(Credits: Far Out / TIDAL)

Industrial provocateurs Throbbing Gristle would have stood as one of post-punk and electronic music’s seminal pioneers even if they’d stopped at one record. Formed from the ashes of the COUM Transmissions art collective and hailing from Hully, Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti joined forces with Hipgnosis graphic designer Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson and lo-fi electronics whizz Chris Carter to unleash a swirling nightmare of distorted tape loops and white-knuckle synthesizers during COUM’s Prostitution exhibit.

Scoring pornography, political violence and Nazi atrocities, Throbbing Gristle tore a hole in the 1970s UK’s civil veneer and poured all its grubby hypocrisies into 1977’s The Second Annual Report—a haunted debut caked in noise and deep unease.

Following a string of similarly acclaimed yet controversial releases, including 1979’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats, Throbbing Gristle came to an official close in 1981 after their final performance in San Francisco’s Kezar Pavilion. Whether due to artistic differences or P-Orridge and Tutti’s break up, all four would go on to dominate the 1980s underground—Tutti and Carter became a couple and crafted minimal synthpop as Chris & Cosey, Christopherson became creative partners and lovers with John Balance with the arcane Coil, and P-Orridge founded Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth and underwent bodily transformation with Lady Jaye under the “Pandrogyne Project” journey.

After a collective flirtation with some of the relative mainstream’s biggest names—Chris & Cosey working with Annie Lennox and Christopherson directing various Nine Inch Nails videos—the old Throbbing Gristle quartet quietly entered the studio together in 2004 to cut the limited release TG Now, a document of lengthy jams that served as their first new material since 1982’s Journey Through a Body. Tapping into a renewed vitality, work went underway to realise an ‘official’ LP accompanied by select live dates, and 2007’s Part Two was released via Mute Records to a characteristic mix of acclaim and bewilderment.

Gone were the ultra-black humour or austere sting of early album covers. Part Two was simply adorned with a venerable snapshot of Tibet’s Mount Kailash, a site of holy significance in Buddhist culture. Often sub-titled as The Endless Not, the ancient endless knot symbol found across Buddhist, Hindu, and Jainist philosophies signalled Throbbing Gristle’s longstanding fascination with esoteric mysticism to a more universal and ancient plane.

A notable feature of the first 4,000 issues of Part Two was its totemic gifts. Inserted into the spine of the original CD jewel cases and handled by Christopherson in Thailand, one could find a trinket of either copper, bone, rubber or wood, as well as a Japanese release gifting relics of stainless steel and two boasting gifts made of 23-carat gold.

“The Totemic Gifts given away with Part Two act as a symbolic form of non-verbal communication as well as ‘gift’ objects,” Carter revealed to Arne Löffel in 2007. “But they primarily function in conjunction with the symbolism of the album’s endless knot logo. The knot is an adaptation of a Tibetan Buddhist symbol. Its use on ‘gifts’ is seen not only as a good omen but also as making a connection between the giver and receiver. It is also a reminder of cause and effect and, thus, the concept of karma. This approach is nothing new for TG; the notion of harmony and cause and effect have always been there, but it seemed appropriate to place it in an artwork at this time and this TG context.”

It’s an intriguing conceptual and spiritual packaging which could well illustrate the last time music’s physical medium existed as a piece of treasure in one’s hand. Christopherson sadly died in 2010, shortly followed by P-Orridge—leaving an uncomfortable legacy of alleged abuse in their wake. Throbbing Gristle stood as industrial’s pioneer and innovator right til the end, showing a range of ideas and dimensions in a genre which can feel crowded with derivatives.