(updated 05 May 2009)
LIMB
The much-anticipated release of LIMB,
comprising J.G. Thirlwell's minimal compositions spanning the years 1980-1983,
as well as the DVD of NY Foetus (a preview of which appeared on the bonus
DVD included with the LOVE release) is slated for a
May 2009 release. In addition to the NY Foetus documentary
directed by Clement Tuffreau, the DVD will have 40 minutes of bonus and live
material. The double-disc set will include a 48-page booklet containing
Thirlwell's minimalist artwork and be packaged in a deluxe slipcase. It
will be available exclusively from this website.
(updated
05 May 2009) Manorexia Double-Header
JGT's Manorexia will perform two shows on 06 May 2009 at The Stone in New York City; 8pm and 10pm. Tickets are $10, students age 13-17 admitted half price, and children age 12 and under are admitted free. No pre-sales, all tickets are sold at the door on the day of the performance, so get there early.
These will be the only New York shows in 2009, and feature new arrangements of
compositions that have been described as "Beautiful and disturbing
cinematic avant-chamber music". Show flyer here.
(added
25 Apr 2009) Thirlwell DJ's at Benefit
JG Thirlwell will lend his DJ talents at
a benefit concert for friend and artist Yuko Sueta, who is battling
cancer. Also on the bill are Dorit Chrysler, Jim Kelly, DJ Hayden
Honey, MC Natureboy, Apollo Heights, Honeychild Coleman, Lapis Lazuli and White
Noise Supremacists. $10, age 21+. Monday, 27th Apr 2009, doors
open 7.30pm. Santo's Party House, 96 Lafayette St below Canal, NYC.
More info here; show
flyer here.
(posted
26 Nov 2008) JGT DJ's at Boss Hog gig
Hot on the tail of the ATP fest, J.G.
Thirlwell will be a guest DJ at the Boss Hog show at The
Luminaire on Mon 08 Dec 2008.
(posted 11 Nov 2008)
STONE HIGHLIGHTS
A nice piece in The Brooklyn Rail,
detailing highlights
of JG Thirlwell's 30-day curatorship at The Stone.
(posted 15 Oct 2008)
BRAINWAVES
FESTIVAL
A stellar line-up this year, including
JGT's Manorexia, Threshold HouseBoys Choir (Sleazy's latest venture),
Meat Beat
Manifesto, Matmos, Stars of the Lid, Little Annie, Silver Apples, Andrew Liles,
Jonathan Coleclaugh, His Name is Alive, Steven Stapleton as DJ, and many others.
More info at the brainwavesfest.org
site.
(posted 15 Oct 2008) ALL TOMORROW'S
PARTIES FESTIVAL - THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS
Curated by Mike Patton and Melvins,
which accounts for the wildly eclectic line-up this time around, including JGT's
Manorexia, Fantomas, The Dirtbombs, Melvins, Butthole Surfers, The Damned, Meat
Puppets, Junior Brown, Kool Keith, Dalek, Mastodon, Black Heart Procession, Neil
Hamburger, Boss Hog, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Fennesz, Rahzel, and many many
others. More info at the atpfestival.com
site.
(posted 15 Oct 2008) BUDDY
RICH MEMORIAL CONCERT
JG Thirlwell's Venture Bros opening and
closing themes will be performed at
Buddy Rich memorial concert this Saturday in NYC
18th Oct 2008.
JG Thirlwell recently received an email from Terry Bozzio asking about performing his compositions a concert tribute to Buddy Rich.
Terry wanted permission to adapt the opening and closing themes of The Venture
Brothers for the Buddy Rich Big Band.
Thirlwell has been scoring the popular Adult Swim series for three seasons and is about to begin work on season four.
JG was delighted and said yes, of course. The new arrangements were made by Matt
Harris.
The pieces will be performed this Saturday 10/18 at The Manhattan Center in NYC and streamed live on
drumchannel.com for you lucky people. Along with Bozzio, the concert will feature
Neil Peart (Rush), Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers) and many more.
It will be released on DVD at a later date.
"After a 10 year hiatus, The Buddy Rich Memorial returns with a vengeance!
This years show features Rock Icon Neil Peart from Rush, Terry Bozzio formerly of
Frank Zappa and Missing Persons, John Blackwell formerly of Prince and currently with
Justin Timberlake, and the debut of Nick Rich, grandson of the legendary Buddy Rich.
This event will feature the afore-mentioned artists sitting in with The Buddy Rich Big Band.
Bass Player extraordinaire Will Lee will be featured with the band. Other special guests to be announced.
The show is produced by Buddy's daughter Cathy Rich and her company Scabeba Entertainment along with Neil Peart as well as title sponsor
Richard Drucker's Drucker Labs.
