2011 has been a great year for reissues. Starting with Conrad Schnitzler’s seminal LP Con (reissued as Ballet Statique by the good folks at M=Minimal), Harald Grosskopf’s Synthesist, classics from Drexciya, UR and Arthur Russell, and ending with one of my all-time favorite acts: Throbbing Gristle.

For those of you who have no clue (is that even possible?) who Throbbing Gristle are and their impact on electronic music, here’s some starting points to kick off your research: TG’s Wikipedia, their official website and this excellent article by Federico Nessi. TG’s history is also the subject of Simon Ford’s excellent book Wreckers Of Civilization: The Story of COUM Transmissions & Throbbing Gristle which has been out of print for ages and thus pretty hard to come by.

You cannot imagine how happy I was when I first heard that Industrial Records is about to be restarted and reissue all the iconic TG LPs – freshly remastered and repressed for the first time in ages. The original pressings go for hundreds of dollars on Discogs and eBay, so that added even more to my happiness. So far I purchased three of them: The Second Annual Report, D.o.A and 20 Jazz Funk Greats, and I’m planning to acquire the remaining two in the next couple of weeks. TG’s Chris Carter did an awesome job with the remastering and I can confirm that all three LPs sound fantastic. Each LP is housed in a pictured sleeve with visually reconstructed original artwork and 8-page full size booklet featuring vintage photos of the band, newspaper clippings and various artwork. As far as I can tell, each LP is limited to 2,000 copies only, so don’t sleep on this for too long.

You can read more on the remastering process in Carter’s own words here or listen to the excellent Carter/Tutti interview with the Quietus below.

Chris Carter & Cosey Fanni Tutti Interview, Rough Trade East by theQuietus