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Carter Tutti Void

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Carter Tutti Void, “Triumvirate” (Conspiracy International, 2019)

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This second studio album from the wonderful union of Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti, and Nik Void is a bittersweet affair, as the trio have announced that it will be their final release. I dearly wish that was not the case, as this beloved project never quite reached its full potential. That said, Triumvirate does display some significant evolution since 2015’s f(x) though, as Chris Carter’s grooves have never been more vibrant or dynamically inventive. 

Characteristically, however, the trio’s songwriting efforts essentially begin and end with that achievement, so almost none of these six pieces ever fully transcend the feeling of a jam (though they are certainly tightly edited jams). That incredibly constrained aesthetic continues to frustrate me, as Triumvirate‘s narrow focus on repeating that formula with slight variations unavoidably yields diminishing returns regardless of how delightfully explosive and kinetic that formula can be. As such, Triumvirate essentially offers a welcome and somewhat more dancefloor-focused repeat of the project’s previous pleasures, yet misses the chance to go out with something a bit more memorable and extraordinary.

For better or worse, it cannot be said that Carter Tutti Void are inconsistent, as the project’s fundamental template has not wavered much at all over the course of their eight-year existence. Much like the live Transverse and the studio-recorded f(x) before it, Triumvirate is another series of Chris Carter grooves embellished by the pedal-stomping, dual-guitar sorcery of Cosey and Void. The tone of the project, however, is not nearly as static: in hindsight, f(x) now feels like a transitional release in which the clanking and gnarled Gristle grooves of Transverse began to morph into more pulsing and driving fare a la Chris & Cosey/Carter Tutti. 

With Triumvirate, that transformation is arguably complete, as these six pieces feel like a stripped-down Carter Tutti album swirling with echoing and hallucinatory scrapes and moans. Unfortunately, that transition from shambling industrial soundscapes to taut, sensuous synthpop did not come with a corresponding increase in melodic or harmonic content. As such, Triumvirate feels like a great Carter Tutti album with a very important element conspicuously absent: there are no chord changes (or even chords) and even the most melodic bass lines remain locked in largely unchanging loops. This feels like pop music, but without any verses, choruses, transitions, or sense of ever building towards anything more—each piece is just a single theme that unfolds for six or seven minutes, then stops. 

The closest thing to an exception is “T 3.5,” which features enough of a structured vocal motif to at least feel like a deconstructed dub-version of something that was once a fully formed song. For the most part, however, Carter Tutti Void feel like a trio who brought all their best ideas to a session, yet discovered that an imaginary fourth member (in charge of bringing all of the crucial melodic framework) had to cancel.

For his part, Chris Carter seems impressively hellbent on overcoming that obstacle almost single-handedly and it is his dexterous beat-juggling that makes Triumvirate a compelling listen despite its flaws. In a few cases, his efforts miraculously prove to be enough, as the rhythms in “T 3.2” and “T 3.3” have enough relentless forward momentum and constant dynamic transformation to make me forget that there is not much else happening. 

The latter is my favorite piece on the album, as Carter deftly adds, subtracts, and alters percussive elements as his throbbing, burbling rhythm barrels relentlessly forward through a maelstrom of groaning metallic and sci-fi-damaged sounds from Tutti and Void. Carter’s rhythmic ingenuity goes beyond seamlessly altering cymbal patterns or changing textures though, as the tempo and intensity of the piece organically transform as well, imbuing it with a wonderfully visceral and satisfying arc. 

The opening “3.2” is a bit less rhythmically nuanced, but it compensates by featuring a burbling sequencer pattern that disappears and reappears throughout its duration. Beyond that, it is also quite a delightfully improbable marriage of stomping, clapping dancefloor thump and spaced-out guitar psychedelia. I am also quite fond of the aforementioned “T 3.5,” as it gradually builds from a lurching quasi-industrial crawl to an infectiously fluid and pulsing groove. 

Moreover, it features some of Void and Tutti’s most varied and compelling onslaughts, as the pair unleash a host of strangled bleeps, burned-out riff fragments, shuddering strings, and phantasmal reverberations. I am definitely impressed with the depth and breadth of the sounds those two are able to wrest from their gleefully misused guitars. Not many guitarists could make it through an entire album without running out of interesting scrapes, rattles, and snarls if that was (nearly) the full extent of the palette they allowed themselves.

I should note here that I do genuinely like this album, in case that is not clear from my earlier grumbling. I am always more critical when it comes to artists that I love and watching such artists come maddeningly close to producing a masterpiece is always rough. And I would definitely count Triumvirate as an instance of a missed masterpiece, as there were countless times over the course of the album where I was nagged by the thought that a song could be so much better if there was even something as simple as a chord change. 

