The ‘tribal’ genre of techno is a classical example of a genre name which, while pregnant with meaning and nuance, ultimately fails to deliver. Genesis P. Orridge of Psychic TV has lamented this fact, warning us that the DJ “is at best the shaman’s drum, and not the shaman.” It’s a debatable point- but where Psychic TV truly trumped the more recent ‘tribalists’ was in their adoption of this attitude as a completely integrated lifestyle, not just a musical diversion from suburban norms and folkways. In fact, Psychic TV was no more than the musical wing of the Temple Ov Psychick Youth, a paramilitary ‘anti-cult’ which made use of infinitely more cultural totems than just a turntable or two. The examination of alternative, individuality-enhancing uses for everything from neo-Tibetan haircuts to TV static was a hallmark of T.O.P.Y. The tribe took on several different manifestations and reveled in media games, famously stitching together climactic moments (orgasmic, instrumental, etc.) in their music and film work, either driving the audience member into ecstasy or nausea. PTV live concerts always had the dynamics of an initiation rite about them: giddy anticipation and steady buildup until either the inductee collapsed from exhaustion or locked into synchronous trance with the musicians. Of course, we can take the viewpoint that all life is just a succession of initiation rites- PTV seemed determined to, at the very least, compress these rites into one big Technicolor spectacle.

Psychic TV was wise to realize that they had something unique in their live performance, releasing an unprecedented number of live albums. Descending, released on Jean-Pierre Turmel’s Sordide Sentimentale label, is one of the best among them, and one in which PTV are at their most unmistakably ‘tribal’. Defensive walls of feedback and huge, resonant drum hits perforate holes in the perception, through which Genesis can deliver his improvised lyrical challenges to all emanations of control and authority. Even the squeaky sound of fast-forwarding cassette tape becomes a sort of erotic stimulus in the context of this intense sound. Recorded shortly after two of the project’s most finely-attuned sound sculptors- Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson and Geoff Rushton/Jhon Balance- departed for their next incarnation as Coil, there is obviously a challenge present for the rest of the band to pick up. They do a fine job of stripping music to its animalistic fundamentals, as if a pack of wolves had evolved digits, enabling them to play musical instruments. 

From the opening, portentous trumpet fanfare and Genesis’ idiosyncratic declarations of intent (which sound both childish and otherworldly), the initiative ‘what-happens-next’ atmosphere envelops the listener like a Venus flytrap. A few minutes into the tape treatments and disciplined improvisation, the instrumentation melts into “Love Damage”: a lurid slow bass and seductive vibraphone fused together over a rigid drum machine part and a half-hazy, half-emotive monologue about flesh-piercing (at least a decade before its appropriation as ersatz toughness for teens!) The song runs its course and then there is more clever interplay (intercourse?) with tapes aptly named “Tape Sex”. By this point into the recording, it becomes noticeable that PTV guitarist Alex Fergusson has not let loose with his effortless, refined style of post-Velvet Underground guitar-isms. His contribution to ‘Descending’ is more minimal than previous PTV live outings, but his restraint just adds to the wildness of the rest of the program.

By the time the opening two notes and druid drums of ‘Unclean’ kick in, it’s clear there is some sort of spirit mounting the band, as the songs lose all sense of time and Gen’s heretical challenges morph into impressively inhuman screams. If you don’t credit him for anything else, at least credit him with re-shaping the aesthetic of the scream: it’s not the disheartening scream of the victim- more like the determined battlefield scream of an onrushing samurai. ‘Unclean’ throbs and shakes for some 13 minutes before the participants finally expend their energy, setting up a brief ‘afterglow’ period with Gen reverently chanting the same lines he had been screaming before. Again, a little reprieve (or “petit mort”?) before the band collectively decides “oh, why not, let’s do it again.” This time the song “Ov Power” is reworked from its version on PTV’s seminal “Force The Hand of Chance”, stripped of the downtown funk that permeated the original version and replaced with the simple Martian menace that makes the rest of this disc so eminently enjoyable. Including Gen’s hilarious, ‘scolding mother’ warning for us to ‘not forget our sex tonight’, it is a slow whirlwind of psychedelic force AND fun. Here a brief Jim Morrison fit disrupts Gen’s solemnity and the band responds in turn, wah-wahing and feedbacking good-naturedly until the time comes for an extended percussive workout. Exit Morrison and enter African rhythmic intricacy, complemented by vocal whoops, minced glossolalia and muted guitar. If there weren’t any torches flaring in the Rouen audience by this time, well there should have been. The reduction of PTV to an exclusively rhythmic beast at this point is another smart move, allowing for reflection on the passionate abrasion that has gone on before. Eventually everything explodes into sampled soprano warble, looped in various permutations. If you’re lucky enough to have a copy of the accompanying video CD “Listen Today”, you get two more numbers. If not, the CD expires.

Psychick Rallies’ like this one were never something you could equate with compromise, often stretching to the 3‑hour plus mark. The sheer physicality of these performances gives Psychic TV the true right to claim the ‘tribal’ designation, leaving in their wake an army of DJs who just don’t get it.