The event will be taped for DVD release in early 2009. This years event promises to be the biggest to date."
Buy tickets
here.
More info at buddyrich.com,
drumchannel.com, and myspace.
MIRROR MIRROR
JG Thirlwell appeared with
Marina Rosenfeld on 05 May 2008 at Merce Cunningham Dance Studios in New York,
accompanying her for her piece titled Mirror Mirror. JGT provided
vocal sounds and treatments. More info at the Merce
site.
FOR THE BENEFIT OF MYAT
JG Thirlwell appeared at a
benefit for two-year-old Myat Moondog Haggart, who suffers from health problems
relating to an undiagnosed brain disease. The fundraising event was at St. Mark's
Church on 18 May 2008, and was intended to help offset his medical bills being
incurred by his musician parents, Scott Haggart and Kara Bohenstiel. Also
appearing were David Grubbs, Backworld, Little Annie, Vito Acconci, Lary 7
w/Scott Haggart, Captains Sons and Daughters, and more. More info at the CMJ
site.
NARCISSUM ESCENDA
JG Thirlwell exhibited a new
sculpture at the Teleport Färgfabfriken exhibition at the new Färgfabriken
museum in Ostersund, Sweden. The sculpture is entitled "Narcissum
Escenda." It was constructed with plywood, Plexiglas, mirrors and two way
mirrors, LED's with circuit board and other materials. The opening was 1-3
April 2008. www.fargfabriken.se
NEW FOETUS REMIX ALBUM
Just out is a new album consisting of remixes from the Foetus studio
album, LOVE.
Entitled
VEIN, it
features Mike Patton, Matmos, Fennesz, Donna Summer (a/k/a Jason
Forrest), Tweaker, Tujiko Noriko, Trztn (Services), Jay Wasco, Tom Recchion and J.G. Thirlwell. The album also includes a video of the track Time Marches On by Sam Sohlberg.
Available in the shoppe on this
website, as well as finer retailers worldwide.
JGT AT THE WHITNEY
J.G. Thirlwell played a free concert at the Whitney
Museum in NYC on 02 Nov 2007. He
presented a set by Manorexia
and a cycle of pieces for LEMUR
robot instruments and string quartet, including several world premieres. The lineup of players for this Manorexia show
were Leyna Marika Papach - violin, Elena Moon Park - violin, Karen Waltuch - viola, Felix Fan - cello, David Cossin - percussion, David Broome - piano and JG Thirlwell
- laptop. The material was drawn from the two Manorexia albums,
Volvox Turbo (2001) and The Radiolarian Ooze
(2002). JG also presented several pieces he has composed with the LEMUR robot instruments and string quartet.
LEMUR
is an acronym for the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots. 
The
robots are self-playing machines, including a four-necked guitar,
xylophone, and numerous percussion instruments. In addition to a
commissioned piece he premiered earlier this year at Three Legged Dog,
Thirlwell presented a brand new piece and two new pieces adaptations
for robot instruments and strings: the Steroid Maximus piece L'espion
Qui A Pleure and a special rearrangement of the theme song for The
Venture Brothers cartoon. For the LEMUR robots portion of the concert,
the string section was Leyna Marika Papach - violin, Elena Moon Park - violin, Karen Waltuch - viola
and Okkyung Lee - cello. JG Thirlwell served as conducter. You can see J.G. rehearsing his piece for LEMUR here.
The
concert was a Composer Spotlight and part of the Friday Night concert
series hosted by the Whitney Museum. Click
here for more photos (by Damien
Neva).
NEW FOETUS STUDIO ALBUM
Ectopic Ents is proud to announce the release of DAMP,
a new
Foetus album. It is available exclusively thru
the shoppe on this website. The huge 72+ minute album consists mainly of brand new and unreleased material, as well as
some rare material. The DAMP cover
is a ten panel foldout with lyrics, featuring photos and design by J.G. Thirlwell.
The complicated printing process involves spot hi-gloss lamination which is un-reproducible
here.
TOON TUNES
J.G. has
finished scoring the third season of The
Venture Brothers, which airs on Adult Swim/Cartoon Network,
and will soon begin work on season four. Seasons one and two have already been released on DVD. If you have discovered Thirlwell for the first time from The Venture
Brothers and are looking to discover more of his music, may we direct you to
the Foetus Shoppe. If you dig
the soundtrack of The Venture Brothers, you'll love Steroid
Maximus and Manorexia.
NEW WRITTEN WORD
J.G. has written an essay for Arcana
2, a book compiled and edited by John Zorn. In it,
"thirty distinguished composer/performers illuminate and speculate upon
method and practice in the process of making, experiencing and thinking about
music." It also includes writings by Uri Caine, Trevor Dunn,
Annie Gosfield, Milford Graves, Lukas Ligeti, Jim O'Rourke, Marina Rosenfeld,
Yamataka Eye, and many more.