Every single performance on this album is great, but all of that effort would have been so much better spent in service of songs with some hooks or any kind of melodic framework at all. Obviously, time was likely a major issue, as all three artists were working on solo projects (among other things), but it just seems like such a missed opportunity for the swansong of this great project for this to be yet another set of jams rather than something more substantial. 

On the bright side, at least they are damn good jams—while the broad strokes definitely feel like variations on a very familiar theme, the trio’s attention to detail and small-scale textural and dynamic shifts makes for compelling deep listening. Still, I sincerely hope that this is not actually the last time that this trio surfaces, as this project has produced some of the most vital and inspired work from Chris and Cosey in years. Barring a reunion, I will grudgingly settle for Chris Carter bringing this same level of rhythmic intensity to whatever he does next. In any case, this project is going out with a flawless three-album hot streak of strong releases, even if this one exasperatingly brims with the promise of something even greater.

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Carter Tutti Void, “f(x)” (Industrial Records, 2015)

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Four long years after their seismic performance at London’s Short Circuit Festival, Carter Tutti Void have finally returned with their first proper studio album. Equally noteworthy is that fact that f(x) is the first new music to be released by Industrial Records since 2012’s Throbbing Gristle/X-TG swan song Desertshore/The Final Report. Given those circumstances, it would be hard for any record to live up to the resultant expectations, so it is not especially surprising that f(x) falls a bit short of the mark. 

The problem is not that the trio were lacking ideas or inspiration, however: they have just backed themselves into a very constrained stylistic niche that cannot realistically yield multiple albums of compelling material. That said, f(x) is still quite an enjoyable album, even if it is essentially Transverse Redux (albeit with some of the sharper edges sanded down a bit).

One of the many perils of music criticism is that it is very easy to develop a skewed perspective when I am a longtime fan of an artist. That revelation smacked me in the head when I tried to figure why I was not nearly as thrilled by f(x) as I wanted to be. Upon deeper reflection, it occurred to me that Carter Tutti Void is a fundamentally perverse and unsustainable project: I enjoyed Transverse because it was exciting to see three oft-dormant artists that I like team up for an unexpected, visceral, and explosive performance. 

Only later does it occur to me that Transverse lacked almost everything that I love about Throbbing Gristle or Chris & Cosey: it was not transgressive, it was not sexy, it did not have great hooks, and there were not any actual songs. What it offered instead was Chris Carter’s wonderfully unique lurching, clanking and wheezing grooves; plenty of energy; and the wild spontaneity of Nik Void and Cosey Fanni Tutti’s smoldering and echoing guitar improvisations. 

As it happens, that was more than enough to make a cool album, but it was a very precarious cocktail indeed: Cosey is an iconic vocalist and performer, but I would probably not queue up to buy a solo improv guitar album by either her or Void. Carter Tutti Void are not a band that entirely play to their strengths.

Notably, the trio have not made any significant alterations to their formula with f(x), which is essentially more of the same, except recorded at Chris & Cosey’s home studio in Norfolk rather than at a gig. Even the approach was roughly the same, as they set up for the recording process as though they were playing a live show in the studio—the sole significant innovation being that they allowed themselves three takes and assembled the finished pieces from those components. 

Oddly, the sound quality is cleaner, but not always better—f(x) often feels quite a bit more mannered than its predecessor, even though the grooves are a bit more sexed-up. Musically, however, Chris Carter is in prime form, unleashing six more throbbing and propulsive grooves that sound eerily like a living machine. The best of lot is the opening “f = (2.4),” which sounds like a sinuous and sultry Carter Tutti song warped into a haunted, hallucinatory, and sci-fi-damaged juggernaut. Later on, Carter delves into something that sounds like it belongs in a strip club scene in a film like Escape From New York (“f = (2.2)”), a burbling and insistent Motorik work-out (“f =(2.6)”), and an awesomely throbbing groove that sounds plucked from an ’80s S&M club (“f=(2.7.)”).

Notably, the “John Carpenter Strip Club” song is absent from the vinyl version of the album, but that gets at something very important about f(x): it absolutely does not matter at all. While the best pieces are definitely the book-ends (“Warped Carter Tutti Song in Space” and “Retro S&M Sex Groove”), these six (or five) pieces are otherwise more or less interchangeable due to their hyper-limited palette. 

There are no melodies, no chord changes, no hooks, no real development, and no real vocals (aside from some chopped and heavily processed howling and chanting). The songs are all just vamps that play out for 8 or 10 minutes, then wind to a close once they have run their course. Cosey and Nik certainly make quite a bit of racket on their end, but there is only so much they can do to make a song memorable when playing bowed guitar through a battery of effects pedals. 

