Wreckers of Civilisation: The Story of Coum Transmissions & Throbbing Gristle
Simon Ford
Wreckers of Civilisation recalls a time which despite volumes of print remains occluded, obdurate, even intimidating: that moment before the conservative reconstruction. To be awake in London in the late 1970s was to be plunged into turmoil: externally manifest in riot, internally within various forms of damage & depression and, if one felt brave or driven, extreme aesthetics. COUM Transmissions & Throbbing Gristle mark the furthest reach of that impulse: even more so than Punk, they plunged into a technological & personal examination of the dark side - the forbidden, the taboo, the dystopian future on the doorstep. Today this might seem like science fiction or deliberate shock tactics, but then it seemed like reportage, front line dispatches from a convulsed country.