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Cosey Fanni Tutti talks with Dangerous Minds about her first solo album since 1983


Photo by Chris Carter

Next week, Cosey Fanni Tutti—visual and performance artist, author of Art Sex Music, member of Throbbing Gristle, COUM Transmissions, Chris & Cosey, Carter Tutti, and Carter Tutti Void—will release her first solo album since 1983’s Time to Tell. The erotic undertow and ghostly foreboding of the music on the new LP, Tutti, which originated as the soundtrack to the autobiographical film Harmonic COUMaction, take me to a wonderful place. Cosey kindly spoke with Dangerous Minds by phone on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

What are the sources that you used for this album? How did you record it? The press materials say that it’s mostly based on source material from throughout your life.

Yeah, that’s right. All the audio sources for the album were taken from recordings throughout my life, whether they were audio voices, phone calls, anything like that, which we’ve always recorded and I’ve always recorded for a long, long time now. And because the original music for Tutti was done as a soundtrack for a film that was based on images throughout my life, that’s why I used the audio for the same thing, so they both married up, and they represented me, basically. Yeah, and then I manipulated it all, so that’s where it all came from.

That’s so interesting, because the only vocals I recognized are on the song “Heliy.”

Yeah, I was singing live.

Can you identify any of the people whose voices appear on the album in different form?

No. [laughter] I can but I won’t. It’s people that literally have been in my life, and it’s not so much about recognizing their voice so much as. . . it’s just the essence of everything that contributed to making me who I am, and it was like that with the visuals and with the audio.

Is this the Harmonic COUMaction movie? Can you describe it for me?

Well, it’s like I said, they’re still images taken right from my birth, it begins with—to put it in context, when I was asked to do something for the Hull City of Culture, which, Hull is where I was born and where COUM really started, began there, and I was asked to do something there and put together a COUM Transmissions exhibition, retrospective. So I was working with all that material, and then I was asked to do a live performance, and at the same time I was doing my autobiography, so everything kind of came in right at the correct moment for me, so one thing fed the other. And I decided to do a film, like I said, of visuals that represented who I was from the town where I was born, where the exhibition and the City of Culture was taking place, and that’s when I put all the audio together for it as well.

In the film, there’s images of me, there’s my parents when I was born, my sister, where I lived, so there’s geographical references as well as personal references to people. And I did it so they’re all morphing into one another, a kind of visual representation of me being formed, basically. So everything is, like, running and melting from day one, and people turn into other people, into buildings, into—even my pet dog Tremble is in there. Everything is there that was really important to me throughout my life and recorded, and it all just becomes transformed into me, as this metamorphosis of who you are and what formed you. So the visuals are like that, and there’s like things collapsing in and then reforming into something else. That’s how I visually decided to present how I felt about my life.

It sounds like a representation of your “art is life, life is art” philosophy.

Well, yes, it’s all there. It is, actually; that’s what it is, you get the impression, then. That’s where my work is based and continues to be based, is how I traverse this planet, basically, and how it affects me and how the people I come into contact with affect me, and all the forces at play: emotional, physical, geographical. It’s important, ‘cause that’s how we all are, to be honest.
 

 
Can you tell me a little about that event? Was there any kind of a COUM reunion? I don’t know who’s still around from that period.

Yeah, it was quite sad, actually, because we’ve lost some people along the way, like everybody has. For the exhibition, I did a new piece as well, which was called “COUM Talks,” and it was basically talking heads of seven original members of COUM. And we lost one of those after I interviewed him. All these people, I had filmed, with just a few questions about COUM—when they joined, when they left, what it meant to them, any particular part of COUM that stood out to them as a memory—and then after that they could talk about what they wanted, really. So I had these seven screens in the exhibition room, and each person was reflecting on COUM and what it meant to them and their little memories, it was really interesting.

And Tim Poston, one of the first founding members of COUM, as well, was the one that sadly passed away. But it’s quite serendipitous, really, ‘cause when I was putting this together, he’d got in touch with me before I got in touch with him [laughs], and he was working in India at the time. You should look him up, he’s an incredible person. When I met him, he was telling me about figuring out how to get ultrasound to work to help irrigate arid areas and things like that. He’d also done research and provided a really cheap way of testing eyesight in India, in the villages there, so people could get treatment, that kind of thing. He was an incredible person. He got in touch with me, and I told him about what was going on, and he happened to have a brother who lived in the same area of the UK as me, and he was going to visit him. So we met up, and I said, “Do you want to do this interview for the exhibition?” And we met up and filmed him, had a lovely time together, and then about six months later he passed away. It was really sad. But then again, I think it’s quite wonderful that he was recorded. His piece, in particular, people absolutely adore, because he has a very. . . peaceful demeanor. He looks like Gandalf, for a start [laughs], so you get some idea. And he has this beautiful staff that he’s always carried around with him, so he’s been Gandalf before. . . maybe he took it from Gandalf. So we met him here, and had a wonderful time with him, and then lost him, sadly. But he was in the exhibition, which was wonderful, and COUM meant such a lot to him. And that’s a new piece that I did for the exhibition as well.

