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