Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth: A quasi-religious movement of industrial music
If one band were to be credited with inventing industrial music, transgressive electronic provocateurs Throbbing Gristle would confidently hold that claim.
Formed as an off-shoot from the COUM Transmissions art collective and earning the immortal epithet “wreckers of civilisation” from Tory MP Nicholas Fairbairn after their notorious Prostitution exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, members Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti recruited visual artist Peter Christopherson and DIY synthesist Chris Carter and founded Industrial Records, cutting a string of seminal and hugely controversial LPs including DoA: The Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle and 20 Jazz Funk Greats amid a post-punk climate who embraced them as their own, despite stressing they never considered themselves punk.
Dissolving in 1981 before their brief 2004 regrouping, all respective members went on to forge vital scores to the decade’s musical underground. Tutti and Carter became a couple and produced minimal synthpop as Chris & Cosey, and Christopherson conjured the arcane dark-ambient project Coil with partner and collaborator John Balance. P-Orridge, along with Scottish record producer Alex Fergusson and early input from Coil, conceived of a media-art outlet where videos were accompanied by music rather than the other way around. While not entirely achieving this concept, Psychic TV garnered a devoted fanbase enamoured with the group’s embrace of dark psychedelia and proto-acid electronics.
Melding elements of Reverend Jim Jones’ notorious The People’s Temple, The Process Church of the Final Judgement, and even a little Manson Family for good measure, Psychic TV was founded with its very own esoteric organisation dedicated to the neo-pagan theories of chaos magic and the mystical qualities of human sexuality. Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth ostensibly formed as a network of subterranean artists united in resistance to the pernicious societal forces of control and conformity and included chapters, or ‘stations’ as TTOPY named them, across Europe, North America, and Australia.
Whatever noble or sincerely cabalistic aims TTOPY were founded on were soured by growing allegations of abuse and a leadership style characterised by control. Writing in Pop Matters in 2019, New York academic Dan Siepmann listed the allegations starkly: “P-Orridge’s knowing adoption of cult iconography and organising principles quickly slid from satiric emulation to full embrace and many Temple apostates describe years of escalating exploitation: a guru with a sycophantic following; the systematic breakdown of individuality and autonomy; rigid hierarchies, disciplinary regimens, and incessant bullying; preying on the suggestible and vulnerable; explosive, tyrannical outbursts; and the appropriation of others’ creative voices and ideas.”
A history of abuse has been a feature of P-Orridge’s life since the COUM Transmission days back in their hometown of Hull. As detailed in Tutti’s Art Sex Music memoir, P-Orridge showed flashes of abusive conduct when they were a couple before Throbbing Gristle, including coercion of unprotected intercourse, pressure to join group sex sessions, physical assault and brandishing a knife after attempts to end their relationship, throwing pet cats against a wall, opening and replying to her own fan mail, and even lobbing a cinder block that only just missed her head while she sunbathed. “Whatever sells a book, sells a book,” P-Orridge crassly remarked to The New York Times, instilling little confidence in their innocence to the accusations.
P-Orridge’s emerging guru-like hold on TTOPY and the fawning devotion they wallowed in became too much for some. Christopherson and Balance left abruptly after Psychic TV’s founding, and what followed for the collective was a move away from the satirical subversion of its roots toward an increasingly oppressive, top-down power structure holding P-Orridge aloft and demanding its members abandon all sense of self and autonomy “even at the risk of personal disintegration and mental collapse.”
By P-Orridge’s departure in 1991, TTOPY was functioning just like the cults it sought to satirically explore. P-Orridge indulged in serious authoritarian powerplays toward a vulnerable and economically deprived member base who hung on their every word. Early member David Tibet of Current 93 fame even served as a helper and mentor to those who had fled the ever-oppressive cult, knowing firsthand TTOPY’s messy, psychological effect.
Scarpering when grievances toward their cult fancy became too much, P-Orridge jumped ship to found another artistic society, The Process, along with industrial shock-rockers Skinny Puppy, and directly providing the conceptual underpinning to 1996’s namesake album. A continuation of neo-pagan obsessions with sigils and chaos infused with the emerging internet culture, P-Orridge’s new venture never took off like TTOPY, although The Satanic Temple credits The Process with greater influence than even The Church of Satan’s founder Anton LaVey.
TTOPY persisted in some form following P-Orridge’s departure and eventual death in 2020 but still struggled to disentangle themselves from their former leader’s shadow. The ultimate irony to TTOPY and hypocrisy to P-Orridge’s countercultural pretences was that the cabalistic society forged to resist authority and control wound up being its best and most depressing example.
