Music/Gear: Gristleism

These little fellow – Gristleisms – are small palm sized loop playback machines. The boxes contain a small speakers and 13 sample loops. They are made by the members of the influential industrial band Throbbing Gristle. You can influence the tone with little knobs on the top of the box (Volume controle, Pitch controle, Extended range). But when another Gristleism put next to another their sounds interact.

In this video you can see another type of these loop-boxes called the Buddha Machine. They also have a iPhone loop-box App called Buddha Machine. But now, back to the pioneer.

One of the founders of Throbbing Gristle is Chris Carter. He was born in London and began his career in the late 1960’s working for various TV stations (Thames, Granada and LWT) as a sound engineer on numerous TV shows and documentaries. This gave him an invaluable grounding in working with sound, audio techniques and theories. He also got more involved in the visual side of entertainment and performance, which eventually progressed into designing and presenting light shows and visual effects for numerous festivals, events and performances. (source: http://www.chriscarter.co.uk/)

What this man can do with guitar-effect pedals and other soundboxes is amazing.

This two video’s show the Throbbing Gristle in the 80’s and in 2009.

Primavera Sound, Auditori del Fòrum Barcelona 31/5/2008

Throbbing Gristle – Discipline