Review: Psychic TV ‘Those Who Do Not’ [Reissue]
Live albums are a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, there are some career, even era defining gems (think Weld, No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith, Coltrane ‘Live’ At The Village Vanguard, Kick Out The Jams), some ripe old stinkers (every desk recorded, flat-sounding, pieced-together-from-eight-different-shows, wring the last ha’penny out of the diehard’s disc, which was released when the band needed cash), and the odd curate’s egg; Metallic K.O. for example, which manages to feature in ‘Best of..’ and ‘Worst of…’ lists, which says to me that it’s quite obviously a work of genius.
According to the accompanying blurb from Cold Spring Records, who are reissuing the recording after twenty-three years of being out of print, Those Who Do Not is a full show performed in Reykjavik in 1983 capturing ‘the sound of the classic period of Psychic TV’, that features, as it does, Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson and Jhonn Balance of Coil. This is ‘Psychic TV at their most esoteric, their most ritual, and often most extreme’, and the tracks are interspersed with recordings of the Pagan marriage between Genesis and Paula P-Orridge(!). So far, so Psychic TV.
Interlude: I first came across Genesis and Paula P-Orridge in the classic 1989 RE/Search tome Modern Primitives, a veritable smorgasbord of body modification in which Genesis discusses the pros and cons of having a piece of surgical steel through their todger, as well as tattoos, scarification, and branding. Eye opening stuff for a callow youth!
Reviewing an album like this is a bit of a tough gig. It’s pretty unlikely that anyone will pick up Those Who Do Not for their first foray into the oeuvre of Psychic TV, even less the vast P-Orridge canon. There are far, far more accessible entry points – Dreams Less Sweet for instance – but Those Who Do Not captures the chaos (magic), power, and threat of Psychic TV’s live performances. This is at the very edge of music/public ritual/performance art, and it’s so, so important to remember when it took place – 1983 by crikey!
Think about what else was going on at the time, what music was being produced and then give the track Unclean a listen. We’ve got an insistent, bare-bones beat, Genesis intoning/yelling over discordant synth, vocal samples, chimes, an almost imperceptible bass, and, although I may be wrong, a typewriter (it’s probably a kickdrum but I like to think it’s a typewriter). And everything is one gigantic loop, repeating and building, over and over, and ending with feedback before a scream of some sort propels us into the glitterbeat, chant and Oi You! of Skinhead². Psychic TV are brilliant at mixing in a beat that doesn’t make any sense except in an alchemical, non-rhythmical and punctuating way, the result of which is to unsettle the listener. The only artist to excel at unsettling the listener in this way was, for me, Scott Walker, a genius in his own right.
Psychic TV are brilliant at mixing in a beat that doesn’t make any sense except in an alchemical, non-rhythmical and punctuating way…
Thee Full Pack shows another side to Psychic TV. An atmospheric piece with an almost middle eastern motif purveyed by string instruments and chimes, P-Orridge’s vocal is restrained by their standards (at least in its performance), though the relative calm is undermined by the sound of an animal gutturally snarling at strategic intervals.
As part of Throbbing Gristle, P-Orridge invented industrial music and, by circuitous route, is the great grand parent of all yer neofolk, martial folk, dark ambient, power electronics, blah di blah, most of which yours truly finds as dull as ditchwater, and significantly less creative than protozoa found within.
So perhaps it’s best to view Those Who Do Not as a sonic window into the past, a past in which a group of non-musician artists are pushing at the boundaries of what constitutes music. In which the performance is as essential as the music it produces, and both come together to create a ritualistic experience for performers and audience combined. And maybe this glimpse of Psychic TV can be a Rosetta Stone allowing us to make sense of the myriad offshoots spawned and inspired by P-Orridge and their collaborators (the number of which is pretty high, if not quite Mark E Smith-esque!).
To go track by track through an album like Those Who Do Not would be pointless and dull in the extreme. It also isn’t really the point of a recording like this. It stands as a snapshot, a testament to who and what the band(?) was at the time it was recorded, what they did or didn’t achieve and what they created. So, while Those Who Do Not may or may not be a good entry point into the Psychic TV portfolio, repeated listening proved it to be a fascinating and intriguingly hypnotic experience, entertaining, unsettling, and just plain befuddling in parts.
What’s more, it made me want to seek out further Psychic TV live recordings in order to experience secondhand the ritual of performance forty years after it was enacted. So, I suppose, to answer the question ‘who is it for?’, I would say for completists, and for the curious who want to dip a toe into Genesis P-Orridge’s disturbing, rapturous and odd pool of sound, colour and humanity, mixed together like the oily sheen on a dirty puddle. My appetite is whetted for more. Oh, and I would have loved to be at that wedding. I wonder what the buffet was like.
Label: Cold Spring Records
Band Links: Bandcamp
Scribed by: George Green