Was it strange at all to be recognized as sort of “official culture” in Hull? I imagine that would be gratifying, but it seems so different from the way COUM was received at the time.

Yeah, it was a funny one, really. That kind of acknowledgement had gained momentum over the past, I guess, 15 years, where I’d been included in group shows in my own right, as well as contributed for COUM, over the years, so it wasn’t so strange. But I kind of thought it was quite ironic. It’s the kind of thing that we would have embraced as COUM, if COUM had still been going. Kind of, like, Yeah, that’s a little bit unexpected, but great! We’ll run with that.

I was given the option of different spaces to do the exhibition: the Ferens Art Gallery, which is kind of, like, quite institutional, and there’s one at the college, the Philip Larkin Gallery, which were both really beautiful. But then I was given the option of a place that could be refurbed, which was bang in the middle of where we used to do all the COUM street actions, and that just felt so right, even though it was derelict at the time [laughs] when I went ‘round, had a look. I said, “Oh, it’s got to be here, because this is where we were, this is where the spirit of COUM was.” So it was carefully planned in that respect. So to be accepted, but then at the same time impose the actual spirit of COUM on it as well, that, Yes, we’ll have that, but we’ll want this space here—that’s the best place, because it’s where we worked.

It sounds like some serendipity was involved overall.

Yes, definitely. It was quite uncanny. There was a lot of things like that going on at the same time. The momentum of that element of serendipity kind of went through the whole, well, two years of preparation, yeah.
 

 
I listened to the audiobook of Art Sex Music, which is really wonderful. I know that you were estranged from your family; had it been a long time since you’d gone back to Hull?

No, I’d gone back to Hull ‘cause my sister still lives there, and Les has lived there, has never moved out. So I’ve always gone back to visit Les, right from. . . yeah, when Nick was born, ‘82, we were back in Hull with Les. I’ve always gone back, I’ve never felt estranged from Hull at all, it’s just my place there has changed in itself.

It’s not the Hull I remember—even more so now, because there’s been a lot of regeneration going on because of the Hull City of Culture. It’s not the Hull I remember like London isn’t the London I remember, either, when I go back there. Places change, and what it means to me, it doesn’t mean that to people who are there now [laughs]. But I still have a real fondness for my time there because it was instrumental in a lot of things I do, and informing me, and forming me, from the very beginning. That was where things began for me.

Much more after the jump…

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Posted by Oliver Hall
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01.31.2019
08:20 am
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Throbbing Gristle’s Cosey Fanni Tutti in the video for Sylvester’s ‘You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)’
04.04.2017
02:56 pm
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A few nights ago I accompanied my wife to the ER. Before we left for the hospital I grabbed Cosey Fanni Tutti’s newly published autobiography Art Sex Music (Faber & Faber) and I’m glad I did. While we waited and waited (and then waited some more) I got really engrossed in what is easily my favorite book of 2017 so far, even as I haven’t finished it yet. After about three hours, when they finally called her name, I looked up from its pages and it felt like my neck was stuck and that I needed to see a doctor myself. It’s a fascinating read and I’m hoping I’ll be able to interview Cosey about it here in the coming weeks. (Quite a good excerpt appeared recently at The Guardian’s website.)

Now I don’t know yet if she actually mentions this in the book as I’m still a year or so behind in the narrative, but in 1978 Cosey appeared as a disco-dancing extra in the promo video that was shot for Sylvester’s immortal classic “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”!

She was asked about this by John Doran a writer for The Quietus in 2015:

Cosey, were you really in the video to “Mighty Real” by Sylvester?

Cosey: Yeah.

I love that song….

Cosey: It’s a great song. I was with a stripping agency because I was stripping at the time and for whatever reason, whoever was filming the video for him wanted to have dancers. So they got some dancers from Pineapple Studios in London. So they had orthodox dancers and they also wanted people that just danced. And not just disco dancers but people who were used to dancing in front of an audience or in front of cameras so they rang our agency. Three of us went down to the shoot (one of them was French Jane who used to do go-go dancing for The Who). All of us were given white satin shorts because it was at the Embassy Club and all of the male waiters there used to wear white satin shorts. Sylvester wanted the men in the shorts but he was stuck with these ten dancing girls instead. So the director said, ‘Will you dance to the music?’ Like you said, it’s a fantastic song but these Pineapple Studio girls were going, ‘...2, 3, 4, 5, 6,7, 8, 9, 10…’ [mimes intricate but stiff dance routine] And I was thinking, ‘Fuck me, it’s so regimented - why don’t you just listen to the record and dance?’ I think the director ended up using us and one or two of the girls from Pineapple who could let loose a little bit. But Sylvester got the boys in at the end. I think you can see them at the end of the video. He did get his way. I kept my shorts and I made a pattern off them so I could make some more pairs. They were really good for stripping in.

