Foetus
6/21, Empty Bottle
 
Jim Thirlwell (aka J.G. Thirlwell, aka Clint Ruin, aka DJ Otesfu...) was relatively quiet in the 90s, when we needed him most, sticking mostly to production and remixes for folks who ain't good enough to do his laundry.  He showed up on my radar again last year, when his favorite nom de noise, Foetus, appeared on a list of participants in a New York Ronnie James Dio tribute concert.  The new Foetus project, Flow (Thirsty Ear), is astonishingly good--not your standard post-Foetus-level crap, full of school-shooter-wannabe self-pity and fake menace.  No, this is the real thing, full of boasting wit and a smidgen of real menace, driven home by diverse music that crumbles industrial crunch with metal, techno trance, jumpy horns, fractured melody, and sheer bad manners.  Also new from a new alter ego, Manorexia, is Volvox Turbo, an all-instrumental "psychologic symphony" available only from www.foetus.org and at shows; coming in fall is Blow ("aka 'Over-Flow'"), in which Flow's already lush and demented tracks get reworked by Amon Tobin, DJ Food, Pan*Sonic, Kid-606, FM Einheit, and the Young Gods' Franz Treichler, among others.  Comeback of the year?  That Go-Go's reunion is gonna have to be pretty great to beat it.
 

Original source: The Chicago Reader, 15 June 2001, by Monica Kendrick.

© The Chicago Reader 2001