REVIEWS [t]

Throbbing Gristle: Part Two - The Endless Not
(Industrial / Mute 2007)

"Shit is shit, no matter how you present it. Most current so called 'electronic musicians' have little or no imagination outside the protected sphere of their computer screen or bedroom. Where has the experimentation gone? Everyone sounds like everyone else. ."
- Chris Carter 2006.
http://www.ikonen-magazin.de/interview/TG.htm

The new TG album is at times nicely powerful, unpredictable and challenging, if pretty and polished. Cosey's trumpet is there thank god, nestled between some weird modern jazz piano on 'Rabbit Snare' and Gen asking if we are scared. Sleazy's input takes some of the electronics part-way into genuine spooky-land on 'Lyre Liar'. Twenty five years on though I fear the group's use of technology has sapped away some of the renegade spirit we all came to know and love. Perhaps even creative technology has moved yet further along while this record has been sitting in Mute's vaults delayed for well over a year. Part Two is a largely meditative album with a new-age ambience, if you've been listening to CarterTutti these past years, notably 'Cabal' much of this album will not suprise you, and it is Carter dominated (he also mastered it). 2005's limited EP-CD 'TGNOW' has more going for it overall and the new version of 'Almost a Kiss' here is too mellow with long sustained keyboard chords and Gen crooning like an opiated Max Bygraves, and when he shouts audibly weak from his recent ill-health. Even the amusing and notoriously bad rhyming lyrics are tiresome especially on the title track with it's laid back trip-hop feel. Among the heavy use of loops toward the last few tracks I noticed on 'The Worm Waits Its Turn' the use of a Sony CD keyboard loop which I also used on a release. I'm feeling quite gutted having to slag off one of the greats with this modern day studio incarnation but the new album seems to die toward the end like a rotting forgotten yuppie on a burnt out tube. Addition: Strangely enough, three months have now passed since the release and I think it could be growing on me.

- jd