J.G. Thirlwell

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"I'm the cockroach in your tinseltown..."

"Is it too late to trade in my mind?" —"Kreibabe", from the album Flow

James George Thirlwell (a.k.a. Clint Ruin) is the main man behind industrial music experiment Foetus and the official maestro of The Venture Bros Born from the underground "No Wave" era of the 1980s, Thirlwell is a multi-talented singer, songwriter, producer and instrumentalist who's output has largely been ignored by the mainstream, thus earning him a cult following amongst both old school and new crew hipsters and music aficionados alike. A rock 'n' roll chimera, Thirlwell's musical influences and style runs the gamut from Punk Rock to Noise Rock to Big Band to Jazz to avant-garde symphonies, all of which is reflected in his numerous projects, side-projects, and one-off collaborations. The most persistent include:

• Foetus is the name of Thirlwell's traditional musical project, except when he calls it Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel, or Foetus Interruptus, or Foetus In Excelsis Corruptus Deluxe, or any other variation on the British term for an unborn mammal. Probably the most accessible of all of Thirlwell's work, most tracks on a Foetus album can be broadly defined as "Industrial rock", although recent excursions have veered into the realm of cinematic instrumentals.
• Steroid Maximus and Manorexia are Thirlwell's two solely instrumental projects, the former more straight-forward and the latter more minimalist and experimental. They were formed to offset the amount of instrumental tracks leaking their way onto Thirlwell's Foetus albums, and in the case of Manorexia, allow him to liberate his talents as a musician and composer outside normal boundaries.
• Wiseblood is what Thirlwell called his collaboration with ex-Swans member and fellow No Waver Roli Mosimann. Just as Steroid Maximus and Manorexia attracted Thirlwell's orchestrated side, Wiseblood catered to his filthy, angry, perverse, Post-Punk sensibilities with a number of noisy, guitar-driven, Garage Rock-esque tunes.

And of course, there is The Venture Bros soundtrack, which arguably infected a whole mess of new listeners to the Foetus pathogen. Aside from his personal work, J. G. Thirlwell has also worked as producer, contributor, and remixer for a number of like-minded artists, such as Nine Inch Nails, The The, Marilyn Manson, Glenn Danzig, Soft Cell, Nick Cave, Lydia Lunch, and the Kronos Quartet.

For more on Big Jim Thirlwell, please visit his website, which includes his enormous discography.