For all intents and purposes, these songs live or die by their grooves: the gnarled guitar cacophony over the top just serves to keep things interesting and unpredictable. Also, these pieces are so similar that listening to more than a few at a time yields quickly diminishing impact. All of that adds up to an alternately bracing, exhilarating, exhausting, frustrating, hypnotic, and wild whole (or maybe a handful of very cool (if overlong) singles, if viewed in a more charitable light). 

In any case, my feelings regarding f(x) are deeply conflicted. On one hand, it is always wonderful to hear more of Carter’s weirdly heaving and imperfect rhythms and it is great that this project is bringing Chris & Cosey’s work to new audiences. On the other, I cannot help but feel that Carter Tutti Void have driven themselves into a creative cul de sac and that they desperately need to find a way out: this is not a well that they can viably keep returning to. 

I am hoping that they eventually either take the plunge and write some actual songs or find some way to harness their rhythmic genius into something more immersive and longform. In fact, I was hoping that might happen with f(x). Alas. Maybe next time. For now, however, f(x) is a very likable, albeit minor, album. It may not be the revelation that Transverse was, but the material is not necessarily weaker—it just feels that way because Carter Tutti Void tried to dazzle me with the same trick twice.

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Carter Tutti Void, “Transverse” (Mute, 2013)

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Back in 2011, Chris and Cosey united with Factory Floor’s Nik Void (né Nikki Colk) for an improvised set during London’s Short Circuit Festival. Not very many people got to actually see it (it was a small room), but those lucky few who did were fairly unanimous in declaring it spectacular. Thankfully, someone competently recorded it and everyone involved agreed that it should be released once they heard it. I am sure that Transverse is not nearly as great as being there must have been, but it definitely makes for a very unexpected and satisfying consolation prize.

This album is an anomaly and an aberration in just about every possible way, as absolutely nothing about it is what I would have anticipated. The biggest surprise is probably that it sounds absolutely nothing like recent Carter Tutti. Instead, it resembles a bad-ass abstract hybrid between Throbbing Gristle and early ’80s Chris & Cosey. Part of that makes sense, as the beats and grooves were all harvested from unused Gristle recordings that Chris Carter had lying around. 

The rest is definitely a leftfield surprise though, as I do not understand why Chris & Cosey could not have made this album long ago or why they needed Ms. Void’s involvement to make it happen. I am not saying that Void’s contributions are not great or welcome (because they are great and welcome), but it is certainly bizarre that the involvement of someone in a very dancefloor-oriented band was what it took to steer Carter and Tutti into such ugly and noisy territory. Transverse does not sound at all like the sum of its parts—it sounds like Chris & Cosey from 30 years ago in a particularly hostile mood.

Yet another twist is that the actual sounds themselves on Transverse are unexpected, as both Tutti and Void were wielding guitars for the performance. While I know Void used a bow and Cosey used a slide, there is very little here that recognizably sounds like guitar at all. Instead, there is quite a lot of snarling, scraping, and shuddering and some sounds that seem like they could only emanate from a badly abused, detuned bass. 

For his part, Chris Carter characteristically spent the show hunched over a table full of electronics. It is nearly impossible to determine which sounds emanated from him and which came from the guitars for the most part, but the beats are definitely his and they are quite stellar. There is not much variation between these five pieces, as they all basically cohere into an endlessly throbbing and hypnotic whole periodically interrupted by well-earned cheering and clapping, but Carter’s visceral, mechanized thumps and groans are both unrelenting and darkly sensual.

The final twist is that the music is quite regressive, but better for it. None of these pieces approaches the complexity or craft of either Chris & Cosey’s or Factory Floor’s work, as the trio opt instead for simple rhythmic vamps with virtually no structural evolution or change. There is not anything approaching an actual song at all, just a handful of killer early beats strafed with inspired eruptions of noise and the occasional wordless, digitized moan. Normally, i would I expect such a one-dimensional attack to eventually get boring, but Transverse never does. Nor does it ever get too cluttered or over the top. In fact, it sounds like these three have been playing together forever, as everything unfolds organically and all of the spaces and flurries sounds like they are exactly where they need to be.

The only perfectly logical and predictable aspect of Transverse is that Void, Tutti, and Carter were able to work so well together, as Factory Floor occasionally shares a lot of common ground with Chris & Cosey’s past work. There is not a lot of common ground with Gristle or with anything on this particular album, mind you, but it is evident that there is a lot of stylistic overlap and mutual admiration. Even with that factored in, however, there is no denying that the chemistry between these three was absolutely perfect that night and that something truly unique and wonderful occurred. 

That fact is highlighted by the final piece on the album, a studio version of “V4.” In theory, that should be the best piece, as it was professionally recorded and the trio had time to edit and re-record, but it somehow lacks the magic and energy of the four live pieces that precede it. I have said many times that I do not understand the appeal of live albums at all, but Transverse is the exception to that rule: this album captures a performance that can probably never be replicated or topped.

Listen here.