Heathen Earth

…Can the world be as sad as it seems is a document of a performance by Throbbing Gristle to a small and invited audience on 16 February 1980 in the studios of Industrial Records. Neither an insight into Throbbing Gristle’s recording process nor private live show, Heathen Earth is its own entity and exists as a document and testament to a group of people at the height of their creative powers, recorded just over a year before they disbanded and terminated the mission.

Live performances brought out Throbbing Gristle's talents for improvisation and provocation and it's no coincidence that most of their classic albums contain sizeable extracts and edits of their live shows; the live arena - be it grotty club, gallery space, concert hall or even the band's own rehearsal space - is where the action and the innovation really happened. The bulk of Heathen Earth documents one particular performance which took place in 1980 on "Saturday the 16th February between 8:10pm and 9.00pm"; the track list is filled out with two recordings from two separate performances in '78. It's a hugely enjoyable listen, arguably capturing better than any of the "studio" albums the tension between free-wheeling abstraction and structural discipline which defines the group. It's also probably the most obviously electronic Throbbing Gristle album of its time, Gen's guitar and Cosey's cornet duelling with Carter and Sleazy's clipped, clammy minimal synth constructions: 'The Old Man Smiled', ‘Something Came Over me’, 'Don't Do As Your Told, Do As You Think' and 'The World Is A War Film' are all breathtakingly, pulsatingly ahead of their time. 'Still Walking', first heard on 20 Jazz Funk Greats, sounds even more surreal and seductive in its live incarnation, Cosey's dour East Yorkshire vowels echoed to infinity, before P.Orridge presents a vision of paranoia and self-loathing purified in 'Sub Human' and 'Adrenalin' brings things to an oddly ecstatic, hi-NRG close, Carter fully indulging his apreggiated Euro-disco inclinations.

Unmissable.

Ripped from the 1991 CD reissue to improvised FLAC

Throbbing Gristle; Heathen Earth

1.      Cornet

2.      The Old Man Smiled

3.      Improvisation

4.      The World Is A War Film

5.      Something Came Over Me

6.      Still Talking

7.      Don’t Do As You’re Told, Do As You Think

8.      Painless Childbirth

9.      Subhuman

10.   Adrenalin