Monday
• O C T. XI. • Throbbing Gristle — “E-Coli”
From the 1978 album D.o.A: The Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle.
I know the TG track people always mention when the subject of creepy music comes up is "Hamburger Lady", but "E-Coli" has always given me ten times the unease. The ominous pulsating synth, the creaky bowed instrument (dunno what it is, but it sounds a bit like a kemençe), and the ghostly guitar moving around the stereo field all add up to something really unsettling to me. Top it all off with the scientists talking over the whole thing (double-tracked, making it rather disorienting and hard to follow), and it becomes the soundtrack to a biological Armageddon. A good one to listen to on headphones in the dark.
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Nice choice—and definitely not an obvious one.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what kind of instrument was used to make the creaky high sound to which you referred. It may have been a manipulated/processed guitar or an electric violin. If I recall, Genesis P. Orridge played an electric violin on some of their stuff.
And if you want to know something really disturbing, look into where E-Coli O157:H7 (the strain that makes people sick) from. (You probably shouldn't do that...it's really gross.)
Yay, people are still reading my drivel! Was worried that I'd finally managed to alienate everyone when I noticed my last pageview was five posts back, haha.
ReplyDeleteI remember how that strain is transmitted from all the news reports surrounding the big outbreak a few years ago in New Jersey. Not a very appetizing means of infection, for certain.
You're probably right about the violin; I forgot that he used one, although this one sounds relatively unprocessed. I think it's probably all down to playing technique more than anything else. I know it gets used to good effect earlier on in the album during "Weeping".
Great choice. Christian Death did a few tracks in this vein...layering a track of someone speaking over another one of spooky music I mean. Great effect.
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