First released in 2000, 'Caged' united two giants of experimental electronic music - Throbbing Gristle’s Chris Carter, a pioneering force in industrial and electronic music for over four decades, and Ian Boddy, composer, sound designer, analogue synth aficionado, and founder of the ambient/electronic label DiN. Having known each other casually for years, Boddy invited Carter to collaborate for his then-new label; Carter immediately agreed, and together they produced a work of startling muscularity and textural depth. Across its shifting soundscapes, Caged plays with chance and paradox, where a whisper swells into a crescendo, a beat dissolves into a tone, and nothing remains still for long.

The album now returns for its 25th anniversary via The Grey Area of Mute in a newly remastered edition, expanded with two brand-new compositions reimagined from the original audio files: ‘Claustrophobia’, reworked by Carter, and ‘Uncaged’, reworked by Boddy. Together, these new versions revisit 'Caged’s DNA from opposite ends of the spectrum, one tightening its grip, the other breaking free. They say expectation is a prison. Here, being 'Caged' is being free.

TRACK LISTING

1. Concussed
2. Coriolis
3. Slab
4. Sub-Aura
5. Disembodied
6. Caged
7. Under-Dub
8. Claustrophobia
9. Uncaged

Electronic Ambient Remixes Three was originally released in 2001 and includes ambient remixes and soundscapes utilising Chris Carter’s original Throbbing Gristle rhythm tapes from the 70s and 80s. Tracks from this instrumental series have been used internationally in gallery installations, performed at numerous electronic music festivals, featured on TV and radio broadcasts and within Hollywood movie trailers.

Electronic Ambient Remixes One was originally released in 2000 and includes ambient remixes and reinventions of the album ‘The Space Between’. Tracks from this instrumental series have been used internationally in gallery installations, performed at numerous electronic music festivals, featured on TV and radio broadcasts and within Hollywood movie trailers. Electronic Ambient Remixes One is now available for the first time on double violet coloured vinyl as well as CD, download and streaming.

‘Archival Recordings: 1973 - 1977’: Originally only available in the now sold out ‘Miscellany’ vinyl box set released in 2018. 13 tracks that Chris found in his archive from years before he formed Throbbing Gristle with Cosey, Sleazy and Genesis. They show a young mind curious about electronic sound and melody, yet sound like a fully formed album that should never have been left in the archive for 40+ years. A perfect companion piece to his latest album ‘Chris Carter’s Chemistry Lessons Volume One’.

TRACK LISTING

Nodes - 1973
Head Less - 1974
Hegel Vogt - 1974
Null - 1974
Runclodler - 1974
Hexfoil - 1975
Jet Age - 1975
Warm Hair - 1975
Variables - 1976
Wybbel - 1976
Black Powder - 1977
Ghost Trains - 1977
See Sick - 1977

‘Disobedient’: Chris Carter’s live documentation of his performance at the legendary Disobey Club in London, Manchester and Vienna from October 1995. Double vinyl in gatefold sleeve with bonus track ‘Disobedient Redux’ recorded in 2018.

TRACK LISTING

Pantavistiq
Pulsec
Solomo
Lixiez
TVX
Chakutut
Versix
Sublev
Domank
Disobedient Redux

‘Mondo Beat’: Chris Carter’s second solo album, originally released in 1985. Includes the haunting classic track ‘Moonlight’.

TRACK LISTING

Moonlight
Real Life
Noevil
Mondo B
Nobadhairdo
Beyond Temptation

‘Small Moon’: Originally released in 1999. A pulsing classic that takes you down to the nightclub and floats you home. Double vinyl in gatefold sleeve with bonus track ‘Small Moon Redux’ from 2018.

TRACK LISTING

Arcadia
Praxiz
Klypp'D
Non-Pop
Reazymn
Soho… 3am
Small Moon Redux

Remixes from Chris Carter’s "Chemistry Lessons Volume One.1: Coursework" alongside a new piece - "Bongo Glow".

A work in progress at the time the album was completed, "Bongo Glow" was completed using the same processes as the rest of "CCCLV1", and it juusst about made the cut for the Japanese release date. But for you lucky listeners Mute have ensured its inclusion here. A slowly morphing, elasticated track with mangled, computerized vox, playful melodies and push-pull rhythms; it's deliciously quirky and textured and should appeal to both die hard electronica fans and lovers of leftfield pop.

The additional three reworkings included here were created without direct instruction as an experiment to see how they changed with input from external sources. Daniel Avery’s remix of "Usyring" is a slow building, mesmerizing industrial pounder which fits perfectly with the producer's current MO. 

Meanwhile The Radiophonic Workshop took "Blissters" and created a more experimental reworking exectued in their unique style and Chris Liebing gives "Tones Map" a brooding end-of-world type feel, adding his 'Slow Burn' remix technique.

