walking upstream…
Throbbing Gristle
photo: seth tisue (flickr) · cc by-sa 2.0 ↗Throbbing Gristle
On 19 October 1976, Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter Christopherson and Chris Carter debuted as a band inside "Prostitution," the closing exhibition of their performance-art collective COUM Transmissions at London's ICA, an installation of pornography and used tampons that a Conservative MP denounced as the work of "wreckers of civilisation." The band's name for its own project had already been settled the year before, on a walk to London Fields with the artist Monte Cazazza, when Genesis P-Orridge landed on the word he kept repeating: industrial. Over four studio albums to 1981 they built songs from tape loops, homemade electronics and confrontational subject matter, rejecting chords and drummers on principle. As Chris Carter put it, industrial was never a sound to them — it was "a way of life."
the sound in question
1978
Hamburger LadyThrobbing Gristle
walk the tributaries ↓
Nico1960s–70s · Art rock / Experimental / Gothic rock
Cosey Fanni Tutti heard Nico on the same record that reoriented P-Orridge: "It was my introduction to Nico's voice," she said, "when you listen to the instrumentation that [John Cale] puts with her voice, it's just magical." Peter Christopherson felt the pull hard enough that in 2006 he began planning a full cover of Nico's 1970 album Desertshore — a project Chris Carter admitted wasn't his idea ("I was never a big fan of Nico, this was Cosey and Sleazy's thing"). Christopherson died in 2010; Carter and Fanni Tutti finished it without Genesis P-Orridge, releasing it in 2012 under the new name X-TG.
listen: upstream & heresource: The Quietus — Cosey Fanni Tutti's Baker's Dozen (Nico and Martin Denny influences, in her own words) ↗
1970
Janitor of LunacyNico
2012
Janitor of Lunacy (as X-TG)Throbbing Gristle
listen for"Janitor of Lunacy" on Desertshore is just Nico's voice, a wheezing harmonium and John Cale's viola drifting in and out of tune, with nothing keeping time. The 2012 version, sung by the falsetto vocalist Antony Hegarty and credited to X-TG, keeps every chord and pause of the original intact but rebuilds the floor underneath it out of synthesizer hum and tape treatments — the same bare, off-kilter arrangement, run through the electronics this band spent a decade building.
The Velvet Underground1960s · Art rock / Proto-punk / Experimental rock
Genesis P-Orridge dated the whole project back to one import copy of a record from America. Recalling it decades later, he said it "blew me away" the day it reached England: "The Velvet Underground. They had that track, 'The Gift,' where it's just the story." That was the moment he traced Throbbing Gristle's chordless, self-built-instrument method to — a song that abandoned melody for a flat spoken narrative laid over noise, reorienting him away from chart pop entirely.
listen: upstream & heresource: The New Yorker — Industrial Music for Industrial People (Genesis P-Orridge's own account of hearing the Velvet Underground) ↗
1968
The GiftThe Velvet Underground
1978
Hamburger LadyThrobbing Gristle
listen for"The Gift" spends eight minutes with John Cale reading a short story in a flat deadpan while the rest of the Velvet Underground grind out one distorted, barely shifting riff underneath him — voice and noise occupying separate lanes. "Hamburger Lady," Throbbing Gristle's telling of a burn-ward patient, works the same split: a toneless spoken vocal rides over a bed of synthesizer drone and tape hiss that scarcely moves for four minutes.
Martin Denny1950s–60s · Exotica / Lounge / Easy listening
Cosey Fanni Tutti named Martin Denny's kitsch exotica as a direct model, not just a personal favorite: "This ended up being an influence on TG because it was so kitsch, muzak, background music," she said, pointing to how American stores used piped-in sound "to seduce shoppers into buying more." Chris Carter independently described chasing the same idea while planning the band's third album, wanting "this whole kitsch thing where you could find that in a bargain bin" at Woolworths, the discount chain — a deliberate swerve from confrontation into gift-shop muzak.
listen: upstream & heresource: The Quietus — Cosey Fanni Tutti's Baker's Dozen (Nico and Martin Denny influences, in her own words) ↗
1959
Quiet VillageMartin Denny
1979
20 Jazz Funk GreatsThrobbing Gristle
listen forDenny's "Quiet Village" builds an artificial paradise out of vibraphone, birdcalls and a lounge-band shuffle so smooth it barely registers as composition — mood standing in for melody. The title track of 20 Jazz Funk Greats borrows that same over-smoothed lounge surface, easy-listening synth chords swaying under a breezy beat, and turns it into a joke played completely straight: the gentlest-sounding thing the band ever released, hiding on an album named for the noise it deliberately isn't.