J. G. Thirlwell and his music provides examples of:

• AcCENT Upon the Wrong SylLABle: Self-destruction and personal decadence being common themes means many songs are sung like Thirlwell is either beligerently drunk, acting like a rock star diva, or about to flip some tables.
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: While he isn't the only one who namedrops undeveloped babys in his band name, Jim Thirlwell happens to be the only one who uses the British spelling, which helps fans identify early Foetus albums despite the "band's" revolving name.
• Cool Old Guy: Just because Jim isn't a fresh young slab of manhood anymore, doesn't mean he ain't slicker than molasses in a heatwave.
• Echoing Acoustics: "How To Vibrate" sounds like it was recording in a echo chamber inside of a waterfall.
• Everything Is an Instrument: Thirlwell's promotes this occasionally in some of his more eclectic work.
• Everything Sounds Sexier in French: The song "Mon Agonie Douce", which also counts as Gratuitous French.
• Functional Addict: His first dozen or so releases were recorded on a mountain of methamphetamines, as is evident in their manic approach.
• Gratuitous Spanish: “¡Chingada!”, from the '88 album Thaw, which also happens to be a case of...
  • Foreign Cuss Word
• Harsh Vocals: Jim Thirlwell sometimes sounds like a more nasally, somewhat higher-pitched version of Tom Waits or Nick Cave.
• I Am the Band: Literally. And plural. Jim Thirlwell is the sole composer and performer on the majority of his work, only calling in help for a few tracks on each album. This would be cool enough if he just produced simple garage rock, but then you realize he's also built massive symphonic soundscapes all on his own.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every Foetus album to date is named after a four letter word: Hole, Thaw, Sink, Love, etc.
  • Additionally, the project used to go by a number of moniker variations per EP, such as "Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel", "Foetus Corruptus", "Foetus Uber Frisco", and so on. 1995's Gash broke the trend, and every release since then has just been credited as "Foetus".
  • Even the album art doesn't escape this, as a several pairs of albums have shared the same design ethic, such as Ache/Hole or Thaw/Rife.
• Industrial: The easiest way to describe Foetus to an outsider, and even then, it doesn't cover every style played. He particularly hates being called "industrial".
  • On the other hand, Jim Thirlwell is considered by many to be the unsung godfather of the entire Industrial movement, not just for seniority, but because of the sheer amount of material the man has consistently produced since the '80s.
• Large Ham: TODAY IS THE FIRST OF SEPTEMBAH!
• Lyrical Dissonance: "I'll Meet You In Poland, Baby" is a one-man acapella song, about the invasion that kicked off World War II.
• Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness: Foetus runs the gamut from 4 to 10, while Wiseblood provides just enough grime to climb to 11.
• Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly: Foetus is one of the few, legitimate candidates for being the Trope Codifier. The closest any of us poor listeners can come to, is "Instrumental Experimental Industrial Post-Punk Cinematic Avant-Garde Big Band Lounge Noise Wave".
• New Sound Album: 1995's Gash was far less '80s than previous Foetus releases, possibly a by-product of being (momentarily) picked up by a major label. Later releases would see Thirlwell juxtaposing a number of different styles together instead of filling up an album with one linear style.
• No-Hit Wonder: Until he was commissioned to provide the music for The Venture Bros, Thirlwell and his work was a rare case of being completely underground to everyone except those who knew about him from other avenues. Didn't stop him from gaining a dedicated trust, however.
• Nose Yodeling: Thirlwell's voice is a scratchier, more melodramatic variant of this.
• Rearrange the Song: "No Vacancy", the theme song to The Venture Bros, is a reworking of "Fighteous", off the Steroid Maximus album Quilombo.
• Sanity Slippage Song: Half of Foetus's entire discography counts.
• Scary Musician, Harmless Music: Inverted. J. G. Thirlwell seems like a rather cool, relaxed dude. According to his music, however, he's some kind of Perpetual Nervous Breakdown Machine.
• Self-Backing Vocalist: Well, it usually is just Jim on vocals, so...
• Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll: J.G. Thirlwell loves to write songs that fall hard on the cynical side of this.
  • "Aladdin Reverse" in particular appears to be about a rockstar realizing at the end of his life that he's shat everything down the drain in the pursuit of his own excess.
• Shout-Out: Supernintendo Superintendent Chalmers deserves some song royalties for "Take It Outside Godboy".
  • Wiseblood's "0-0 (Where Evil Dwells)" is a five-and-a-half minute psycho homage to David Cronenberg's Videodrome.
  • Hell, Wiseblood itself was named after Flannery O'Connor's novel of the same name.
• Stage Names: Jim has gone by the moniker of Clint Ruin in the past. In fact, some of his old albums were credited to multiple, non-existant artists and producers like Phillip Toss and Frank Want.
• Surprisingly Gentle Song: Several across his career, less so in the beginning but increasingly common. Manorexia would qualify as a "surprisingly gentle side-project." However, with Thirlwell, "gentle" does not mean the music is any less unnerving.
• The Jimmy Hart Version: "I Hate You All" is a rare exception; Originally, Thirlwell wrote the song on behalf of Buck Tick vocalist Atsushi Sakurai's first solo album, wherein Atsushi sung his own J-rock lyrics. Later, Thirlwell would re-release the song on Damp, except this time, it's Jim singing his own lines to his own song. This mash-up showcases the differences between the two versions.
• Three Chords and the Truth: Thirlwell is a child of the "No Wave" movement of the 1980s, which was the Mirror Universe counterpart to the commercially driven New Wave scene. As such, much of Thirlwell's early Foetus work comes across as hot and dirty rock 'n' roll, to his uber-stylish mainstream rivals.
• What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: Actually, a lot of Thirlwell's earlier stuff was. He would play this straight later on in his career, when he ditched (some of) the crazy and replaced it with creative experimentation.
• Word Salad Lyrics: Subverted, as many of Thirlwell's songs are stream-of-consciousness, tending to flow around tones of self-abuse, loathing, psychosis, and egomania. They end up being highly interpretive when all's said and done.