Word reaches us that Sweden’s poptronica pioneers, Page, are heading back to the studio to record new songs.
The duo of Eddie Bengtsson and Marina Schiptjenko topped our year-end charts with the single, “Frusen,” which featured Rrussell Bell of Gary Numan’s touring band and Dramatis. Well-placed sources in Sweden indicate that they are planning a single for release in the New Year. An album is expected to follow, later in 2025.
Throbbing Gristle have released their final single and a unique box set as TG Berlin.
(Via Mute)
The new lavish Throbbing Gristle box set chronicling unreleased work recorded around a series of live events at the Berlin Volksbühne, TG BERLIN, is out today via Mute.
The Throbbing Gristle curated event saw the band perform a live set on New Year’s Eve and an improvised live soundtrack to a new 16mm print of Derek Jarman’s In The Shadow of the Sun (1981) on New Year’s Day, and, while the band were in Berlin, they recorded two final songs alongside a 48-minute piece of new music.
The box set – which comprises of 4 CDs, a Blu-ray, a 10” vinyl and a booklet featuring unseen photographs from the time by Paul Heartfield as well as new sleeve notes by the award winning Scottish visual artist Lucy McKenzie – collates both of these performances, alongside the TG Berlin Studio Session which is comprised of the final Throbbing Gristle single (two unreleased tracks, ‘Scabs & Saws’ and ‘Wotwududo’,) and an unreleased 48-minute piece titled ‘TG Berlin Studio Session 2005 – 2006’, recorded at Planet Roc studios during the time they were in the city.
TG Berlin will also include the “rehearsal” for In The Shadow of the Sun, recorded on New Year’s Day at the Volksbühne (“people’s theatre”). The performance of In The Shadow of the Sun was improvised, so the two documents offer a different perspective on the soundtrack to Jarman’s work.
The New Year’s Eve show previewed five songs from the band’s first album in 27 years, Part Two: The Endless Not, several years before its release, on a set list that included ‘Convincing People’, ‘Slug Bait’, and ‘Hamburger Lady’ (their first encore in 25/26 years, and what an encore!) – tracks that had lost none of their potency in the intervening years – plus the released track, ‘Splitting Sky’ and more. The performance is also included as a Blu-ray.
In 2004, Throbbing Gristle – Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (1950-2020) and Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson (1955-2010) – regrouped and the following six years became a period of renewed creativity for the band. Back in the studio after 20 years, they found group intuition when performing was intact, and their ability to break down barriers and forge connections with an audience was more powerful than ever.
This new box set, the latest release in an ongoing collaboration with Mute, is a compelling document of Throbbing Gristle performing and recording as a four-piece with a renewed vigour. From the opening beats and serrated electronics of one of their final tracks recorded together, ‘Scabs & Saws’, it’s clear that TG are not revisiting ground already tread, but bringing two decades of individual experience back into the studio to create a new exploration of sound. The vocals have a different depth, the groove is deeper, and the atmosphere has lost none of its potency.
CD1 – TG Berlin
Live at the Volksbühne Berlin, New Year’s Eve 2005
Trumpet Herald
Convincing People
Splitting Sky
Slug Bait
Rabbit Snare
Almost A Kiss
Greasy Poo
Endless Not
Vow of Silence
PA Destroyer
Hamburger Lady
CD2 – In the Shadow of the Sun
Live at the Volksbühne Berlin, New Year’s Day, 2006
In the Shadow of the Sun Live – 49:29
CD3 – In the Shadow of the Sun
Rehearsal at the Volksbühne Berlin, New Year’s Day 2006
In the Shadow of the Sun Rehearsal – 49:12
CD4 – TG Berlin Studio Session (2005 – 2006)
TG Berlin – 48:22
Scabs & Saws 11:02
Wotwududo 7:07
Recorded late December 2005 to early January 2006 at Planet Roc (Funkhaus), Berlin
10” vinyl – The Final Throbbing Gristle single
Side A
Scabs & Saws 11:02
Side B
Wotwududo 7:07
Blu-ray
Throbbing Gristle Live at the Volksbühne Berlin, New Year’s Eve 2005
Trumpet Herald
Convincing People
Splitting Sky
Slug Bait
Rabbit Snare
Almost a Kiss
Greasy Poo
The Endless Not
Vow of Silence
PA Destroyer
Hamburger Lady
(Photos: Paul Heartfield)
Sunroof – the all-modular duo of Daniel Miller and Tonmeister Gareth Jones – have announced Volume 3 of their Electronic Music Improvisations series. The album will be released on vinyl, CD and digitally via the Parallel Series of Mute on 29 November 2024.
