CHRIS CARTER

Chris Carter’s Miscellany MUtE

It’s a measure of the esteem in which Chris Carter is held that even the Radiophonic Workshop are among remixers on a new EP drawn from his album. With the electronic blueprints he started unleashing more than 40 years ago with Throbbing Gristle and then with lifelong partner Cosey Fanni Tutti long ingrained in music’s fabric, he’s been enjoying another lease of life as a solo artist since releasing Chris Carter’s Chemistry Lessons Volume One earlier this year. His first solo work this century, its success sparked live appearances and now a four-CD/six-LP box set comprising three earlier albums plus bonus

70s foragings.

If any further evidence is needed to position Carter as possibly the UK’s greatest living keyboard exponent and sonic scientist, it’s all here. These tracks capture this sonic activist/selfconfessed tech geek in the ongoing search for the perfect sound, shade or beat that sometimes prompted his own inventions.

1985’s Mondo Beat displays Carter plugging into the electro and proto-acid that was gripping the world then, but putting his own spin on Noevil and the title track before descending into the clammy sewervamp of Nobadhairdo and TG-like fever dream of Beyond Temptation. Acid house had gone and techno moved in by the time Carter recorded 1998’s Disobedient and ’99’s Small Moon. On vinyl for the first time (both coloured wax doubles), the former forges into fathomless deep space via a radioactive jungle river, deploying deep techno flavours on Domank and Lixiez, while the latter explores drum’n’bass on Arcadia before Non-Pop and sirensdraped Soho…3am twist the possibilities in electronically generated rhythms.

Archival Recordings 1973 To 1977 shows that Carter’s trademark steely ambience and extra-terrestrial finesse had been there since before TG; he simply refined it as technology appeared to catch up with his rampant muse. And nothing here sounds dated.