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A few days before PTV3, the latest incarnation of Psychic TV, were about to start their tour in support of Hell is Invisible… Heaven is Her/e I had the chance to talk with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. We chatted about Psychic TV’s first studio album as PTV3, Pandrogeny and Gen’s various other projects.

Just to get it out there, I’ve been a big fan of your work for a long time, probably the last 17 years or so.

It’s weird for me. You know? To think that people… there’s a lot of people who grow up and I was just always there. I was always in the music landscape. Strange thought. It’s hard for me to really imagine.

Well it’s great in that sense, because there is always a back catalog to go back to.

Yeah, the Throbbing Gristle stuff is pretty much all available. And I just got an email from Sleazy, there’s gonna be a box set of DVDs of all the video documentation of TG live.

I wondered if that was really going to come out soon.

He’s mastered all the DVDs and he’s finishing the artwork.

Any idea on when that will be coming out?

My umm… I have been trying to find out from Mute. They have not given me a date, however I do know they’ll probably try and bring it out for Christmas. It’ll make a Special Christmas gift.

I’m actually excited about that. I think people who’ve imagined Throbbing Gristle live… that to actually see what it was like for the first time is going to be very exciting.

Yes, definitely looking forward to them. I was very excited about the DVDs when I first read about them…

I suspect that there’ll be quite a few… new bands that will… take that as a sort of starting point, having watched. And sort of re-interpret what they imagine they are seeing in terms of our somewhat deadpan approach.

There’s one of those gigs in particular at the Illuminated 666 club in Manchester where we played and Joy Division, A Certain Ratio, and Nico’s band at the time were in the audience, a lot of people. A Certain Ratio were in our dressing room and I had been having a really bad day with the other members of TG, I was in a really cranky mood. I was trying to get A Certain Ratio to leave the dressing room because I wanted to be alone and they wouldn’t go, so I pulled out this knife and I sliced my arm, my right hand, one slice on the back of my hand for each finger. Very beautifully done, very symmetrical. And it started to gush blood and they still didn’t want to leave. So I got my mustard gas and sprayed them all in the face, and that’s when they finally left. But, when you watch the video you will see that my right hand when I am holding the microphone is still streaming blood. And when I am turning certain knobs on the signal generator and so on. There’s a bootleg of that gig actually with a close up of my right wrist where you can see the wounds bleeding. So that’s going to be interesting for people to see… The whole day was very weird.

I’m sure a lot of days of shows with Throbbing Gristle were weird.

[laughs] Yeah, right.

Jordie Valls, of Vagina Dentata Organ, was there and he saw that I was getting into more and more of a bad mood, so he decided to take me out. He said, “let’s go find something to eat. Get some fish and chips.” And we went out, I was stomping along grrr looking at the ground grrrr and I didn’t notice but there were all these Hell’s Angels up the street and they saw me coming along and they were starting to say all these things. They wanted to create some kind of situation and, he only told me this afterwards, but apparently I just marched right through them and shoved them out of the way. [laughs] I told them all to fuck off. [laughs] And they were so shocked at this tiny person being so aggressive that they didn’t do anything, they just backed off. It was a good gig though, it was one of the nights that I invented “Something Came Over Me”. So, with all being well, there is a good version of that on there.

Personally, I can not wait to see these shows.

When you see the Manchester gig think about me knocking the Hell’s Angels out of the way. Groaning and moaning and being really obnoxious.

Now, with Hell is Invisibile… Heaven is Her/e, I honestly didn’t know what to expect from it. Of course, the Throbbing Gristle album came out earlier this year and it was far better than I ever could have expected it to be.

[laughs] I’m on a roll, aren’t I?

I thought, “oh no, he can’t have two great “comeback” albums. And, it was great.

Ohh, I’m really happy with the new album. I really, really am. I think that Hell is Invisible… in a way, for me, encapsulates all the things I wanted Psychic TV to be from the very beginning. And I think it’s probably the most perfect album I have ever done.

You know, I would actually probably agree.

I think it’s just got all the aspects that I’ve always played with and investigated. Cut-ups, and symphonic structures, strange edits like Frank Zappa and Lumpy Gravy. Sort of otherworldly film music, landscapes and ironic psychedelic stories and parables. I really think it’s the best thing I have ever done. I really do. I think my singing is better than ever.

