cartertutti © haire
Interview with Chris Carter/Cosey Fanni Tutti (CarterTutti, Throbbing Gristle) -
Berlin, June 2008.
HE/Xrysafenia Danai: Is there a theme, or a purpose of your recent album "Feral Vapours Of The Silver Ether", as if, would you expect something from the listener?
CFT: I think the purpose of our music is a universal experience really. It comes on very personal things that our friends or we have gone through, transcribed into music. And the lyrics are ambiguous for everyone to interpret – open to everybody. Not dictating emotions or feelings or any kind of philosophy at all. Just shared experience.
HE: The incredible thing about this album is that it combines experimentation of sound as well as experimentation of different perspectives of being within a space that has managed to remain neutral; saying emotionally unloaded.
CFT: The space is what people tend to keep very deep inside themselves and they don’t often share with other people. And I think that particularly now, in this society and culture that is more important than it ever has been. Because people tend to live within a virtual world. You know with Internet, visual communication and everything else, culture in its deepest meaning and purpose has become quite rare. The case of when we do sound we try to create the kind of sound that touches the nerves of your body and triggers these emotions and then you have an empty point and a touchpoint with people.
HE: There is a certain suspicion about this record of the confession of a quite well known secret in a way “harmful” as to how deep of a personal experience one would give in getting individually.
CFT: We had a very emotional 18 months before recording the album. That had a fit into what we did. But it was something we felt was really important and is transmitted in the music. We been in different places and the atmosphere and ambience there created by the space that it puts us just by being there. For instance, in Venice, when we did some shows there, the lakes at night and the lagoon and everything and the noises around when no one was there maybe you heard something in the distance/clubs shutting down and then people walking in the street. When a lot of humans were leaving they gathered so many energies together.
CC: And the space between.
CFT: A sort of magical time. A lot of people that live late at night. The people who inhabit that “space between”. The twilights of the lake.
HE: You mean something similar to what wewere talking about earlier (before I started recording the conversation). The flight state of transit. The plane no space.
CFT: Yeah. Some people, cut themselves off completely. Other people, like me, are programmed to actually try and connect to things going on around me cause I find that interesting and it feeds my creative intrigueness. That’s why often you get tired while travelling. Travelling can get really exhausting cause you meet so many people. And if you are out there travelling for ten hours you’re absolutely knackered when you reach your destination.
HE: And at the same time trying to maintain your observatory ability.
CFT: No, you can’t help that.
CC: Yeah. Can’t turn that off.
CFT: All the people’s energies, which is another thing, especially people that are really anxious and arguing or shouting, that’s another thing.
cartertutti © haire
HE: When you’re at home is day or night the active time for you?
CC: We are often active throughout the daytime, we tend to chill out in the night.
HE: Also recording?
CC: It’s usually during the day, yeah. We live in a very quiet place in England. We live in the countryside and there’s not a lot of difference between night and day.
CFT: It’s very very still, it’s mostly countryside and farms around us. It’s a very small village. And people there are felt around once they come home from work, so the place a little bit active for a couple of hours and then back to silence.
CC: Although I like working at night, you (CFT) are not so keen on the idea. I like working throughout the night.
CFT: No, no. Night time for me is my observational time, if you like, my stimulation time. That’s why I liked walking in the streets in Venice in the night so much. Although you (CC) like working late at night.
CC: I do, yeah. I like cities at night, how they change and how they turn into something else.
CFT: For me it depends what city it is.
HE: Also what’s interesting, is the sort of unit that you two, Chris and Cosey have as a sound identity. But at the same time having individual projects.
CC: Do you think we have a sound?
HE: Yeah, definitely, surely.
CC: Cause we’re trying to confound this sort of expectation.
HE: Not in terms of living up to a certain expectation, but as far as musical identity is concerned. Possibly a feeling rather than an expectation. And I believe this comes from a long term collaboration – knowing each other so much – and you can’t avoid finding this intimacy in the music.
HE: Is this record referring to aging as well? In many ways.