TRACK LISTING

Bongo Glow
Uysring (Daniel Avery Remix)
Blissters (Radiophonic Workshop Remix)
Tones Map (Chris Liebing Burn Slow Remix)

Seventeen years on from his last solo release, the twenty-five tracks collected on Chris Carter’s Chemistry Lessons Volume One (CCCL Volume 1) were the product of six years spent working on solo material in the Norfolk home studio he shares with Cosey Fanni Tutti. CCCL Volume 1 reinforces Carter’s significant but often under-appreciated role in the development of electronic music - a journey that for Carter started ahead of his work with Throbbing Gristle (alongside Cosey, Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge), and continued through Chris & Cosey, Carter Tutti, Carter Tutti Void as well as his own solo and collaborative releases under his own name.

Here you will find music with a distinctly futuristic leaning, with insistent melodic patterns and a distinct sense of wonderment at the limitless possibilities of science. “If there’s an influence on the album, it’s definitely ‘60s radiophonic,” Carter agrees. “Over the last few years I’ve also been listening to old English folk music, almost like a guilty pleasure, and so some of tracks on the album hark back to an almost ingrained DNA we have for those kinds of melodies. They’re not dissimilar to nursery rhymes in some ways.”

That combination of traditional music and the backing track for exciting, potential futures gives tracks like ‘Moon Two’ and ‘Tangerines’ a sheen of inquisitiveness and quiet euphoria, while ‘Modularity’ and ‘Roane’ have an anxious, sci-fi noir charm. Elsewhere, the skewed voices of the meditative ‘Cernubicua’ add a calming, human note to the album, even if deciphering any specific lyrical content is largely impossible. “That's completely intentional,” says Carter. “Sleazy and I had worked together on ways of developing a sort of artificial singing using software and hardware. This was me trying to take it a step further. I've taken lyrics, my own voice or people's voices from a collection that I'd put together with Sleazy, and I’ve chopped them up and done all sorts of weird things with them.”

Carter began the foundation work for what became CCCL Volume 1 in the years before Sleazy passed away in 2010, and the death of Carter’s fellow TG journeyman had a profound effect on the development of the album. “I’d been accumulating a lot of material, just tracks and elements of tracks, and I was going to start putting it together just before Sleazy died,” he says. “That’s what completely threw me, and that’s partly why it’s taken so long, because of dealing with the shock of that.” Carter describes going through a long grieving process which manifested itself in some of the darker, more introspective tracks appearing on the album.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There aren't many driving forces in electronic music as influential as throbbing gristle, and Chris Carter's role cannot be understated. Here we get a distillation of his influences from minimal wave industrial into cosmic and krautrock. Brilliantly evocative and enthralling.

TRACK LISTING

1. Blissters
2. Tangerines
3. Nineteen 7
4. Cernubicua
5. Pillars Of Wah
6. Modularity
7. Field Depth
8. Moon Two
9. Durlin
10. Corvus
11. Tones Map
12. Dust & Spiders
13. Gradients
14. Lab Test
15. Shildreke
16. Uysring
17. Ghosting
18. Noise Floor
19. Post Industrial
20. Rehndim
21. Roane
22. Time Curious Glows
23. Ars Vetus
24. Hobbs End
25. Inkstain 

Christina Carter is an exceptional and compelling musician, pushing the boundaries of personal expression and innovative sonics, she is perhaps better known for her work as part of the popular free-folk duo Charalambides. Christina Carter has a gift. In a world where most people shy away from the truth, from honesty in emotion, Christina has the strength to address those feelings head on through her music. Within the songs of "Original Darkness", she confronts loneliness, self doubt, inadequacy and desire. She bares these emotions in a sometimes tender, sometimes forceful, sometimes pleading voice, a voice in which you can hear her vulnerability, her trepidation. Christina's words, and the mournful sound of them, stirs a melancholy that is supported and framed by her gently plucked guitar notes, notes that echo the sadness in the world she sings of, as well as the words she sings. These ten new songs paint pictures; exposing the underbelly of what we all really think but most will not say, of what we all really feel but push away. With the addition of gentle bells and occasional keyboards, Christina reminds us of what it means to be honestly human.

This is the third in a series of Charalambides - related reissues from Kranky, following Charalambides' "Unknow Spin" and Tom Carter's "Monument" album. This album was originally released as an extremely limited CDR by Wholly Other in 2001. It features recordings from the period between Charalambides' "Union" and "Houston" albums, with most of the material being recorded in 1995/6. This album proves that the simplistic combination of one woman's voice and guitar can be as ethereal and heavenly as a full band of musicians.