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