20 Oct 2009

Synthetic Beauty

Watched Synth Britannia last night, taped it. Amongst the excellent music, infuriatingly wobbly camera work (wobbly does not equal edgy), superb hair and the now slightly too familiar story of how it all began with Kraftwerk, were industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle (best band name ever).

I've only heard scraps of TG's work through compilations, so to babble about their music as a whole would be worthless and pointless. One track I am familiar with though is Hot On The Heels Of Love, a bizarre, dystopian (how those synth-botherers loved Ballard) yet brutally beautiful piece of electronic music.

The sounds on the record may be familiar to us now, after two cycles of synth-pop domination and the broadening of tastes that technology in some part has allowed, yet Hot On The Heels Of Love is still as ferociously alien as when it was recorded over 30 years ago.