CC: Possibly, aging. I think what it deals with is the acceptance that growth is something fantastic. And that with age comes the realization that some of the things you thought were important are coming down to be trivial. And the transient of life as well, because for instance, in the five years that we had, we had to let go of a lot of people. So there’s that side of it but there is also a celebration of the fact that although life ends it’s a fantastic thing; the existence of the people and the things that you’ve done. We worked with a lot of people that were 25 years younger than us and though it’s quite difficult to achieve, we don’t feel that distance. Cause age has nothing to do with that, on the other hand what I do sense, is the view and the acceptance of how I was in that age.
HE: I think that it’s a different world order as well, though, for the 20smth year old people.
CFT: It’s a very obvious thing to say but you only have 20smth years of experience in this case. When you have 50, your comparison points are different. Taking under consideration that life experience is something that differs from person to person, of course.
HE: I can’t even imagine.
CC: And that’s what is exciting about it. To be honest, I would hate to be 25 now, in this world. Cause I think it would be a bit scary.
CFT: I think an advantage we had was that our reference point started off with our parents. I can still remember a lady in a Victorian dress when I was young. Naturally, she was very old and she never changed but there were still Victoria dresses in second hand shops. You know, you’d go and buy one as a hippie.
So you had the references from the Victorian times, the 30’s, the war, everything. And the came all this technology, so our generation saw all this growth. Subsequently, we have the advantage in a way we assimilate to maturity and we made our choices of where we went. Whereas, with other future generations the choices are so vast that you’d start thinking: “where do I go?”
HE: Being brought up in such a digitised and neutral world with sets of ideas everywhere in the creative perspective, you have to clarify the direction you’ll follow every morning you wake up according to your identity and background, to achieve a goal. But the goal changes every single second.
CFT: The importance of that is to focus on what you feel inside, the little resonances that are going. And it is sort of difficult.
HE: And also merging your influences in your artistic activity.
CC: Especially in a meaningful way.
CFT: The key to it is self discovering. Doesn’t have to do with anyone else but you. You can’t just live in that virtual world cause it doesn’t exist. The only world there is is this one, the real one. And as long as you don’t know who you are you can’t really interact.
CC: But that’s the difficult part. Because much of the world now is virtual. So much of it is.
CFT: But that's why you have to take control, isn't it? The hardest thing is that whatever you become interested in, becomes assimilated so quick and commercialized and commodified that you almost feel betrayed that you even liked it at the first place. It happened with me when I was seventeen with Velvet Underground and Lou Reed and all that. As soon as they got popular... well I wasn't really that interested anymore. That was my territoty, how was it intruded like that.
CC: And it's even quicker now that things become global much more quickly.
HE: At least it forces you to retain your character and filter everything to your standards.
CFT: It can never be anyone else's and that's what people tend to forget. They tend to sort of excuse the fact that they won't connect with themselves: How can they with all that and this going on?
Well, you do have a choice and you can tune in where to go next. Give yourself a chance to assimilate that and then you know where you want to go next. And that's the biggest problem I think.
HE: That's anyway an interesting way to put it (self exploration), as a stroll through the woods rather than a window shopping walk within visual culture.
CFT: Well in a stroll in the woods you never know what you're going to find. And that's what it's about. There's things behind the tree and things under your feet.
HE: And images you created yourself rather than icons.
CFT: Absolutely, yeah. And get away from television.
HE: So what about the Throbbing Gristle chapter?
CC: It is definitely not closed at the moment. This is not even a break. When we get back to England we still have some albums to work on.
HE: Are you recording?
CC: We recorded, we played at Primavera in Barcelona and then Villete Sonique in Paris last week. We recorded both of those performances and did an album together.
HE: Isn't that recording from five days in the ICA in London still pending?
CC: Yeah, that's still on hold. That's the basis of an album called Desert Shore that Nico redorded in the 60's. We've done a cover of the album. The whole album. Track by track. But that probably won't come out until next year because the logistics of the vocals change a lot. We have guest mucisians coming to record different vocals for us as part of Throbbing Gristle. It's all a bit more of a collaboration work.
HE: What label?
CC: Industrial records. We're going to resurrect Industrial Records. We're also moving into art. We're doing a sound installation with Cerith Wyn Evans in Tokyo, October. A very big shift. He's building a sculpture and we're going to do the soundtrack. And also releasing a DVD we're working on right now. We need some more shooting to do.
HE: Lot's of work to anticipate. Can't wait!
Interview: xrysafenia danai papagrigoriou.
