Search - Psychic TV :: Force the Hand of Chance

Following the dissolution of Throbbing Gristle--the band that coined the term "Industrial Music"--the involved musicians went on to a variety of projects. Psychic TV is the brainchild of TG "vocalist" and ringleader Genesis P-Orridge. Force The Hand Of Chance is PTV's first album. It is a strange and difficult affair--though quite not entirely in the way one might expect given the band's pedigree. Originally released in 1982 and sleeved with a rather graphic and elaboratevisual double entendre (sadly replaced on subsequent editions), Force opens with the deceptively soothing "Just Drifting"--complete with easy-listening strings and P-Orridge's actually singing. This odd, sweet style of song-which also typifies the brilliant "Stolen Kisses"--is made especially unsettling because of the tension created by not allowing the music to devolve into the anticipated cathartic white-noise implosions. Each of the album's string-suffused tracks seems tofunction as a kind of musical analogy of Buddhist tantric sex theories. Though there are noisier tracks (like the Gristle-like "Ov Power"), Force is exactly what P-Orridge clearlyintended it to be--a masterpiece of subverted expectations. Classic.