That was actually one of the points I was going to make. I think lyrically it’s one of the strongest and I think your vocals are just great on it. What would you attribute that to?

A couple of things, I don’t know if you know the story of how PTV3 originated, but you know I met Lady Jaye, my other half, in 1993 in NY, fell madly in love, and still madly in love all these years later… and she didn’t know I was even in a band when we fell in love. She had heard Throbbing Gristle, but she didn’t make the connection, and she remembered hearing “Hamburger Lady” when she was still in high school and thinking it was a really interesting track, but one of her best friends from her teenage years was this guy Edward Odowd… Edley. When we moved to New York in 1996 we started to hang out with Edley, you know for dinner and just listen to records and talk. And he said to me, “you really should start Psychic TV again.” And I said, “Why?”He said, “’because you write good songs.” It may seem weird to people now, but I never thought of myself as primarily a songwriter. I’ve always been into these cultural ideas and ways to change the world and all these other things, but I never really separated it out and thought “I write songs.”

I think songwriting was definitely more of a byproduct of getting your art and ideas out there. You know?

Exactly! So, he said he would make a CD of what he thought were my best songs and he said, “listen to this and pretend it’s by someone else, not you. And you will realize that these are just really good songs.” So he did that and I listened to these songs, most of them were from the Allegory and Self era, the more psychedelic stuff. And he was right. I listened to them, as best as I could, objectively and I realized that I did love them as songs. They still stood up very well. They were actually songs that could be for some degree, timeless. I would say to Lady Jaye, “am I being egocentric here, or is it true that I can write some really good songs?” She said, “no, no you’re a great poet. You really do write catchy melodies and choruses, you’ve got a knack.” So between her and Edley they taught me to see myself from a completely different perspective. I’ll never give up being into trying to change the world, of course, but they also made me appreciate and respect myself for being able to do the songs that worked. I think it was that confidence they gave me, to reassess what I did that really helped me with this album. And even with the TG one. To stretch and to sort of think of each song as a story and imagine it was the person telling the story. How would they feel, how would they sound. And I got sort of so involved in a Marlon Brando, immersed into the emotions kind of acting role, that for example with “Higher and Higher”, the anti-war song, I was actually sobbing and crying at the end. In those choruses at the end I’m crying.

It comes through…

I’m actually crying my eyes out because I started to imagine the pictures, the film of centuries of these beautiful young people being tricked into going out and fighting and ending up lying in the mud somewhere, their life draining out of them. And the people who had tricked them into doing this, being these demons that keep coming through over and over again that go off and sign some kind of agreement later with their enemies. And ultimately it was meaningless, you know? The sacrifice was for nothing. That hypocrisy that leads to so much suffering really touches me, and by believing in myself more I think I was able to find the voices much more than ever before, much more accurately than before.

That was one of the things that got me at first about the album. How vocally strong it was, and you know, you figure it’s been 10 years between your last studio album as far as for Psychic TV…

I’m really happy that you like it. Because I am so pleased with this album. You know, if somebody said which album would you like people to listen to and throw away the rest, I would say keep this one.

Really?

I think it’s the most perfect, yeah.

There’s others that have wonderful moments and that are very groundbreaking and new, but I think this is the one that will last the longest in terms of quality. And for once, we have a new album with material on it that I think is strong and then we are going to tour starting in a couple of weeks. And we’ll be touring with the same stuff that is available in shops. That has never happened to us before.

Never, really?

Never ever. Nothing has ever fallen into place in the right way before.

“New York Story”, that one began as a poem I was writing and I was performing with Thee Majesty and we were in Paris a couple of years ago at the Cartier Foundation playing and I started to improvise with this poem with Lady Jaye and Brian Dahl, and again it was very much like the same thing. I closed my eyes and I could see the film. A lot of the songs are very much like films for me. And I watch them and I start to describe what I’m seeing. It becomes very, very real. And I was watching the film of this couple in New York and it was lots of different people I know, and maybe they were junkies, or maybe they were just mutually disruptive, there were all these different dynamics in their relationship that were negative and, by the end of it, I was crying again. And the following day in Le Monde, the daily paper in France, they did this whole review of the concert and they were talking, respectfully, about how I had been crying my eyes out at the end and there was even a half page cartoon as well.

