Throbbing Gristle

★★★★ Part Two: The Endless Not/TG Now MUTE. CD/DL/LP

Still queasy after all those years, suggest reunion sets from 2004 and 2007.

The original TG project had a near-mystical significance for first-time fans. Howard Devoto, for instance, took umbrage when the group began printing their lyrics in Industrial News. Yet since the 1981 split, TG’s industrial music has been (mis) appropriated as just another rock genre, while their tape cut-ups and passion for the profane was absorbed by everything from hip-hop to easy and electronica. Then, legend assured, in 2004 one last embrace with the unthinkable: a reunion. It was a painful affair, as Cosey Fanni Tutti recounts in her autobiography. Frontman Genesis P-Orridge’s ambivalence is evident across these two studio sets. He hated “laptop bands” which, with their shiny iMacs, TG had become. “Kind of ridiculous,” P-Orridge moans on Rabbit Snare, while cornet-blowing Cosey conjures up Herb Alpert with a toothache. And none of this did the legacy any harm at all.