[kj] O/T The Most Overrated Album In The World....Ever

[Mark Kolmar]

On 3/2/07, ade <ade at the-lab.zetnet.co.uk> wrote:

> Here's an example - I adore Throbbing Gristle yet many modernerer fans

> of noisey music rate TG as tame, 'cos, like, Merzbow is louder for longer,

> or whatever. They're TOTALLY missing the point. "My band's louder than

> your band...". Like KJ, TG invented the fucking lot.


TG's influences and sources came out of punk rock and pop, while
Merzbow's came out of free jazz, prog rock, 20th-century art music,
and dada.  Merzbow makes a lot more sense if you were to begin with
the early junk dada collage, and then increase the density and
velocity in something like the way Jackson Pollock's paintings
developed.  Early Merzbow releases in this style were released in very
small editions, mainly on cassette, and they remain more or less
unavailable except in the 50-CD retrospective Merzbox.  For this
reason, this aspect is not very well-understood.

So, I agree that TG and Merzbow is apples and oranges.  If someone
doesn't appreciate TG as something pretty different from a quieter
Merzbow, then they do miss the point on both counts.

--Mark