I’ve learned to, to become the songs I think. In a very deep way. It sounds maybe difficult for someone who’s not performing to understand, but there’s so many bands, I think, that perform to a formula. I’ve talked about this to people. People who have noticed that I am singing differently, or more profoundly, and we’ve talked about it, and they’ve said most bands will develop a formula or style that works and the audience enjoys it and responds to it. And there are two versions of that band. There’s the ballad or fast, but you recognize the vocal style and it’s always the same. But with PTV3 it’s not like that. Each song has a person, a character, that’s singing. They’re speaking through me. And through my vocal cords, but there are different voices for different stories. And i think that’s what should be happening. It shouldn’t be always the same voice telling different stories, it should be different voices telling different stories.

So with the breakthrough of being encouraged, and loved for what I do by the band, I think I have been able to have this big sort of new, improved ability. Of course it brings a great responsibility too because you have to remember how to become the people in the stories. So it’s very emotionally draining.

And we just found out that Cargo who released it, are so happy that we are doing a vinyl version. It will be a double album and one will be orange and one will be pink and there will be one bonus track, because the one thing I was sad about was that on this album there was one extra track that Lady Jaye did the vocals for, she wrote a lyric and vocal, and there was no room on the CD. So now with the double-vinyl album it will be on there. So it will be the absolute perfect version of the album.

Is that going to be available only through your site or will it also be in shops?

That’s a good question, and I honestly can’t be sure. I know we’ll have some and we’ll be selling them at gigs too. So people should look for it via our website and/or at gigs. I think they are going to do at least 1000 to begin with, but if it’s popular I’m sure they’ll keep going.

Part 2 Coming Soon…



Thee Psychick Bible

Just ordered this gorgeous looking thing.

Not sure what I am more excited about, the new content in the book or the included DVD. Can not wait for this to arrive. When I had interviewed GP-O for soundsect s/he had mentioned this would be coming soon. Had to wait longer than I expected, but it looks like it was well worth the wait.

Thee infamous PSYCHIC BIBLE from Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth receives an updated, expanded, corrected edition,complete with dozens of new visuals and essays. The Feral House edition is handsomely presented in smyth-sewn hardcover with a red ribbon. Thee 544 pages within are printed in two colors on high-quality 60-pound stock on acid-free 100% recycled paper stock.

This signed, numbered limited edition (999 copies only) is also presented with a remarkable DVD of impossible-to-find videos from P-Orridge archives of early Psychic TV and TOPY creations which includes the work of Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson and Derek Jarman. Several of the videos included were seized by Scotland Yard in 1991, and as a result the DVD is provided here are second-generation and are reproduced in this CD for their historical value.

Head over to Feral House to check it out.  They also have a fantastic looking book out now on The Process Church (which Gen also mentioned in the soundsect interview).

For instance, Dollhouse: Season One. Do I go with the DVD since I have a habit of watching TV shows on DVD as I am going to sleep everynight (as I don’t have a BD player in bedroom right now), or do I go with the superior pic quality? Same with Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series, this is definitely a series that would be damn nice to look at in high def, but the lack of portability between rooms kind of annoys me.  And I am just not ready to upgrade to BD in the bedroom yet.

I guess price is the big problem solver in the end. Right now I think there is an $18 difference between the Dollhouse BD and DVD.  $18 is enough to make me not want to go with BD. I just don’t want to regret it a few years from now.

Decisions…

Battlestar Galactica Complete Series

I will truly miss this show, I never would have expected it to be as good as it was.

I decided over President’s Day weekend that I wanted to take advantage of a sale at Guitar Center and pick up a new midi controller. Specifically I wanted to grab the M-Audio Trigger Finger, while I’ve been eyeing the Korg PadKontrol  for a while the price and lack of faders and knobs pushed me towards the Trigger Finger.

Anyway, so I picked up the Trigger Finger and brought it home. Went straight to the computer to try it out and was annoyed to find that the USB cable was really short and wouldn’t allow the controller to sit on the table I keep my gear on. Ok, no biggie I will just use a MIDI cable.  Even though I wasn’t using the USB I decided to install the driver just in case. Of course, the driver supplied with the controller wouldn’t install on Vista, so I had to hunt that down on the M-Audio website.  I installed the Ableton Live Lite edition that also came with the unit, but that wasn’t working. Figuring that it must also be a Vista incompatability I went to find out if there was an upgrade. Once logged into the Ableton site I find out that someone else is using the registration number that was supplied with the software. WTF? I just bought this brand new.

