Track Listing

1. 20 Jazz Funk Greats
2. Beachy Head
3. Still Walking
4. Tanith
5. Convincing People
6. Exotica
7. Hot On The Heels Of Love
8. Persuasion
9. Walkabout
10. What A Day
11. Six Six Sixties
12. Discipline
13. Discipline (1)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13098 in Music
• Released on: 1993-12-31
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Customer Reviews

Seminal stuff
A stunning piece of work! If, like me, you had thought Throbbing Gristle were primarily noise and angst, 20 Jazz Funk Greats introduces a whole new dimension to their sound. A track like Beachy Head is gentle, beautiful and yet unsettling. On the one hand it's a pure instrumental tone-poem, but then the fact that it's named after Beachy Head, the UK's most notorious suicide spot, adds a new level of refined macabre to TG's pallette.

And it's got some of the best cover artwork ever... with a nasty kick for the observant.

Side note: I remember reading that Throbbing Gristle were an influence on Boards of Canada, but couldn't hear the lineage until I got 20 Jazz Funk Greats. Just compare a track like Walkabout on 20 JFG's to early BOC and it's plain to see. Even the cover has similarities to BOC's Music Has the Right to Children.

Radio Friendly Unit Shifter
TG eschewed the barrages of noise documented by their Annual Reports for one shot at a commercial record. 'Twenty Jazz Funk Greats' shows a quieter side to the band but is still riddled with the sickness that informed their obsessions and interests. The sleeve is a slickly corporate shot of the type that the band liked to produce but is informed by the fact that it was shot at Beachy Head, a major suicide location in the UK. The music is more like the later work of Chris and Cosey and Peter Christopherson's Coil than the Annual Reports or '24 Hours', mostly utilising 70s synths and beatboxes. It remains the friendliest point of access into TG apart from the posthumous 'Greatest Hits'.

Industrial as it was originally conceived
This album, from it's polo neck cover through to the sick whine of frontman Genesis P'Orridge, is an ecclectic mix of ambient, techno/electro, power electronics and old fashioned industrial noise. With plenty of black humourous elements (sixsixsixties) and an spotlight on all aspects of social control, it is a must have for any true Industrial fan, or a highlight for someone interested in music in this vein. My only Throbbing Gristle album it stands proud in my CD collection, but it does suffer as it's very dated sounding now. If you enjoy analogue synth sounds it's definately one to get a hold of.