Quadruplets of prime Foetal matter.
A brood of Thirlwell e.p.s from the eighties for aural delight.
As his first adopted persona: 'Foetus', J.G.Thirlwelll really
did bring something new to life during that horrible dour period of the
mid-eighties. Full of drama, overt machismo, threatened violence,
sadism, misogyny, black-vaudeville-type [ironic?] humour and musical
theatrics equal to the grandest of grand opera, here was an artist who
although quickly labelled as a member of the 'no wave', was unique.
Incomparable then: greatly emulated since; you can hear his influence
throughout so many sub-genres; and this e.p. from 85, a
You've Got Foetus On Your Breath production, shows how
Thirlwell
was already having big fun with rap and dance music. Accompanying it
with what was already becoming his own familiar style of art work,
adopting stark red, white and black cover designs, which often
incorporated comic book and iconographic styles; in this case obvious
Socialist imagery, but doing a bit of an Escher with it.
And why not?
Sometimes it seemed as if
Thirlwell
existed years ahead of his time. I could imagine, at the time of
listening to this on release, this is what the music of the future will
sound like; and on listening to this e.p. now, 'Slog' especially sounds
very relevant; and if it wasn't for the crackles on my recording (just
imagine it as a DJ Shadow mix) it wouldn't sound that out of place
amongst what is going on now, twenty-five or so years later, in the
'alternative indie dance scene'.
Cem, on first hearing Foetus described it as sounding like Trent
Reznor speeded-up; like
NIN, but more jolly, and a lot more fun.
And
this recording is definitely fun; not yet the darker Foetus that would
soon expose its depravity, but a bouncy, danceable and
singalongable-to Foetus.
But
things were about to change: for as the decade moved on, selfishness,
greed and smack were all becoming the fads and flavours of the day, and
Thirlwell was to be our mirror, our own little no wave Caliban.
You've Got Foetus on Your Breath (1985)
Wash It All Off
Today I Started Slogging Again
A couple of releases later and
Thirlwell
was becoming just as much a composer as he was a radical artist and
musician. This e.p. from 87, indicates how much he had progressed
musically: the Stravinsky-like stringed
outro
on the track 'Ramrod' is stunningly arranged and executed; full of
foreboding, darkness and power: a truly incredible piece of music.
The flip side adopts a more industrial edge, with the track '
Boxhead' sounding a little like an Al
Jorgenson production; but due to its idiosyncratic
soundscaping and theatricality,
Thirlwell's sound allowed him to retain individuality: Ministry-like, perhaps, but a very dark vaudeville version.
Along with the previous album
Nail,
Thirlwell had established a place in the music scene akin to a cult
film director working in Hollywood; a Lynch-like character.
This e.p. is Thirlwell's
Eraserhead.
Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel (1987)
Ramrod
Boxhead
Smut
Thirlwell was always big on collaborations, and one of his best joint projects was
Wiseblood: a collaboration with the Swiss' Prince of Darkness:
Roli Mosimann.
And apart from the obvious percussive elements,
Mosimann brought a lot of production value to
Thirlwell's sound. This is most notable on the
Dirtdish album, featuring songs such as the comic monster blaster '
Stumbo' and the wistful 'Someone Drowned in my Pool', both of which were later released as singles.
Motorslug, 1985,
was the first
Wiseblood e.p. release. Petrol-head's delight: strap yourself in and GO:
"Keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel"
Minimalist is too busy a term to describe 'Death Rape 2000'.
With just three notes, Thirlwell attempts to conjure up a demonic state with a blast of
Musica Diabolica: an assault on the senses from a tritone sequence repeated for seven and a half minutes.
"Death Rape 2000.
An Instrument.
An Instrument of Torture/An Instrument of Music
Maximum Volume and Minimum Distraction is Suggested.
Playable At Most High Speeds.
Recommended Listening Environment:
Under Fast Strobe And/Or At High Speed"
Using the
tritone, or
Devil's Interval
is not uncommon in dissonant music; and since the Middle Ages has
always been considered to be audio code for evil or the Devil; so much
so, that the Catholic Church censored and banned any piece of music that
included the diabolical musical interval: any sequence of notes
spanning three whole tones.
It has become most familiar now through Tony
Iommi
stumbling across it and choosing it as the riff to open the theme track
'Black Sabbath'. He claimed to know nothing about the diabolical
connection with the augmented fourth (probably the most diabolical of
all
tritone sequences), he claimed to be just searching for "something that sounded right... something that sounded really evil and
doomy".
And
I believe him, serendipity is an amazing thing; and who knows, maybe
the devil took his prosthetic fingertips and guided the digits through
the sequence. Well you never know.
