THROBBING GRISTLE – Live @ All Tomorrow’s Parties | fvll concert (2004)

Throbbing Gristle, ATP 2004: a gateway to a strange other England – The Guardian, 5 August 2020

An encounter with the British industrialists opened not only a world of music and underground culture but a whole new way of living

By the winter of 2004, the Pontins holiday camp at Camber Sands had seen better days. Barely updated since its 1970s heyday, the bleak chalets, roamed by the ghosts of Bluecoats, were an appropriate setting for Throbbing Gristle’s comeback.

In the late 70s, the band had held up a mirror to a seamy, degraded Britain ruled by corrupt authorities and mired in industrial decline, with lyrics about the Moors murders and political control, and stage outfits made of army-surplus gear. Musically, their use of samplers and abstract sound made them pioneers. After they terminated their initial phase of operation in 1981, none of the industrial artists who later cited them as an influence – Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails – came close to their radical sonics and social commentary.

TG’s plan had been to return to the fray with their own weekend event at Camber Sands in May 2004, but this was cancelled and that December they joined an All Tomorrow’s Parties lineup, part-curated by the artists Jake and Dinos Chapman. Although a comeback concert earlier that year had been well-received by the faithful, a festival bill featuring Aphex Twin and Sunn O))) could have left a 25-year-old group like TG sounding stale. But this one would be no exercise in nostalgia.

Late on the Friday night, Chris Carter and Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson walked on to the stage of the huge upstairs venue, a garish space decorated with murals of cartoon characters and adverts for WKD drinks, its carpet sticky with years of spilled lager. Sleazy was dressed in a giant white furry outfit; Genesis P-Orridge followed in purple tights, tiny skirt, boots and a shock of bleached-blond hair. I had never seen anything like it – this was not standard at a fairly blokey jeans-and-T-shirts festival. A deep rhythm, pulsing like an anxious human heart, filled the room, Cosey Fanni Tutti used her guitar to make a sound I had never heard the instrument make before and an unearthly growling tickled my ears. The next 90 minutes were life-changing… [+]

SETLIST:

1. P-A-D.

2. What a Day.

3. Greasy Spoon.

4. Live Ray.

5. Hamburger Lady.

6. Almost a Kiss.

7. Poem.

8. Splitting Sky.