Throbbing Gristle: The Taste of TG 12″

Description

Mute present acolored 2LP reissueofThe Taste of TG, the 2004 compilation presenting a beginner’s guide to the music ofThrobbing Gristle. Discontent with ho-hum frameworks and facile reactionary accouterments,Throbbing Gristleset out to subvert standard musical performance, and in the process, lived up to their infamous parliamentary epithet of “wreckers of civilization.” Where punk sought “to change the nature of rock n’ roll,” Genesis P-Orridge and his cohorts were all about mutating and re-inscribing the very nature of music itself.

The Taste of TGoffers 14 tracks culled from the band’s four proper albums, two live tracks, and “Exotic Functions” fromJourney Through a Body, the group’s last studio recording from March 1981. Packaged with a disturbing, tongue-lashing cover image by Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson (a manipulation of a still from the Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1975 filmSal o le 120 giornate di Sodoma), the dark clouds of TG’s electronic mayhem are here on full display, with highlights including the confusion of “Persuasion U.S.A.,” the swirling psychedelia of “His Arm Was Her Leg,” and the seductive horror of “Hamburger Lady.”

The few stabs thatThrobbing Gristlemade at pop music (even if their subject matter was routinely dark) are here as well, with “Hot On the Heels of Love,” “What a Day,” and “United.”