Home » Events » Psychic TV & High-Functioning Flesh, Cairo Pythian, Trans FX | 21+ Only – The Church on York presents

Psychic TV & High-Functioning Flesh, Cairo Pythian, Trans FX | 21+ Only – The Church on York presents

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Date/Time
Date(s) - 09/20/2015
8:00 PM - 11:00 PM

Location
Complex, LA

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Psychic TV was first born in 50 Beck Road, Hackney in 1982 following his termination of Throbbing Gristle in 1981. Six months later the duo completed the nucleus of the new unit with ex-TG’er Peter Christopherson. By that time Genesis had already conceived, named and pioneered the genre “lndustrial Music” with Throbbing Gristle. Along with the Velvet Underground, Throbbing Gristle is and remains one of the most influential rock groups of the last 30 years; if you haven’t heard their music, you will certainly have listened to someone who has. In Throbbing Gristle, Genesis and company synthesized the influences and philosophies of Gen’s close friends and collaborators, including Beat writer William S. Burroughs; Beat poet and painter Brion Gysin; psychedelic shaman Dr Timothy Leary; queer activist film maker Derek Jarman; and those of legendary occultist Austin Osman Spare, theorist John Cage and various seminal underground authors, thinkers, artists and film makers. The group “TG” produced some of the most unsettling and thoughtprovoking music of all time. Their pioneering “Industrial” sound and self-sufficient approach to record distribution has had a profound impact, becoming key elements of underground music production and distribution ever since.

A Unity of Miseries: High-Functioning Flesh is an Electro-punk act from Los Angeles, USA, in the vein of bands like Portion Control and Cabaret Voltaire, as executed by electronic body mutants Greg Vont and Susan Subtract. Their unique hard beating electronics is heavily infused with body horror and seeks to revive us all from our spectacle-induced coma. Unlike the swarm of revival, retro, and oldschool bands out there hoping to capture your nostalgia or naivety, HFF is looking to pump your bodies and refresh your mind from the tired beat.

Cairo Pythian dirties up his Goth/glam snake shed skin, like a reincarnated, monstrous Jobriath who’s just discovered his venom glands. All of Touched feels at once more unified, more ambitious, and way more ragged than the polished bone china of his past few releases for Perennial, the artist (at least lyrically) opening up sexual preference to all teams, amping up the sleaze and more or less barebacking the entirety of side 1. It’s a bit difficult to frame this guy’s work in terms of such a homogenous sound (all buzzing, schaeffel beats, vampiric crooning and sinister whispers) in comparison to the radically organized sounds that came before Touched, but he and his band (featuring Reuben Storey from Christian Mistress and Dave Harvey among other Olympia-centric notables) crank up the trash and go for it. What’s missing from the first seven songs is an appreciable boost in production techniques, almost seeming like Pythian is hitting a creative ceiling due to low/no budget, but the vibes open up nicely on side 2, culminating in the predatory dance party/psychotic Prince phone call track ethos of “Playboy Blues: Laced Again.” Change is good, directions need to be followed, and once again Cairo Pythian follows the darkness in his soul. Pretty gross, but also cool. NC-17 just based on tone (here)
(Doug Mosurock)

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