending out some postcards with pornography on them, about a man who records the voices of the dead and how he uses them in live shows & recordings (I THINK you can actually hear these voices weaved in as he is talking about this -- along with the GRISTLER humming away, and what sounds like subliminal symphony music somewhere in the mix (which I have heard on other TG records, especially if I fall asleep my subconcious can hear this spooky music way back there clearly) - very cool stuff). With this information you may think this is something you could pass on, but in my opinion, if you are a TG fan, you MUST get this, it's a real treat.

To be fair, not everything in the TG cannon is going to reach right out and grab you. Much of their work is quite difficult for a casual or new fan to get their head round, mostly because of the "is it a joke or not" nature of the lyrics and the all-over-the-place musical approach. "Grief" is no different and the main reason I can't recommend it is because of a simple moral issue. I have only recently discovered that the label Thirsty Ear apparently doesn't pay TG royalties on these releases ( they have also stiffed Einsturzende Neubauten , among others ). But I've bought "Grief" and I can't do anything about it now except not buy any more Thirsty Ear product, and try to warn others not to as well. As for the content, I've almost got a "take it or leave it" attitude about it, which I now think comes more from the earlier mentioned ridiculous moral quandry I have about the whole affair than anything else. That being said, as the header of this review states, this is simply not an essential TG purchase. Interviews with the always fascinating and entertaining Genesis P-Orridge are its only redeeming feature. The layers of the expected TG brand of mechanial din and wall of noise electronics are just so poorly presented, the audio channels being split right down the middle ( not sure that's intentional either ) and as another reviewer here notes, this sounds like an obsessive fan's homemade creation.

Indeed, a little "grief" to listen to fabolous TG tracks being abused by mixed in with interviews and audio notebooks with GPO as well as some radio shows. Only for the die hard fans? Well, don't know, most hardliners would have get the soundtracks elsewhere and would have the talkshows separately too. For new fans of TG it is suggested to do likewise. Being originally a bootleg from possibly mid 80's (?) sound quality is what you would expect from such. Still it is not bad that this piece is made widely available, but it should never serve as any kind of introductary material, rather, at best, as an archive piece to fill out a wellstocked TG collection.

On this album, you get about 40 minutes of uninteresting whirring and nondescript synth noises working their hardest to obscure bits and pieces of an interview with Genesis P-Orridge.

...
Need I go on?
Why the hell would this get released? Did the band actually sanction this? It sounds like some fanboys got plastered and decided to pay tribute to Throbbing Gristle by screwing around with some sound clips and slathering them with rudimentary buzzes and reverb effects.

I wouldn't even recommend this to completists it's so stiflingly worthless.