This dismal new offering by Genesis P-Orridge was made in collaborationwith a well-known producer, who prefers to go under the assumed name ofAstrid Monroe for this release, presumably out of sheer embarrassmentat the outcome. I'm certain that I'm not alone in having beenunderwhelmed by most of Genesis' recent musical work, most especially1999's Thee Majesty, P-Orridge's vanity "spoken word" album of apoetic,repetitive blather that featured the painfully dull ambient soundsettings of the talentless Bryin Dall. "When I was young, there weretwo reasons for me to look in a mirror," Genesis intoned on TheeMajesty's debut Time's Up,"The first reason was to see if my parting was straight. The secondreason was to see if my tie was straight. Now I'm older, and there's athird reason." Apparently, this sort of thing passes for profundityover at the P-Orridge household, and perhaps among a small legion ofTOPY holdovers, but for those who are not altogether convinced thatGenesis is a transsexual alien prophet-shaman-guru whose everyutterance must be the very voice of God, it can't help but seem alittle trite. It should come as no surprise my abject disappointmentwhen I discovered that When I Was Young is nothing but a rehash of the same non-revelatory prattle that populated Time's Up.Filtering out the minimal, dark-ambient backing tracks from theoriginal material, Astrid Monroe reuses Genesis' vocal tracks, addingheavy distortion and vocoder effects, placing them in new settings oflaughably swanky, nocturnal trip-hop outmoded by at least a decade.It's hard to say who exactly the real Astrid Monroe might be, butjudging from the dubby, overproduced atmospherics and syrupy strings,I'd place him or her squarely in the Massive Attack camp. Sci-fitheremin and ring-modulation effects are used to contribute to adruggy, night-clubby atmosphere, which sounds frankly ludicrousaccompanying P-Orridge's space-cadet proselytizing. It should be notedthat Genesis P-Orridge is a great artist and a massively importantcounter-cultural figure who has been at the vanguard of art, music andculture for thirty years. Even now, with his transgender surgicalmutations and his recent resurrection and transmutation of PTV andThrobbing Gristle, he is proving that he is still a vital and relevantfigure. Many complained when Psychic TV began experimenting with acidhouse back in their mid-80's Infinite Beat phase, but inGenesis' defense, it hadn't yet become a hopeless clich?, and PTV wereable to innovate and expand the definitions of the genre, influencing ageneration of producers. Unfortunately, When I Was Young comes more than 12 years too late to be even slightly relevant.Read More