See the video, after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.04.2017
02:56 pm
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An incredible video of Throbbing Gristle: Recording their album ‘Heathen Earth’

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An incredible video of Throbbing Gristle recording their album Heathen Earth in one take, on a Saturday night between 20.10 and 21.00 hours, on February 16th 1980. The album was recorded in front of a small audience of friends and associates, at the Industrial Records studios, and was filmed by Monte Cazazza on a single camera, with “certain visual information” included by TG.

“The soundtrack of this tape was taken independant of the 8-track audio master recording and it remains ‘live’ and unremixed and consequently differs from the album in some places. Like the TG sound itself, the quality and content of this recording cannot and should not be compared with conventional commercial recordings…”

Tracklisting: as provided by Genesis P-Orridge:

01. “Cornets” (that’s all we ever called it on gig sheets etc, boring hey!)

02. “The Old Man Smiled” (this is a song I wrote. Originally I was messing about on my own in the Death Factory, at Martello St. I got a rhythm I liked on my COMPURYTHM drumachine. Then a fuzzed lead bass guitar sound. So I recorded it. Maybe 15 minutes or so. One section made it onto 20 Jazz Funk Greats as “Six Six Sixties” I believe. But I always wanted a longer version. So after I came up with a story telling lyric primarily about William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin in Tangiers and their stories of Captain Clark, boys etc I decided to do the NEW song on Heathen Earth. We did it live a couple of times too. At Oundle School for eg.) For Heathen Earth we used my original cassette as the basic track.

03. “After Cease To Exist” (yes, a new version for Heathen Earth)

04. “The World Is A War Film”

05. “Dreamachine” (Brion Gysin LOVED this track. Said it was best music, equal with The Master Musicians Of Jajouka to use his dreamachine. The rhythm had already existed (one of Chris Carter’s gems). So I always think happy thoughts of Brion, Bachir Attar and others listening with eyes closed in Paris at his apartment opposite the Beaubourg Museum in Rue St Martin. Ah, happy daze.)

06. “Still Walking” (A permutation of ‘meaningless’ phrases cooked up by myself and Sleazy, that were repeated over and over as the musics rythm gave shape to the shapeless. Chris and Cosey were shy of vocals at that time. It was partly a formula to get them to begin using their voices that I suggested based on Gysin’s theories and my own experiences of gaining confidence with microphones simply by using them.)

07. “Don’t Do As You’re Told, Do As You Think” (To be honest I think this is the weakest vocal track and lyric. Someone, a journalist or Sleazy or both suggested we should have a “positive” message! Ugh! Certainly Sleazy persuaded me to try and this is the resultant track. I still find it embarassing and wish I’d never listened to him. It would have been better as an instrumental. Ah well…)

08. “Painless Childbirth” (Named after a 10 inch vinyl album I found in a junk shop from which the voice was stolen.)

A great video of a brilliant performance by an excellent band.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.04.2012
07:09 pm
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Xeni Jardin’s cancer treatment inspires Cosey Fanni Tutti’s ‘Bioschismic’
06.19.2012
01:58 pm
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As many DM readers know, Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin, who is a very dear friend of mine and Tara’s, has recently been treated for breast cancer (and she is doing GREAT. Expect her to be back at Boing Boing fairly soon, I’d imagine).

I just got an email from her alerting me to this and I am absolutely speechless…

“Time becomes plastic. Your experience of time morphs… And when you come out of it, on the strong days right before the next scheduled infusion, all of that time compresses into blurry waves of noise.”

—Xeni Jardin

Time is defined by and within the human experience yet the dominance of ‘linear’ time prevails. We are inextricably linked with time, ‘Life’ is measured in time.

Depending on particular situations our experience of time can be elusive, appear stretched, accelerated, and on occasions all too specifically in synch with defined parameters. Audio recordings, film, Internet, and photography are some of the means by which we choose to mark ‘times’. Such documentary methods signify our need to externalise particular events and also to activate memories.

‘Bioschismic’ is created solely from audio and photographic documentation of Xeni’s time spent receiving chemotherapy. The repetitive drip drip rhythm of the toxic chemicals measured in precise doses over a specific period of time provide the prospect of extending (life) time. Time is the dominant force yet the effects of the drugs change the experience of time to a space that is other worldly - a different time zone - a schism within and for life itself.

—Cosey Fanni Tutti

‘Bioschism’ - inspired and made possible by Xeni Jardin.

This is THE.NICEST.THING.EVER.

So sweet. Such a moving gesture of solidarity from one of the hippest, coolest women on the planet to another.

