Some bands break the mold—Throbbing Gristle never even acknowledged it. In An Endless Discontent, Ian Trowell dissects the noise, rebellion, and chaos that turned art into activism. It’s a story of a band that challenged not just music, but the very systems around it, echoing louder in every generation still asking the same question: what happens when we refuse to conform?
Drawing on archives and live performances, this book traces the impressions and reverberations of UK punk band Throbbing Gristle.
This book looks at late 1970s Britain, before, during, and immediately after the Winter of Discontent, to situate the activism of Throbbing Gristle in this time. It explores how the band worked in and against the time, and how they worked in and against punk, as punk worked in and against the time and place. Punk acts as a mediating factor and nuisance value in the band’s story, as Throbbing Gristle emerged with punk in late 1976, grappled with it through 1977, and then went on to create and eventually criticize a number of post-punk scenes that had flourished around 1979.