Chris and Cosey Feature February 1984

Issue four of Kindred Spirit included a feature about duo Chris and Cosey. 

To give you a little background, Chris (Carter) and Hull born Cosey (Fanni Tutti) were originally a part of controversial music and art collective COUM Transmissions, which was founded in Hull in the late 1960s by Genesis P-Orridge and remained active until the mid 1970s.

One of the exhibitions on display at Hull’s Humber Street Gallery to tie in with Hull being UK City of Culture last year was a collection of COUM pieces from the personal archives of Cosey and Genesis P-Orridge.

For anyone not familiar, Humber Street was the former home of Hull’s historic fruit market, and has now been transformed into a cultural quarter. I found two interesting recordings linked to this. One is a short film that was recorded shortly before the COUM exhibition in February 2017. It includes an interview with Cosey and some rare footage of COUM on the streets of Hull circa 1972. Well worth a look!

  

The other is an interview with Cosey, where she shares her memories of when she lived in one of the fruit warehouses down Humber Street back in the late 1960s. 

Following the exhibition Chris, Cosey and Nik Void aka Carter Tutti Void gave a spellbinding performance at Fruit in Hull. Here's a snapshot.

In 1975, both Chris and Cosey moved on from COUM along with Genesis P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson and all four formed groundbreaking industrial band Throbbing Gristle. 

When Throbbing Gristle split (for the first time) in 1981, Chris and Cosey formed. They are still performing today under the name of Carter Tutti. Full details can be found on their website 

In 1982 Chris & Cosey were one of the artists featured on a compilation tape recorded on the Flowmotion label. The track they recorded was called 'Devil God'. I managed to dig out a copy of the cassette insert, and here is a piece of text taken from the insert describing the track: 

Chris and Cosey recorded Devil God on 1^st of March 1982.

“The concept was formulated about two weeks ago and begun yesterday. It is supposed to evoke a sort of voodoo, primitive, tribal feel. The title is ‘Devil God’. Length is approximately 2 ½ minutes.”

The entire cassette tracklist is available to view on the Discogs website

Flowmotion was a magazine and recording label founded in  Leeds in the early 1980s by Ian Dobson and Gordon Hope. Their main focus was electronic and experimental music and artists featured in the magazine included Peter Hammill, David Jackman, Nico, Lemon Kittens, Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle.

The article below that featured in Kindred Spirit was written by Daniel Dream.

Focus on Chris and Cosey

In my opinion the music that is played on “night time Radio One” is too derivative and half hearted. It has become another vicious circle, with so many groups worrying about getting played on John Peel’s show and being given coverage in the music press, as about the music itself. The DJs happily feature these half hearted records, which lack personality and integrity, due to the competitive attitude of the musicians involved, and the circle is allowed to keep spinning in dull continuum.

Numerous people have emerged in the last year or so with records which are distinctive, adventurous and unaligned to the frantic pop/rock rat race to (transient superficial) success. For example, The Cult, Anne Clarke, Virginia Astley, Jackie Leven, Sex Gang Children, Joolz, Cocteau Twins, Blitz, Ludus… You could argue that this is just a list of my own favourites, in which case I wouldn’t argue with you (except to say that I’ve only bought records by four of these nine crucial names in the last year)! But what I’m saying is that there are superficial groups given radio play and sessions in abundance.

I’m now going to write about Chris and Cosey, who provide yet another example of the lack of attention given to distinctive, adventurous music.

Chris (Carter) and Cosey (Fanni Tutti) started recording together as a duo almost immediately following the split of Throbbing Gristle in July 1981. These recordings resulted in their first LP release – “Heartbeat”.

On “Heartbeat” Chris and Cosey employ instruments like ‘synth’, ‘electronic percussions’ and ‘casio mt30’, yet despite the supposed artificiality of these instruments, the overall feel of the music is warm and friendly. These qualities marked a progression from the last Throbbing Gristle studio LP – “20 Jazz Funk Greats”, which was more obscure and distant in its atmosphere.

A second LP followed called “Trance”, which was described in Sounds as being “more spacious, moody and atmospheric”. Then further recordings were delayed with the birth of the couple’s child.

Record releases in 1983 were restricted to the single “October (Love Song)”.   This was a commercial song in which Cosey sings in plaintive, angelic voice of how she met Chris, fell in love with him etc. Although it’s slightly too contrived to be truly wonderful, Cosey’s outstanding vocals and the likeable chorus make it one of my most played singles of the year. It also made the independent charts and was voted single of the year by a member of Depeche Mode in Melody Maker.

The B-side, “Little Houses”  is even better. How could any honest citizen resist a song with lyrics like, “Hello hamster! Hello mouse! Hello neighbour in my house!” Of course he/she couldn’t!

Also in 1983 a cassette emerged with accompanying magazine called “Time to Tell”. This revolved around Cosey’s work as a stripper/model, as a performance artist and as a musician. It’s very interesting and informative and well worth obtaining if it’s still available.

Chris and Cosey set up their own label – CTI (Creative Technology Institute) and all of their releases are products of CTI.

Since this article was written Chris and Cosey have released their new LP on Rough Trade called “Songs of Love and Lust”, and a video on Doublevision called “Elemental 7”. 

Some of the most significant releases are as follows:

Heartbeat LP*** Trance LP***
Contribution to Flowmotion Compilation
Time to Tell cassette and magazine
Flexi disc with Vinyl magazine no 15
October (Love Song)/Little Houses***

Footnote: I found a great blog called Die or DIY which includes a post dedicated to the "Time to Tell" cassette and magazine referred to in the fanzine article. Not to be missed!

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Update 06/08/19

Whilst going through issue 4 of Kindred Spirit preparing another blog article I stumbled across this review included in the fanzine reviews section. It relates to a London based fanzine called Liberty:

As stated, the author of the above Chris and Cosey feature - Daniel Dream was involved in the Liberty fanzine. I managed to find a link to some pages taken from the zine which make interesting reading. It was published in August 1984 and as is the case with all fanzines, is a fantastic snapshot of the arts and music scene at that time.

There is among other things a review of the 1984 Brockwell Park festival, which featured The Fall, New Model Army and Joolz.

I haven’t been able to find any info as to whether or not any further issues were produced, so if anyone can enlighten me please do so.

I should also like to say a massive belated thank you to podcast review show Stop Reading That for the incredibly complimentary recording broadcast last June about my blog and in particular this post. Quite how it has taken me over a year to stumble across this I have no idea! You can have a listen for yourself here.

To quote the website “Stop Reading That! is a show in audio format about arts and literature. It mainly focuses on zines and obscure books, but sometimes branches into more mainstream fare. Occasional political commentary.”

The very first broadcast is about COUM Transmission and Throbbing Gristle and it makes fascinating listening, as do many of the other podcasts on the page. Well worth a visit. 

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