?LSD?
Thirlwell recently appeared in the Love's
Secret Domain, Contemporary Psychedelic Art show.
ART
BRUT(e)
The 808
gallery is a myspace art gallery, and for August 2007 presented the artwork
of one J.G. Thirlwell.
CLASSIC MUST-HAVE RE-MASTERED REISSUES
The classic Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel albums HOLE and NAIL
have been reissued by Some Bizzare. They were re-mastered by Scott Hull
with J.G. Thirlwell (Scott's credit was inadvertently left off the
artwork - sorry, Scott!) and come as sensuous new digipak editions with
lyric booklets. They should be orderable from Amazon
UK as well as other online and physical retail outlets.
ALSO JUST REISSUED
Two more classic Foetus recordings, SINK
(Foetus Inc.) and THAW
(Foetus Interruptus), have been re-issued by Some Bizzare, in
digipack sleeves.
GUESTING
JG has just written the lyrics and
performed the vocals on a track with Anubian
Lights, entitled "The Puppet Prince". It will appear on
a future Anubian Lights release.
TRIBUTARIES
Ambassador
21 from Belarus has remixed the Foetus track "Time Marches
On", originally on the album LOVE. It appears on Cut
& Go, an album of their remixes 2003-2007, along with remixes
of Snog, Sonar, The Shizit, and many more.
CURRENT 93 vs JGT
J.G. Thirlwell has remixed the Current 93 track Black Ships ate the Sky. The video was directed by Cam Archer and can be seen at here. It
was eleased as a CD and 12" in late 2007.
EXPAND YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS
J.G.
Thirlwell has written lyrics and performed the vocals on a track
entitled "Asphodel" by the group Strings of Consciousness. You can hear
at at the Strings of Consciousness myspace page.
FREQ_OUT
Bringing together artists, composers, architects, producers and musicians, the freq_out
project invades architecture with sonic imagination. Structured as a
collaborative sound environment in which authorship is determined by
group effort, each of the thirteen participants is assigned a specific
range of frequency with which to produce a sound piece. Over the last
three years freq_out has appeared in Copenhagen, Oslo, Paris and
Berlin. In January 2007 they ventured to Chiang Mai in Thailand and in
February 2008 to Budapest.
Some recordings have been released on Ash
International.
The participants are J.G. Thirlwell, Finnbogi
Pétursson, BJ Nilsen, Jana Winderen, Brandon
LaBelle, Petteri Nisunen, Tommi Grönlund, PerMagnus
Lindborg, Maia Urstad, Jacob Kirkegaard, Mike Harding, Kent
Tankred and Franz Pomassl. The curator and
Capitan of the project is Carl Michael von Hausswolff.
J.G.THIRLWELL ODDITIES ON YOUTUBE
Some odd things have surfaced on YouTube which could be of interest...
Foetus Verklemmt video directed by Alex Winter
Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel on The Tube TV show in 1985
Soft Cell perform Suicide's Ghost Rider with special guest vocalist Clint Ruin
NEW MANOREXIA...
JGT
hopes to begin work on the long-overdue third Manorexia album. Currently no release date is scheduled. More news regarding this soon.
The long awaited LIMB is now
available exclusively at the online shop on this website. LIMB is
an archival release of experimental and minimalist compositions recorded
from 1980-1983, from the early days of Foetus and pre-Foetus. Though the
material is largely unreleased, some of the pieces have been previously released
on the compilation albums by Coil and United Dairies.
Released as a deluxe double disc package, the music disc contains 12 tracks at
50+ minutes with an additional 20 minute bonus mp3 track. On the second
disc, director Clement Tuffreau kindly allowed us to include his 2005
documentary about JG Thirlwell, NYC FOETUS, with this package.
The eighty minute film features interviews with JG Thirlwell, Matt
Johnson, Alex Hacke (Einsturzende Neubauten), Michael Gira, Richard Kern, Lydia
Lunch, Martin Bisi and Elysian Fields along with a lot of never
before seen footage of Foetus, Steroid Maximus, Manorexia and more. There
is also 45 minutes of bonus extras, comprised of Steroid Maximus 18 piece
ensemble live in France, Foetus live in Hannover, Manorexia live at The Stone
NYC and a snippet of JG's LEMUR commission at 3 Legged Dog in
NYC. This deluxe package also contains a 48 page perfect bound book with
minimal designs by JGT (all in his signature red, white, gray and black
palette). This is all held in an attractive sturdy plastic slipcase
printed with another of JG's designs. Click the shop link for more details
and audio previews.