Throbbing Gristle: An Endless Discontent

In 1976, the British band Throbbing Gristle emerged from the radical arts collective COUM Transmissions, comprising core members Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti, alongside Hipgnosis photographer Peter Christopherson and electronics specialist Chris Carter. While they had previously performed in more understated arts environments, their significant launch coincided with the COUM retrospective exhibition Prostitution at London's ICA gallery. This event showcased and contextualised a range of challenging objects from COUM's various actions in performance art and pornography.

Through a deliberately curated strategy that invited press, civic and arts dignitaries, extravagant followers of the nascent punk scene, and music journalists, the band swiftly generated controversy and media panic. This expertly tapped into the restrictive climate and encroaching conservatism of late 1970s Britain. Any opportunities for exploring sex, censorship, and transgression being opened up by a formative punk ethos and movement were amplified and exposed by Throbbing Gristle and Prostitution. An outraged Member of Parliament, Nicholas Fairbairn, took the bait, labelling the ensemble the 'wreckers of civilisation', providing a suitable newspaper headline that would be followed a month later by 'the filth and the fury' as the Sex Pistols uttered strong profanities on live television.

The transition from COUM to Throbbing Gristle encompassed a primary mode of expression: making music as opposed to art, further aligning with the energy of the nascent punk scene. The band quickly developed a radically deviant and challenging reputation by pushing the punk format beyond its strictures in terms of lyrical themes, amateurism, and considerations of what constitutes music. Through a handful of record releases on their own label, Industrial Records, and a sporadic string of live performances, the band cultivated a strong and devoted following, including key journalists and fanzine editors from the punk and post-punk scenes such such as Jon Savage and Sandy Robertson. The band's style of exploring harsh pre-recorded sounds, samples of disconcerting narratives and conversations, and feeding all sounds through messy electronic processing devices gave rise to the term 'industrial music'. This was further bolstered by their practice of performing a strictly timed one-hour set and adopting a non-rockstar mode, appearing disinterested and preoccupied with electronic devices. Having given a name and impetus to the industrial music scene, many of their followers and fans went on to form bands in later years.

Drawing on works such as Andy Bennett's When the Lights Went Out, this book examines late 1970s Britain, before, during, and immediately after the Winter of Discontent, to situate the activism of Throbbing Gristle within this period. It explores how the band operated both within and against the zeitgeist, and how they worked within and against punk, just as punk itself worked within and against the time and place. Punk acts as a mediating factor and a source of nuisance value, as Throbbing Gristle emerged concurrently with punk in late 1976, seemingly grappled with it through 1977, and then proceeded to create and eventually critique a number of post-punk scenes that flourished around 1979. Trowell narrates the story through a series of live performances, highlighting these as points where Throbbing Gristle interacted with various city-scenes around England during their original period of operation (1975-1981). The band reflected (and incorporated into their live music) key tropes from the time, both 'mainstream' and fringe (subcultural, avant-garde art, counter-culture, taboo subjects, extremes), ensuring that Throbbing Gristle events had a profound impact and affect. Trowell traces these as a series of impressions and reverberations amongst fans who subsequently pursued their own music and projects.