Pop Music Capsules : England’s Psychic TV Receives Spotty Reception

Genesis P-Orridge created the forerunner of all industrial terror-music groups (Throbbing Gristle), led a pseudo-religion and has exhibited his body piercings in underground publications. These days the Englishman and his group Psychic TV play a style called acid house that mixes minimal, disco-dub “house” rhythms with psychedelic electronic effects.

With its light shows, films and writhing fans in both gloom-doom and neo-hippie attire, Psychic TV’s show at Helter Skelter on Friday resembled a ‘90s version of a Merry Pranksters’ hippie-era acid test. As three musicians played along with tapes and P-Orridge’s wife Paula manipulated a drum machine, he started out lucid, but as the night throbbed on, he slipped into his own altered state, droning indistinguishable slogans against a never-ending, never-changing trance groove. It might have provided some with hypnotic catharsis, but one man’s ecstasy was another man’s agony.