Throbbing Gristle

Throbbing Gristle's Greatest Hits [2 CDs]

Label: Industrial Records Country: UK

"Part of the re-release of Throbbing Gristle's first five albums on vinyl and CD. Each album has been restored and remastered specifically for each format by Chris Carter from 24bit "baked tape" digital transfers of the original first generation analogue master tapes. Each of the CD special-editions are presented in a gatefold sleeve featuring restored and remastered cover artwork and an integrated 8-page booklet (the booklets feature different artwork and content than the vinyl editions). Each CD special-edition also includes an exclusive bonus CD containing content from the year of the album's original release, including live tracks and remastered singles.

It's impossible to deny Throbbing Gristle's working methods and innovation are so deeply ingrained in the collective consciousness of... everything. TG's subversive dismantling of the apparatus of social control casts such a long shadow, and as impossible as it may seem, this collection actually provides an exceptional summation of their best work. The first real industrial group, the founders of Industrial Records and one of the most important electronic music innovators of all time, TG redefined music and laid a large part of the groundwork for all electronic music that followed.

The CD version includes a bonus CD of live recordings, plus two previously unreleased mixes from the 1980s: "The Old Man Smiled (Alternative Mix)" and "AB7A (AB7B Mix)." The 8-page full-color book includes visual ephemera and previously-unpublished photographs. Cover artwork has been painstakingly restored from the original source material."-Industrial Records

"Genesis P. Orridge was the Frank Zappa of experimental electronic music, exploring virtually every notion and idea of performance that he could possibly muster. And his period with Throbbing Gristle resulted in some of the most dense and difficult music to ever see the light of day, a staggering thought even decades after the band's demise.

Turning the idea of rock music on its head and injecting it with a lethal dose of electronica, Gristle was light years ahead of its time and suffered endless persecution from the British government because of their wild ideas. On this ironically titled collection, the band offers 11 tracks that plant the seeds for a number of genres. Synth pop is here in the primal, awkward guise of "Adrenalin," while "Hot on the Heels of Love" may be one of the very first techno songs ever.

"Subhuman" would set the standard for the type of ranting industrial rock that Skinny Puppy and Ministry would actually have to water down, and "Six Six Sixties" is the sort of guitar-driven noise narrative which would later find brief popularity with the New York City art rock scene. Elsewhere, punk rises from the dead as a shambling zombie ("Blood on the Floor"); Kraftwerk is reshaped into disco death jazz ("20 Jazz Funk Greats"); "United" paves the way for Orridge's own descent into pop; and the spine-chilling "What a Day" is the closest they could ever come to having a rave-up.

Beyond these tracks, everything else sounds like it was recorded on a distant planet hundreds of years ago, blending the primal sludge of early Residents with the demented sonic experiments of Faust and Can. The results range from the eerie and ugly ("Tiab Guls") to the sublimely beautiful ("AB/7A"). This beauty is the primary reason why this band was as good as they were; it was so hard to dismiss the band because these weird hooks and chunks of pop found their way into the harshest noise experiments.

Standing heads and tails above the rest of their contemporaries, this is the best place to first discover Throbbing Gristle's difficult but rewarding body of work. Anyone with even a passing interest in unusual and experimental music would do themselves a big favor by checking this out."-Bradley Torreano, All Music