The Second Annual Report of Throbbing Gristle; D.O.A.: The Third & Final Report of Throbbing Gristle; 20 Jazz Funk Greats; Heathen Earth; Greatest Hits (Industrial)
by Phil Freeman
Timing is everything. I first heard of Throbbing Gristle in the late ’80s, possibly as late as 1990, having read of them in books published by Re/Search. The only CD of their work I could find was a one-track item called CD1. I bought it and was bored. It was a humming, hissing, throbbing piece of electronic atmosphere, and I don’t think I made it all the way through even once. My interests moved in different directions in the years that followed; jazz aside, I was mostly listening to metal and punk, and the only industrial music I heard was of the Ministry/KMFDM/Nine Inch Nails school, plus Einstürzende Neubauten.
I kept seeing their name in print, and of course when they reunited a few years ago they were inescapable—Wire cover story, et cetera. They were enshrined as elder statesmen and cultural pioneers. And I still hadn’t heard them. So now here I am, as 2011 draws to a close, absorbing the Throbbing Gristle corpus for the first time. Their first five releases have been reissued, on their own Industrial label, as two-CD sets, paired with contemporaneous live recordings, non-LP singles, and whatnot.
The fifth issue of Burning Ambulance is coming very, very soon! The upcoming print edition will include full-length interviews with Michael Gira of Swans, saxophonist Marcus Strickland, and trumpeter Jeremy Pelt; a profile of avant-garde guitarist/composer Morgan Craft; a history/analysis of Cecil Taylor‘s 1978 Unit (the band that recorded The Cecil Taylor Unit, 3 Phasis, Live in the Black Forest and One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye); a look back at the movie Two-Lane Blacktop, 40 years later; a roundtable examining the state of North American black metal from the perspective of eight very different musicians/bands; an essay on the nature of time as it relates to 20th Century composition; and the cover story, an epic history of Burnt Sugar as told by its co-founders, Greg Tate and Jared Nickerson.
In the meantime, though, issues 1-4 are on sale for 24 hours only! From now until 11:59 PM PST on Wednesday, November 30, you can save 30% just by using the code CYBERTUESDAY305 when you check out at Lulu.com.
Click to purchase: Issue 1 (Matthew Shipp, Henry Threadgill, Bill Dixon, Orthodox, Christian pop culture and more) physical ($10) digital ($5)
Issue 2 (Darius Jones, Bill Dixon memorial, Eyehategod, Japanese pop, punk rock movies and more) physical ($10) digital ($5)
Issue 3 (Anthony Braxton, Jon Irabagon, David Weiss, Moritz von Oswald Trio, Norwegian progressive metal, “New Hollywood” and more) physical ($10) digital ($5)
Issue 4 (JD Allen, Harriet Tubman, Bill Laswell, ELEW, Earth, Nicolas Jaar, Posi-Tone Records, the Ramones, fascist art, and more) physical ($10) digital ($5)
Thanks for your support! New issue coming very soon!
Arizona thrash act Vektor don’t make things easy for the casual listener. Their last album, 2009′s Black Future, was a stark and unforgiving assault, from its black and white, hand-drawn cover art to the music contained within. Three of its nine songs passed the 10-minute mark, with the album closer, “Accelerating Universe,” a 13-and-a-half-minute odyssey. The group’s lyrical subject matter, on that album and this one, is mostly science-fictional in nature; “Hunger for Violence,” from the debut, was their only side trip into rote brutality. The music, though, is so intense and so precise that when they’re blasting through one of their epic songs, it’s easy to become exhausted.
Fortunately, they’ve exercised a lot more compositional discipline on Outer Isolation. With the sole exception of the album’s first track, “Cosmic Cortex,” no song is longer than eight minutes and most are around five. They’re still galloping along most of the time, but there are some tracks with extended midtempo passages here, too, like “Dying World.”
Vektor take a progressive, sci-fi approach to thrash that’s heavily indebted to Voivod, but with some jazz-fusion elements, particularly Frank Chin‘s bass sound, that remind me of Florida death metal acts like Atheist, Death and most of all Sadus (because Vektor lack the finger-knotting intricacy of Death or Atheist). Vocalist David Disanto has a hoarse, occasionally quite high-pitched shriek that’s sometimes reminiscent of Schmier, the frontman for German thrashers Destruction, and other times nods to black metal, or even that chilling high-pitched inhaling sound Einstuerzende Neubauten‘s Blixa Bargeld makes. This could easily be a deal-breaker for some listeners. Fortunately, there are long stretches of instrumental interplay making up the bulk of every one of their songs—vocals are at best an adjunct to what this music is really all about, which is frantic two-guitar interplay, full speed ahead.
