The New Yorker’s just run a nice feature on Genesis Breyer P-Orridge which, as always, is witty, funny and thought-provoking in a profound yet entirely non-pompous way. Part of its introduction notes:
“P-Orridge, whose well-worn features evoke both Ozzy Osbourne and Donatella Versace, was dressed in a bright yellow-and-magenta print from West Africa, as was a wooden doll poking out from h/er breast pocket —given to h/er, s/he explained, by the high priest of a voodoo python cult in Benin. At sixty-six, P-Orridge is a cult figure in at least two senses of the term. H/er most enduring legacy will be as the godparent of industrial music, the consciously abrasive genre that s/he invented when s/he formed the band Throbbing Gristle, in 1976. The band’s experimental live performances were notoriously loud, physical “sonic assaults,” sometimes featuring halogen lamps or mirrors facing the audience. P-Orridge is also a cult figure in that, in 1981, s/he founded an informal occult order—an artists’ collective called Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, influenced by the nineteenth-century English occultist Austin Osman Spare.”
Read the entire article here – coz why wouldn’t ya?
