[Grief] TG Endless Not

[Jonny]

Throbbing Gristle: Part Two - The Endless Not
(Industrial / Mute 2007)

"Shit is shit, no matter how you present it. Most current so called 
'electronic musicians' have little or no imagination outside the 
protected sphere of their computer screen or bedroom. Where has the 
experimentation gone? Everyone sounds like everyone else. ."
- Chris Carter 2006.
http://www.ikonen-magazin.de/interview/TG.htm

The new TG album is at times nicely powerful, unpredictable and 
challenging, if pretty and polished. Cosey's trumpet is there thank god, 
nestled between some weird modern jazz piano on 'Rabbit Snare' and Gen 
asking if are we scared. Sleazy's input takes some the electronics 
part-way into genuine spooky-land on 'Lyre Liar'. Twenty five years on 
though I fear the group's use of technology has sapped away some of the 
renegade spirit we all came to know and love. Perhaps even creative 
technology has moved yet further along while this record has been 
sitting in Mute's vaults delayed for well over a year. Part Two is a 
largely meditative album with a new-age ambience, if you've been 
listening to CarterTutti these past years, notably 'Cabal' much of this 
album will not suprise you, and it is Carter dominated (he also mastered 
it). 2005's limited EP-CD 'TGNOW' has more going for it overall and the 
new version of 'Almost a Kiss' here is too mellow with long sustained 
keyboard chords and Gen crooning like an opiated Max Bygraves, and when 
he shouts audibly weak from his recent ill-health. Even the amusing and 
notoriously bad rhyming lyrics are tiresome especially on the title 
track with it's laid back trip-hop feel. Among the heavy use of loops 
toward the last few tracks I noticed on 'The Worm Waits Its Turn' the 
use of a Sony CD keyboard loop which I also used on this 
http://www.johnhackett.com/red_planet_rhythm.htm (track 2).
Pretty awful comparing TG to prog rock I know, believe me, I'm feeling 
quite gutted having to slag off one of the greats with this modern day 
studio incarnation but the new album seems to die toward the end like a 
rotting forgotten yuppie on a burnt out tube.

- jd