I fire off an email to Ableton to try and resolve this, but in the meantime I fire up a couple of my other progams like Reason (demo) and Reaper. The Trigger Finger has a factory default Reason map so that should work perfectly fine… nope. Nothing.  Ok.  So I try to get something working in Reaper. Again nothing. So finally I manually map a bunch of the midi notes into the controller that correspond with the VST I am trying out (i believe it was erraticCM) and nothing. While this is going on I am realizing that none of the factory presets are actually in the unit. And it doesn’t seem to be sending anything to my computer. So now I use the updated USB driver and nothing still. By this point I am fucking livid. Obviously Guitar Center sold me a returned unit since the registration number was used and the POS controller isn’t working at all.

Ableton was awesome and got right back to me the next day (they are in Germany) with a new registration number. When I went back to GC to return the controller they surprisingly gave me no real hassle, and also hooked me up with a nice discount on a guitar tuner I wanted.  As much as I would love to complain they did the right thing.  Of course, the new controller worked perfectly fine and came with a USB cable with just the right length I needed it to have.

The only really interesting thing going on as of late is that I recently decided to start making music again. I’ve recorded a few rough tracks that I still need to work on and tons of unfinished bits and pieces that will either go nowhere or will be cannibalized for something else down the road. At this point it is nothing more than a hobby, but it’s nice to have a creative outlet again. I was hoping to focus on my photography, but my plans and desires are too grandiose to execute. With the music I have the luxury of moving at my own pace and relying on no one other than myself, which is nice.

I don’t know what I would call what I am doing. It’s definitely got some noise elements, a bit of drone, there is some ritual. It’s experimental (yes, that was for you AR). When I originally started to think about working with synths and stuff I was thinking I would be going either straight Noise or Dark Ambient, but I found myself leaning naturally towards a hypnotic, ritualized sound. It’s still being formed, and I am sure I will end up somewhere different eventually.

So I guess I will share one of my in progress tracks:

[15:30] ME: When is HT going to be back up?
[15:30] AlienRedrum: i just got word from surewest
[15:30] AlienRedrum: they said it should be up by the time you have a new blog entry

Yeah, Horrortalk still doesn’t seem to be up. :\

True Blood, premiering Sept. 7th on HBO, takes place in a parallel reality where vampires have recently “come out of the coffin” and outed themselves to the world. With the invention of a synthetic blood drink called Tru Blood the vampires no longer need to feed on humans for survival. Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) works as a waitress in Merlotte’s, a bar in rural Lousiana. She is intrigued by the vampires and is excited when Merlotte’s gets its first vampire customer, the 173 year old Bill. Sookie has a not-so-well-kept secret of her own in that she can hear the thoughts of every one around her.

The Best Buy exclusive disc (free with the purchase of an HBO TV on DVD title) comes with the first episode of True Blood, “Strange Love.” I wasn’t sure what to expect from the show going into it. I knew from the viral campaign that there would obviously be a social commentary, but what I didn’t expect was that the show would be as dark and sexual as it is. From oral, to “fangbangers”, to even some chains; there was a lot of sexuality crammed into these 58 minutes. The series also has a nice cast of characters that give the show some minutes of laughter. Sookie’s best friend Tara and Merlotte’s short order cook Lafayette both bring some big laughs in this episode.

All in all it is a nice introductory episode. “Strange Love” sets up the locale and the characters and seems to touch on where the series will be heading. It has definitely caught my interest and I will be faithfully watching this series throughout it’s 12 episode run. I am also interested in reading some of the “Southern Vampire” books the TV show is based on by Charlaine Harris.

The down sides to this particular DVD is that it only has a 2.0 soundtrack and is watermarked with a huge HBO logo across the middle of the screen throughout the entire episode. I don’t mind the intermittent “Personal use” text that pops up, but there is no need to watermark a DVD that you have released to the public.

The Episode:

The DVD:

More information:
http://www.hbo.com/trueblood/