What’s maybe most interesting about Vektor is that, unlike the vast majority of their peers, Disanto and Erik Nelson actually tune their guitars up a half step, rather than downtuning. This gives them a high-pitched squealing sound which makes many of their riffs sound pinched-off and even more precise and insectile than they otherwise might, and leaves plenty of space in the mix for Chin and drummer Blake Anderson to keep the hammer down. Indeed, unlike the usual thrash wall of fuzzed-out midrange noise, the mix on Outer Isolation is relatively spacious, with lots of instrumental separation and a dynamics. Chin even gets a bass intro on “Dying World,” and he dominates the dense thicket of sound on “Dark Creations, Dead Creators,” which almost sounds like Rust in Peace-era Megadeth, and the extremely Voivod-esque “Fast Paced Society.”
Vektor are a really impressive band; it’s almost impossible to imagine their music reaching the mainstream metal audience that listens to, say, Lamb of God or Mastodon or Machine Head, but that’s almost certainly not their goal. The retro thrash movement is one of the most purely “in it for the love” musical subgenres around, and these guys ought to be at the head of the pack.
Here’s a video of them playing “Dying World” in California, back in September:
Wonder Girls are the Korean pop group who’ve made the greatest inroads into the U.S. music industry; they were the Stateside opening act for the Jonas Brothers in 2009, and toured the country on their own the following year. Their single “2 Different Tears” was released in three different versions: Chinese, Korean, and English. Wonder World, released November 7, is their second full-length album, following 2007′s The Wonder Years, but there have been several singles released in between—”So Hot,” “Nobody” and “2 Different Tears”—which aren’t on either album.
Those seeking more K-pop like the balls-out (so to speak) insanity of 2NE1 will likely be disappointed by Wonder Girls. They’re fundamentally a modern R&B group, explicitly modeled on Destiny’s Child and other, similar outfits, from the smooth melodies to the uniform wardrobes. There’s no attempt to break individual girls out of the pack and make them garishly individual, as there was with, say, the Spice Girls. Min Sunye is the primary vocalist, and she’s got a terrific, soulful voice that reminds me of Beyoncé, but more restrained. The other girls back her up, with Park Yeeun taking the lead sometimes, too. The music behind the group varies from track to track, but it’s fairly straightforward and could easily appeal to Western audiences. When it’s uptempo, it might be overtly disco-ish, or Euro-style rave techno; when it’s slower, it’s contemporary R&B in a “quiet storm” style rather than some fractured, post-Timbaland soundscape of pings and bleeps. Strings optional. The first single from Wonder World, “Be My Baby,” sounds like their producer, Park Jin-Young, fed all Beyoncé‘s solo albums into a computer and spat out a perfect amalgam of all her hip-cocked, finger-snapping, girls-together anthems.
Here’s the video (note the choreography, designed to be imitated by girls on YouTube):
Other tracks are weirder and cooler. “Act Cool” is a crazed half-Korean/half-English rap by the group’s newest member, Woo Hye-Rim, with a hilariously anthemic chorus (phrases in [brackets] are in Korean):
[I rap in Korean and] I can rap in English
[I can sing in Chinese] Speaking 4 languages
I sing, I dance talking sh*t about me?
It ain’t cool; shut up and dance, boy
Album opener “G.N.O.” is a thumping dance track with a synth melody that reminds me of “We No Speak Americano,” but slightly less maddening. “Sweet Dreams” is a swooshing disco track; “Girls Girls” puts acoustic guitar and bongos over a hip-hop beat and reminds me of 1990s tracks by Des’ree or India.Arie; “SuperB” is a minimal techno track that sounds like it could have come off one of the Kompakt label’s Total compilations, except for the girls’ mesmerizing vocals.
Wonder Girls are supposed to release their U.S. (and full-on English-language) debut CD sometime in 2012. The ultra-tired American music scene could really use them. In the meantime, Wonder World and the rest of their discography is well worth investigating, if upbeat, melodic, fun pop music is of any interest to you at all.
