Psychic TV

CD version. Those Who Do Not documents a Psychic TV concert in Reykjavik on 23 November 1983. It was organised by Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson and Gramm Records, who first released it as a double LP in 1984. Between the songs run recordings of the pagan Ásatrú marriage of Genesis and Paula P-Orridge, held during the same visit. This 2023 remaster restores the original running order of the show.

The classic early line-up is all here: Genesis P-Orridge on vocals, violin and noise bass guitar, Alex Fergusson on lead guitar, and John Gosling on prepared tape and drums. Alongside them play Peter Christopherson and Geff Rushton, who left the following year to form Coil. Members of the Icelandic scene joined them, among them Godkrist of KUKL. Hilmarsson produced the recording, and the high priest Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson led the wedding ceremony.

The improvised title track sits between the noise of Throbbing Gristle and the ritual side of early Psychic TV. Bells, electronics and taped screams fill the space. Attraction Romantique swells from chimes into scraped guitar and dissonance, until P-Orridge launches into the lyric that became Roman P. Fear is a version of Eleusis from Dreams Less Sweet, built on looped monk chants. In Thee Full Pack, Christopherson releases growling dogs and wolves from his tapes over taped orchestral strings and Fergusson's chiming guitar. What's A Place Like You... opens as an improvised collage of the Eden pieces from the same album.

The concert was one of a series that followed Dreams Less Sweet, released in October 1983, with stops in Manchester, New York and Berlin. Temple Records counted it fourth in a planned run of 23 live albums. Announcing the reissue, The Moderns called it “a vintage noise performance, fully analogue with all of the period's post-punk trappings”. Compulsion heard the improvised opener as a bridge from Throbbing Gristle to the band's ritual music.

This CD comes in a glossy digipak with a 12-page booklet, released by Cold Spring (CSR323CD) on 23 February 2023. Remastered in 2022 by Martin Bowes at The Cage, it presents the ten tracks in the order of the original show. Cold Spring's first CD of 1997 had used a reworked sequence.