More conscious uses of the
Devil's Interval pop up in Sibelius and Wagner; Britten uses it in his
War Requiem; Hendrix used it in 'Purple Haze';
Metallica in 'For Whom the Bell Tolls', and Danny
Elfman used it to open his theme for
The Simpsons!
Go on, sing it to yourself.
On seeing Foetus around this time, I
was expecting to walk out on stage (remember this was years before the
net, when an image is merely a click away, and Foetus didn't appear on
BBC television that often) some dude with a bone through his nose,
draped in shrunken heads, carrying a spear in one hand and the Bible in
the other; but no, he was just a real regular looking guy. In fact,
someone commented at the time, that he looked a little like Rick Astley...
Rick Astley
Wiseblood -
Motorslug (1985)
Motorslug
Death Rape 2000
Long before Nick Cave and Polly Harvey became the darlings of the hip-goth set, or Dita got it together with Brian,
Thirlwell got it on, both romantically and creatively, with musician and all-round vamp, Lydia Lunch.
One of the results of their creative entanglement was the release of the e.p.
Stinkfist in 1987, with
Thirlwell adopting his favoured collaborating moniker: Clint Ruin.
A vast amount of percussion and 'metal' was used in this recording, with
Thirlwell even drafting in extra skin and metal
thumpers - Cliff Martinez amongst them - to add some professionalism to the cacophony.
Very tribal and dancy, Thirlwell
created a ritualistic sound; again foreseeing future trends, and
anticipating the fusion of the industrial sound with dance, and much of
the thematic thrash and hardcore that was soon to follow in its wake.
The percussion and beats are highly
textured and massive on this piece and it really builds as the track
progresses. Accompanied with vocal group chants and moans and groans
from Lunch, it almost becomes reminiscent of White Noise's 'Black Mass
in Hell', but essentially it has Love at its heart:
"In the beginning there was STINK. PULSING. POUNDING. PULPING. Repetitious and vicious cycles of
SEXAMORPHOSIS,
HYPNOSIS and TRANCE INDUCTION PROBING SEXUAL and RITUALISTIC INSTINCTS.
WHEN THE LIFE CYCLE TERMINATES THE MANTRA WILL CONTINUE IN A
CELEBRATION TO THE END. TO THE END..."
I like to play along with the spoons.
The flip side allows Lunch to take the reigns, and we hear her creepy, seductive, femme
fatale voice utter, spit and shout the words of her 'Meltdown' poem.
Thirlwell provides a fitting dockland
soundscape, with the sounds of distant heavy machinery and fog horns [!].
As
her final "I'm terminally fucked up" is decaying, it is met with an
enormous barrage of explosive percussion, squeals of feedback, and
ending with erotic sounds that could have been taped from a sex-line.
At very nearly eleven minutes long, this may well be the true heart
of this e.p. and in many ways is the most collaborative of the three
tracks, as it is just Lunch and
Thirlwell providing all the sounds.
'Son
of Stink' sounds to me like some diabolical tap-number from a
warped-out horror movie that nobody has been quite warped-out enough to
have made yet. I'm sure its time will come.
Again, another good one for the spoons. Well, while you've got them out...
Clint Ruin & Lydia Lunch - Stinkfist (1987)
Stinkfist
Meltdown Oratorio
Son of Stink
Foetus
All Foetal Remnants @320
here
Just like to say thanks to all those who commented on my Valediction post.
Lebuzz
Five years ago, when I first began Rocket Remnants, music blogging was cool.
For many, Trout Mask Replica is the one; the best; the magnum opus of Beefheart's oeuvre; perhaps of alternative music!
The musicianship throughout Decals is simply phenomenal; mainly co-written with guitarist Zoot Horn Rollo, many of the snazzy syncopations absent of conventional notation leave you breathless; they just sound so hard to play.
A divisive piece this for my penultimate post.
Better than The White Stripes, better than The Ting Tings, better than the Kills; here was a mixed gender duo who really should have gained more attention; this still has the power to surprise and thrill.
Simon Boswell said of his score for the movie Hardware: 'It's as if a Celtic Ry Cooder on acid had discovered God and decided to write opera'; and for the climax: 'I visualized a scene in heaven, with Jimi Hendrix, Stravinsky, and the Moscow State Choir all jamming in a small room'.
Another fantastic Foetus-related item.
Wiseblood - Dirtdish (1987)
Like RDF, Senser have a female, bit-part singer who looks like she's in the wrong band.
As one of the early pioneers of 'nu metal' - although it wasn't called that then, it soon became a term best avoided, harbouring poor connotations due to the likes of Limp Bizkit and Alien Ant Farm - Senser were categorised as 'rap metal' and other clunky, hybridized genre definitions.
Fulfilling a request - prompted by the last post - and satisfying an urge for a hit of nostalgia, this live recording from '93 is rather hard to find nowadays.
