Caustic and provocative, it had little market value, but it found its intended audience. Throbbing Gristle-and the many industrial acts who followed in their wake-funneled that metallic uproar into music that was not, at first, intended to move units. This was the sound of work, but it was also the sound of the refusal to work.

Androgynous, playful, and sinister, h/er voice traced a line of escape away from the suffocating constraints of h/er environment. Throbbing GristleРІР‚в„ўs music often literally sounded like factory work, too, with its searing electronic noise and clattering percussion however, P-OrridgeРІР‚в„ўs squalling vocals tended to upend the image of the docile worker laboring away under capitalism.

It called back to Andy WarholРІР‚в„ўs Factory, the studio where the New York artist smeared the imagery of capitalist mass production into the world of fine arts. The term resonated on several frequencies: It spoke to the landscape of Throbbing GristleРІР‚в„ўs native Hull, one of many English cities with architecture that had been transformed by the Industrial Revolution and then hollowed out by a decline in manufacturing work. The ICA catalog from 1976 describes Throbbing Gristle as playing РІР‚СљDeathRock Music.РІР‚Сњ By the time the group had issued their first album, which included recordings from ProstitutionРІР‚в„ўs opening night, they had settled on a different descriptor: РІР‚СљIndustrial Music for Industrial People,РІР‚Сњ the tagline for their newly founded label Industrial Records. It was so disturbing to mainstream British culture that a conservative Member of Parliament declared Coum Transmissions the РІР‚Сљwreckers of civilization.РІР‚Сњ

The opening night marked the first performance from CoumРІР‚в„ўs ad hoc house band Throbbing Gristle, whose vocalist Genesis P-Orridge sang about castrating men and cutting the fetuses out of their pregnant wives. The opening night boasted a strip show in lieu of an introductory speech alongside nude photos of Coum member Cosey Fanni Tutti, the troupe displayed used tampons, soiled bandages, and bottles of blood. In October 1976, the performance arts collective Coum Transmissions debuted Prostitution, an exhibition at the London Institute of Contemporary Arts.

Poltik revolution album muse