The Australian who turned a studio and a shifting cast of pseudonyms into one of the most distinctive bodies of work the no-wave and industrial crossover produced, and then quietly became a composer.
I keep JG Thirlwell at Tier I as the author of a career that is easy to underrate only because it hides behind so many names. Born in Melbourne in 1960, he moved to London in 1978 and into the post-punk scene, then to New York in 1983, and across that span he built the project best known as Foetus: dense, abrasive, sample-stuffed music with the scale of a big band and the temper of a breakdown. That page documents the project; this one documents the man, because the project is only part of him.
The pseudonyms are the method, not a gimmick. Clint Ruin and Frank Want in the early credits, the instrumental Steroid Maximus and the more minimal Manorexia, the electronic Xordox, and the duo Wiseblood with the ex-Swans drummer Roli Mosimann, each a different facet of the same restless sensibility. For a certain kind of record-shop obsessive, tracking Thirlwell across the aliases was a sport.
He is also one of the tradition's great connectors, which is the other reason he earns a Tier I keep. He produced and collaborated with Nurse With Wound, Marc Almond, The The and Nick Cave, and turned up on a Jarboe record beside Blixa Bargeld. Since 2000 he has worked increasingly as a notated composer, writing for the Kronos Quartet and Bang on a Can and scoring The Venture Bros. and Archer, the same cinematic intensity simply rescored for players.
My reading. Thirlwell is at Tier I as a defining crossover sensibility and a connector across the whole tradition.
VAGO · c. the Anthropocene