A missive from Mute tells us:
Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 3 is a collection of nine improvised tracks, recorded using the duo’s Eurorack modular systems, and builds upon the self-imposed parameters laid out on their 2021 debut. With nothing pre-planned or rehearsed, each of the nine tracks were recorded using four channels (two each) with no overdubs. Explaining that, “Our practice is more abstract than thematic. Every time we meet, we attempt a fresh start,” Miller and Jones arrived to each recording session with the spirit, energy and discipline of improvisation and recorded the tracks as live performances, with very little post-production work done once the tracks are recorded.
One exception is on ‘Ensnare’. The original, where glassy percussion works alongside submerged rhythmic beats, has been given two separate remixes by Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones, allowing listeners a glimpse into their very different but intrinsically intertwined processes.
Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones have been collaborating for four decades. Although neither dwell on their past work, preferring to constantly explore new ways to create, Miller and Mute’s legacy is given a nod on ‘Splendid’ which opens with the distinct hiss of analogue tape over a rhythmic heart beat before oscillators burst and collide. This track was recorded using the original 4-track TEAC that Miller picked up second hand in the late 70s and used to record The Normal’s Warm Leatherette 7”.
Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones’ collaboration began in 1982 when Miller asked Jones to work with him on what became Depeche Mode’s Construction Time Again. After Depeche Mode had gone home for the day, the two would stay on to work on their own sessions, a practise that continues to this day. By the mid-nineties Sunroof had become a remix project, reworking the likes of Can, MGMT, To Rococo Rot, Kreidler and Goldfrapp, amongst others, and their first recordings appeared on a compilation paying tribute to Neu!
In 2019, Miller and Jones were heading to a György Ligeti concert at the Barbican and beforehand the pair spent a couple of hours improvising with modular systems. Unusually, this time they decided to record the session and over a pre-concert meal, Gareth asked, “Are we actually going to make a record together before we die?”
The resulting album, Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 1 (2021) was followed by Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 2 (2023), and since 2021, Sunroof have been performing select live shows – at venues such as Café OTO (London), the London School of Economics, the Museum of Modern Electronic Music Frankfurt, Silent Green in Berlin, Ombra Festival (Barcelona), Oslo Cathedral, Golden Pudel (Hamburg), DG Kunstraum (Munich), and IKLECTIK (London) – allowing their live performance to feed back into their recordings. Some of these recordings were released last year as a Bandcamp exclusive, Electronic Music Improvisations Live in London and Frankfurt.
From Östermalm comes news that Julian & Marina are preparing for the release of a new EP. Titled &, the first track – “Pinup Boy” – has already been unveiled.
Located somewhere on the spectrum between Bardot and disco, the duo has established a reputation for smooth, electronic music with the soul of the Riviera. “Pinup Boy” glitters under the neon lights, hinting at good things for the new collection.
Marina Schiptjenko is the cofounder of the Franco-Swedish modern art gallery, Andrehn-Schiptjenko. One of the pioneers of Nordic poptronica, she is well known as a member of Page, Vacuum and BWO.
Julian Brandt currently plays bass in Sweden’s answer to Duran Duran, Lustans Lakejer. He is also known for his solo work and as a member of the legendary acts, Bobby and Kamera.
No live shows have been announced, but both artists will be on stage separately when Lustans Lakejer and Page play together in Malmö on 26 October 2024.
It is the nature of the beast. The more you put into a film, the more it costs to clear intellectual property and polish it for release.
The producers of Nash the Slash Rises Again have appealed for additional funding to complete the project. They have recorded contributions from Iggy Pop, Gary Numan, Youth, Danielle Dax, Steve Hillage and others, but putting the final pieces into place requires fans to pitch in.
There is a link to the fundraising initiative here: https://gofund.me/e96c232b
We strongly encourage fans to contribute, if they are able.
Sad news reaches us that Andreas Catjar-Danielsson has passed away, aged 51, after a battle with cancer. The Swedish musician was closely associated with Covenant and Abu Nein, but he also created his own music and worked in theatre – at home and in Germany.
We send our condolences to his family and many friends.
Mark Spybey (Zoviet France, Dead Voices on Air) and Graham Lewis (Wire, Dome, UUUU) have collaborated for a new album of experimental material. Lewis Spybey features six tracks of intriguing rhythms and drones that loop and spiral with intensity. The result is somewhere between the moment before sunrise and an infantry assault.
Out now on CD and digital formats from Emergency Hearts.
Throbbing Gristle terminated their original mission in 1981. The rock and roll cliche version is that the band broke up over a girl. The deeper reality is that Genesis P-Orridge, the band’s lead vocalist, was a complex character with some truly dark features. The “girl” in question (she shies from gender labels) was Cosey Fanni-Tutti. The guitarist and one-time UFO album cover model brought them to light in her writings: she was trafficked, physically assaulted, and subjected to mental abuse by P-Orridge during their time together. To twist a phrase attributed to the latter, TG was a challenging organisation for challenging people.