Wow. Just wow.

(I should probably add that it’s a really great piece of music!)
 

 
Xeni and I interview Throbbing Gristle backstage in Los Angeles, for Boing Boing Video in 2009. A lot has changed since then.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.19.2012
01:58 pm
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Inside the home studio of Chris & Cosey with Electric Independence

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A new episode of Electric Independence has gone online at VBS.tv, and it features an excellent interview with Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti (aka Carter-Tutti/Chris & Cosey) seminal electronic musicians and one half of Throbbing Gristle.  We find out how the couple met, how they were introduced to electronic music and their life in (and after) Throbbing Gristle. Gear heads are also in for a treat as the duo talk about the synths and equipment they use and have used, including some rare home made synths by Carter. It’s also heartening to see them keeping bang up to date with technology, including the use of Kaoss pads and BC8 synths, and recording their music with Ableton Live on a MacBook.
 

 
Previously on DM:
Happy Birthday Chris Carter: ‘The Spaces Between’ LP re-issue

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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04.11.2011
08:00 pm
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Happy Birthday Chris Carter: ‘The Spaces Between’ LP re-issue

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Founding member (along with his partner Cosey Fanni Tutti) of Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey (now Carter Tutti), inventor of the Gristleizer and seminal influence on both the electronic and industrial scenes, today is Chris Carter’s birthday.

Which gives me the perfect excuse to mention his recent The Spaces Between album re-issue. His first ever solo album, it was originally released in 1980 on cassette only. In 2010 it was issued on vinyl for the first time ever by Optimo Music (the same Optimo who supplied the excellent ambient-not-ambient mix I posted at the start of the week). It has been trimmed down from 15 tracks to 6, and now includes the track “Climbing” which was not on the original album.

Here’s what Optimo Music have to say:

Originally recorded between 1974 and 1978 at Industrial Records studio in London ‘The Space Between’ album was first released as a 90 minute cassette in 1980 on Throbbing Gristle’s Industrial Records label. It wasn’t until 1991 that it was again released by Mute Records on CD. Although tracks from ‘The Space Between’ have appeared on numerous compilations since its release, the album has never been available on vinyl until now.

This new vinyl edition on Optimo Music, now retitled ‘The Spaces Between’, doesn’t include all the tracks of the original album but has been enhanced and remastered from the original two-track master tapes and has new cover artwork especially for this release. All tracks have been remastered by Chris Carter in 2009 for this release.

Chris Carter - Interloop
 

 
Chris Carter - Solidit

 

 
The Spaces Between is available to buy on vinyl and download from Boomkat in the UK. Chris & Cosey are in the middle of re-issuing their back catalog too, but I will save that for another post.

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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01.28.2011
08:31 am
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R.I.P. Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson 1955-2010

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Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, founding member of Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, and Coil, died in his sleep yesterday, 24 November, at his home in Thailand, he was 55.

The initial announcement was made by Throbbing Gristle members Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter who tweeted the same message:

Our dearest beautiful Sleazy left this mortal coil as he slept in peace last night.words cannot express our grief.

Throbbing Gristle’s official website has been updated with the message

We are saddened to announce the death of Peter Christopherson.

Sleazy passed away peacefully in his sleep on the

24th November 2010 at his home in Bankok.


Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson

1955 - 2010


 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.25.2010
09:08 am
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X-TG carry on

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The question of whether or not Genesis Breyer P-Orridge has quit Throbbing Gristle remains not fully answered. Despite Thee Deevelopment, TGers Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti have gone on to fulfill their early-November live TG obligations in Italy and Portugal as X-TG. The group has uploaded some media from those shows on their new site.

P-Orridge’s ambivalent statement on the matter was offset by “Unkle Sleazy’s” take, and there’s likely debate as to how much value a P-Orridge-less TG holds. I’d think the excerpts below from the two shows speak for themselves.
 

  X-TG ‘XPad’ Live at Porto Casa Musica by Industrial Records
 

 

Posted by Ron Nachmann
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11.14.2010
07:49 pm
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Happy birthday Cosey Fanni Tutti!
11.04.2010
04:53 pm
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A very happy birthday to artist, musician, model and feminist icon, Cosey Fanni Tutti, who was born Christine Newby on this day in 1951. You can visit her website to read about current museum exhibits, live performances and to see online archival materials from her four decade career with COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle, Chris & Cosey and now Carter Tutti.
 
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Read an excerpt about the infamous “Prostitution” exhibit at London’s ICA in 1976 from John A. Walker’s book, Art and Outrage: Cosey Fanni Tutti & Genesis P-Orridge in 1976:Media frenzy, Prostitution-style (Art Design Cafe)

From her “Time to Tell” box set, an interview with Cosey about her time in the sex trade.

Below, Cosey demonstrates the Tutti Box:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.04.2010
04:53 pm
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