Bleep

Mute’s Chris Carter series continues with this new edition of the 1998 live LP Disobedient. The Throbbing Gristle fellow hadn’t released a solo album for well over a decade by the time Disobedient came out, so it’s safe to say that people were curious to see what Carter was getting up to as the new millennium approached. With these tracks, recorded at gigs during 1995 in London, Manchester and Vienna, they got their answer.

On this record Carter updates his hot-headed industrial style for the era of electronica. There are moments across this LP when it feels as if Carter is at once playing with and passing judgement on contemporaneous trends in electronic music. Boards Of Canada, Andrew Weatherall and even the downtempo sound of Lemon Jelly and Air can be detected in the makeup of tracks like ‘Chakutut’ and ‘TVX’. However, it is Carter’s trick to stir up these sounds into potent psychedelic broths, and his heady atmospherics prefigure the work of Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement. The dubwise production that laces Disobedient also herks back to post-punkers like A Certain Ratio and The Pop Group.

More than two decades on from the original release, Carter revisits the Disobedient sound on this latest pressing with the bonus track ‘Disobedient Redux’. The eleven-minute-long epic of hulking synths and smoky textures shows that Carter still sees the value in a little disobedience.

Presenting a selection of recordings of his 1995 Disobey tour, Chris Carter’s Disobedient lit the way for a new generation of freaks and weirdos.