Minimal Wave Records

Chris Cart­er was born on Janua­ry 28, 1953 in Lon­don, En­gland and educated at the Friern Bar­net Gram­mar School. He is best known for being a syn­thes­ist and mem­b­er of Throbb­ing Gristle and Chris & Cosey. His long time partn­er Cosey Fanni Tutti is the moth­er of his son, Nick, as well as a mem­b­er of Throbb­ing Gristle.
He began his care­er in the late 1960s’ work­ing for vari­ous UK TV sta­tions (Thames, Granada and LWT) as a sound en­gine­er on numer­ous TV shows and documen­ta­ries. This gave him an in­valu­able ground­ing in sound and audio tech­niques and theo­ries. He also found him­self gett­ing more in­vol­ved in the visu­al side of en­ter­tain­ment, which even­tual­ly pro­gres­sed into de­sign­ing and pre­sent­ing light shows and visu­al ef­fects for numer­ous fes­tiv­als, events and gigs, in­clud­ing bands as di­ver­se as Yes and Hawkwind. This led to com­miss­ions for BBC Televis­ion shows, Col­our Me Pop and The Old Grey Whistle Test. By the early 1970s’ Chris was tour­ing uni­ver­sit­ies and col­leges with a solo, multi­media show play­ing self-built syn­thesiz­ers and keyboards and in­cor­porat­ing a myriad of lig­ht­ing ef­fects gleaned from his pre­vi­ous work. Dur­ing this time he also wor­ked ex­ten­sive­ly with visu­al art­ist John Lacey on many 8 mm & 16 mm ex­periment­al films and multi­media pre­sen­ta­tions.
In the mid 1970s’, and through his con­nec­tion with art­ist John Lacey, Chris began an ex­periment­al music/sound col­labora­tion with Cosey Fanni Tutti and Genesis P-Orridge, who were also work­ing as per­for­mance art group COUM Trans­miss­ions with Peter Chris­topher­son at the time. The re­sults of this mus­ical col­labora­tion was the crea­tion of the now legen­da­ry Throbb­ing Gristle, In­dustri­al Re­cords and the birth of the ‘In­dustri­al Music’ genre.
In 1976 Chris also wor­ked at the Lon­don bureau of the ABC News agen­cy as a sound en­gine­er and dur­ing that time de­sig­ned and con­struc­ted their Lon­don radio studio. In 1977 he was of­fered a contra­ct to build an­oth­er ABC studio in Rome but tur­ned it down to con­tinue his in­vol­ve­ment as a mem­b­er of Throbb­ing Gristle.
Dur­ing the early years of Throbb­ing Gristle the four mem­b­ers each con­tinued with other solo pro­jects and work. It was dur­ing this per­iod (1980) when Chris re­cor­ded his first solo album for In­dustri­al Re­cords cal­led ‘The Space Bet­ween’, which is now avail­able on Mute Re­cords. Short­ly after the de­m­ise of Throbb­ing Gristle in 1981, and with help and back­ing from Rough Trade Re­cords , Chris Cart­er and Cosey Fanni Tutti for­med their Con­spira­cy In­ter­nation­al (aka CTI) re­cord label and began work­ing togeth­er as Chris & Cosey and CTI. In­itial­ly re­leas­ing only music they soon moved into pro­duc­ing video works, and with the help of Doub­levis­ion re­leased a numb­er of Con­spira­cy In­ter­nation­al (aka CTI) ex­periment­al video films and soundtracks. In 1985 Chris re­leased his second solo album Mondo Beat.
As well as suc­cessful­ly tour­ing all over the world Chris & Cosey also re­cor­ded and col­laborated on in­numer­able re­leases, most notab­ly with Annie Len­nox and Dave Stewart, Robert Wyatt, Coil, Boyd Rice, Lustmord, Monte Cazaz­za and many more. Chris & Cosey and Cart­er Tutti have also re­mixed tracks for Mort­al Loom and Erasure, Pan­taleimon, Throbb­ing Gristle, John Cage, Cur­rent 93 and Chris Ewan (FBH).
In 1994 Chris moved also into jour­nal­ism and re­gular­ly has tech­n­ical ar­ticles and re­views pub­lished in UK magazine Sound on Sound. Chris is also a keen photog­raph­er and grap­hic de­sign­er and in col­labora­tion with Cosey Fanni Tutti has de­sig­ned and pro­duced numer­ous album co­v­ers, post­ers and art works. Chris re­tur­ned to solo per­for­mance work in 1995 after a gap of 15 years. His per­for­mances in­cluded sub­tle re­fer­ences to his ear­li­er works but with ob­vi­ous in­flu­ences from his more re­cent col­labora­tions. In 1998 Chris re­leased a com­pila­tion CD tit­led Dis­obedient, con­sist­ing of tracks from his 1995 Dis­obey tour (pro­duced by Paul Smith). In 2000 he re­leased a solo studio album: Small Moon. In 1998 the album Caged, a col­labora­tion album with electronic musician Ian Boddy was re­leased on the DiN label.
In 2000 Chris, in col­labora­tion with Cosey Fanni Tutti, began pro­duc­ing and re­leas­ing a se­ries of al­bums tit­led: Electronic Am­bient Re­mixes. The first of these, EAR ONE, con­sis­ted of dark am­bient re­mixes of his 1980 ‘The Space Bet­ween’ album. In 2002 he re­leased EAR THREE a furth­er solo am­bient CD, which con­s­ists of rad­ical re­mixes of his origin­al Throbb­ing Gristle in­dustri­al rhy­thm tracks.
In 2003 Chris Cart­er and Cosey Fanni Tutti stop­ped re­leas­ing materi­al and per­form­ing as Chris & Cosey and began pro­duc­ing all their work under the title of Cart­er Tutti. One of their first ap­pearan­ces as Cart­er Tutti was a speci­al quad­raphonic per­for­mance in the Dis­ney Theat­re at the Museum of Con­tem­pora­ry Art, Los An­geles in 2005. Chris Cart­er and the other origin­al mem­b­ers of Throbb­ing Gristle re­grouped the band in 2003 and re­leased the TG24 CD boxed set, with an ac­company­ing art ex­hibi­tion in Lon­don. TG per­for­mances fol­lowed in Lon­don, Camb­er Sands, Turin, Be­rlin, Bar­celona and Paris.
Dur­ing 2007 Chris Cart­er and Cosey Fanni Tutti again wor­ked on numer­ous Throbb­ing Gristle pro­jects, re­cord­ings, in­stal­la­tions, ex­hibi­tions and per­for­mances. These in­cluded their groundbreak­ing audio/­visu­al per­for­mance at Tate Modern tur­bine hall and their 3-day ‘pub­lic re­cord­ing sess­ion’ at the ICA Lon­don. Chris Cart­er has re­cent­ly fin­is­hed work­ing on a new Cart­er Tutti album en­tit­led: ‘Feral Vapours of the Silv­er Ether’ which is re­leased on the Con­spira­cy In­ter­nation­al (aka CTI) label and is al­ready being heaped with pra­ise and rave re­views and is being acclaimed as “their fin­est yet”. Chris Cart­er con­tinues to work and col­laborate with both Cosey Fanni Tutti and Throbb­ing Gristle. He is also cur­rent­ly work­ing on a new solo ex­periment­al audio pro­ject tit­led CCCL. and is pro­duc­ing a new Cart­er Tutti film, due for re­lease on DVD in 2008.