At the same time, TG was a creative force that blew holes in the rock establishment. The band created an independent label to release their own music and that of like-minded artists. They wrote with synthesisers and made songs inspired by ABBA, while mining true crime subcultures and inflicting tinnitus on their audiences. Their sense of humour and exploitation of “indecency” won them fans and enemies in equal proportions.
Mute, which has quietly acquired large swathes of the industrial music back catalogue, has announced two reissues from TG’s archives. The first is a relaunch of TGCD1 with a vinyl option. The second is a CD and vinyl releasd of The Third Mind Movements. The latter was previously only available as merch on TG’s final US tour in 2009. Both are available from 23 (see what they did there?) August 2024.
Mute tell us:
TGCD1 comprises 42 minutes of studio recordings, recorded at TG’s infamous Martello Street studio on a TEAC 8-Track recorder on 18 March 1979. The release, which comes with a booklet featuring the original 1986 sleeve notes by the band, was an exclusive piece of unreleased material for Throbbing Gristle’s first-ever CD release, and today, the record’s dark sound stands as a significant chapter in their discography.
In 2004 Chris Carter, Peter Christopherson, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti regrouped – 23 years after their mission was originally terminated – and between 2004 and 2007 the band released Part Two: The Endless Not, TG Now and A Souvenir of Camber Sands – all recently reissued via Mute.
The Third Mind Movements – available for the first time on vinyl and commercially for the first time on CD – was initially an exclusive CD release for the band’s final US tour in 2009 – they would split for the final time the following year. The tour, which saw them perform in the US for the first time in 28 years, included their first shows in NY and an appearance at Coachella festival. The Third Mind Movements album, recorded during the Desertshore sessions at the ICA, London several years earlier – a series of six live recordings from the ICA attended by an attentive audience – journeys through manipulated, time-stretched and distorted samples, with rhythmical breakbeats and hypnotic oscillations of electronics.
The ICA sessions were a unique and fascinating experience. An audience was assembled near Buckingham Palace, composed of refugees from Thee Temple of Psychick Youth and curious office workers. They were able to observe the band in action from seats overlooking work tables. Considering that TG had been maligned in the press and Parliament as “wreckers of civilisation,” the domestic scenery and polite interactions of the event turned a mirror on TG’s critics. As they consumed fantastic quantities of snacks and lashings of milky tea, TG turned Nico into something new and created new material of their own.
The gristle throbbed on and off after that. Again, a “girl” was involved. Maybe more than one. These releases are relics, but they don’t belong in a museum.
Propaganda were one of the most important acts of the 1980s. Signed to Trevor Horn’s ZTT label, they fused industrial and alternative sensibilities with the sleekest of aesthetics. Under the cover of elegant pop, they smuggled in the sounds of metal, the rhythms of the underground dancefloor, and scenes lifted from expressionist cinema.
At the time, many West Germans could be found listening to the Scorpions in stonewashed denim, with bandanas tied around their legs and squirrel tails hanging from their belts. Nostalgia shows selectively neglect to point out the contrast between the travesty of mass fashion and the haute couture of Propaganda’s sound.
The tools they recorded with cost the same as a house, at the time, but Propaganda was not elitist. They embodied a Teutonic coolness that seemed accessible to the kids on the alternative dancefloor. The icy vocals of Claudia Brücken could lean towards Brechtian cabaret, but there was warmth and power in the instrumentation. Their debut album, A Secret Wish, went top 20 in the UK.
After that initial rush, things got complicated. Legal troubles surfaced, Brücken went solo, and the other members of the band were subject to an injunction by ZTT. Another album was made with a different lead singer, but the original quartet were unhappy with a subsequent attempt to reunite.
The core songwriting team of Michael Mertens and Ralf Dörper has combined again as Propaganda for a new album. Propaganda is a double LP/CD with thirteen tracks or a standard LP with eight. On the evidence of the first single to be released from the album, “Purveyor of Pleasure,” the sound has been updated for the new millennium in a darker vein. The touches of the epic and the melodic are still present, but the shine of the 80s has been replaced by a grittier intensity and new textures. Our own secret wish comes true on 11 October 2024 through Bureau B. In the meantime, the second single is out now with vocals by Thunder Bae:
Tracklisting
A1) They Call Me Nocebo
A2) Purveyor Of Pleasure
A3) Vicious Circle
A4) Tipping Point
B1) Distant
B2) Love:Craft
B3) Dystopian Waltz
B4) Wenn ich mir was wünschen dürfte ltd
2-LP/2-CD Edition
C1) Not Good For You
C2) Solace In Sin
C3) World Out Of Joint
D1) I Feel Mysterious
D2) The Calling
(Photos: Thomas Stelzmann)
