The Quietus is honoured to announce that on November 2nd Luke will be visiting Rough Trade East in London to host a Q&A with Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti to mark the release of Throbbing Gristle’s reissues series. Throbbing Gristle have reactivated their Industrial Records label for the re-releases of The Second Annual Report Of Throbbing Gristle, Throbbing Gristle Bring You… 20 Jazz Funk Greats, DOA – The Third And Final Report Of Throbbing Gristle, Heathen Earth and Greatest Hits. These will be made available on a week-by-week basis throughout November, and you can pre-order on the Rough Trade website here.
The vinyl reissues will be on 180 gm vinyl, and the Industrial Records website gives the following information: "Chris Carter has remastered the audio and the LP’s come packaged with an eight page full colour booklet featuring some previously unpublished photos, press reviews from the time, and other visual ephemera from the Industrial Records archive"
When we went to speak to Chris and Cosey for a <a href="http://thequietus.com/articles/06203-chris-carter-cosey-fanni-tutti-interview" target=out">Carter Tutti interview earlier this year, we also asked about their plans for the reissues. "We thought if we’re going to do it we’re going to do it properly," Chris Carter told us. "They’ve been remastered from the original tapes, where we can we’ve got the original artworks and cleaned them up – we’ve spent weeks cleaning the artworks up, to get them all pristine, and the same with the audio. I’ve done all the audio mastering and I’m about halfway through the covers, because originally this was going to be a joint endeavour between me and Sleazy, I was going to do the audio and he was going to do the covers, because they’re his, but now I’m having to do everything."
Has it been strange going back, and so in depth?
CC: It’s funny listening to the multi-tracks, which I haven’t heard since they were done. It’s strange listening to them because you can hear who was doing what.
Cosey Fanni Tutti: You can’t remember what you did.
CC: You can’t. The three of us have always had these conversations where we hear TG things and we have no idea where we did them. We really just don’t remember, but listening to the multi-tracks was really interesting because you could hear who did what. It was more interesting looking at the old archives of photos, because you can see from the body language what mood everyone was in, especially from the outtakes, that’s very interesting.
CFT: I’d be scanning them in and call to Chris saying, you’ve got to come and see this, it’s so funny. What struck me most was the laughter, the genuine laughter between us all, before it all went wrong, and that’s quite sad, when you look back and see that.
CC: We used to document so much stuff. We’ve probably got thousands of negatives. It’s surprising how little there is out there, because you’ve got books of negatives, there are 35 mil, 120, loads we did on Hasselblads. I had a little Canon, you had your Nikon, Sleazy had his.
CFT: the three of us were snapping all the time. You had your Polaroid as well. We were constantly documenting things.
Was that part of the whole TG process?
CC: it was yeah. Cosey had her own darkroom as well, and she was always in there. Sleazy was always bringing photos down, it was just something we always did. But when you actually see it, it is scary how many photographs we actually took – we were taking photographs every day. Somewhere down the line someone else is going to have to deal with it, a proper archivist, because it’s such a big job.
CFT: Because we do so much of all the artwork and the mastering we don’t have time.
CC: We are a cottage industry. It’s a creed we’ve lived by, that we try to do as much of what we can ourselves within the family of Industrial Records and TG. That’s the way it’s always been.
The Quietus Q&A with Chris and Cosey will take place at Rough Trade East in London on November 2nd. Wristbands will be limited to two per person and will be available on the day of the event from the shop
