To know their name is to never forget it, as the horrible words demand to be imagined. The name is a fitting accomplice to the spirit of the art project that ceased back in 1981, a project that has been re-explored for the last few years by the original members. This new recording was offered only on their recent American tour, and rumor has it that the CDs are octagonal. This makes it hard to play the discs and further puts into question what exactly Throbbing Gristle are on about, reinforcing a perplexing modus operandi that has defined the group since its origins back in the mid-seventies.
The Third Mind Movements features captivating electronics that are perpetually mutational. Carbonated bumblebee gasses sear the ceiling, gastric simian voices gurgle from an underground laboratory, digital internal organs tear like pages from a book -- all these strange sounds are featured once and float downstream, never to be heard from again, the songs a patina of spontaneity. As the album gets moving with "PreMature," the soft industrial beats begin to put their woebegone foot on the meager fumes of gasoline. In other words, they are slooooow, but just quick enough and odd enough to turn the cogs in the brain. One of the musicians, Peter Christopherson, is half of the well-known duo Coil, and the subtle bass throb and intelligent, rhythmic clatter heard here is certainly inspired from those explorations. The standout tracks are certainly the "Third Mind" trio that ends the album. There are many unexpected sonic turns like the trumpet conversing with an electric bonobo in "The Third Mind (First Movement)" and the seductive oboe on the third and final Movement.
The album would be a fitting soundtrack to a person locked in a musty, basement laundry room while having a quiet psychedelic experience. Sometimes the music sounds like an insect colony with indigestion, focusing on all the intimate, oily details. The wide array of sounds often leans toward the uncomfortably organic, with plenty of synth burps, pulses that sound like heartbeats, and wet mammals drooling and running amok. It's not exactly the most soothing of experiences, as it provokes a surly latitude of the unconscious mind. Much like a chance encounter with a decomposing corpse, the terror comes from your own inability to turn away. Some of the sounds are very kitsch and the drowning vocals can make a purist wretch, but the overall industrial tide pool of activity is an interesting ambient affair for a group that is notorious for doing just about anything.
Even after a two decade hiatus, it is still relevant to note that to immerse oneself into Throbbing Gristle's world is akin to reading the works of William S. Burroughs. The outsider author wrote several books using the "cut-up" method whereby pages of text are cut and rearranged to form new combinations of word and image. Using this technique with audio in the fifties and sixties, Burroughs recorded random permutations of radio broadcasts, street noise and conversation onto reel-to-reel tapes in an attempt to break down the linear way in which regular communication functioned. Hearing about this, the members of Throbbing Gristle approached the author with a project to commit these experiments to tape. The friendship and collaborations that followed inspired them to use audio in this way, and nowadays the kids call it "sampling". Through their famously controversial live demonstrations back in the seventies, Throbbing Gristle essentially popularized sampling, and naturally there's a dose of it here on The Third Mind Movements. There also happens to be a book by Burroughs and fellow cut-up pioneer Brion Gysin titled The Third Mind, so there's your gateway connection!
Burroughs said that by consistently using the cut-up method, the systems of control in the mind can break down, helping one reclaim the natural instincts that function beyond the learned faculty of linear language. Burroughs' works, as a result, are entirely interpretable fantasies with no intended moral or goal to be revealed. The medium is the message, as it were, and, similarly, listening to Throbbing Gristle with this mindset is a healthy approach. Listening to instrumental music in general perhaps predicates an unconscious choice on our parts to listen to the voice itself, rather than what the voice is saying. Much like their previous releases, The Third Mind Movements acts more like a Rorschach test than a certain set of values to discover, putting your fragile little mind into the spotlight to be examined.
Throbbing Gristle pioneered experimental territory that many modern artists owe much to, and yet, here in 2009 they still sound like they are at the top of their game, fashioning ambient, stream-of-consciousness clatterscapes that H.R. Geiger would smoke a cigar to. This album is an ambient audio document from a particular mindset, and doesn't really represent what Throbbing Gristle might do today, which could be anything. Ed O'Brien of Radiohead once said, "Be a moving target. That's a healthy way to make music." There aren't many live bands that insist on not playing anything from their albums, turning their shows into art happenings where anything can and will happen. As Throbbing Gristle say of themselves, "no one here is a leader", and they certainly don't care about aped recognition and praise from the public world. No time for that. They just push the conversation to where it needs to go. That's art: straight ahead, no apologies.
-Nayt Keane