Foetus | Artist

JG Thirlwell aka Foetus is an Australian avant-garde musician born 1960 in Melbourne. The Foetus project has had many similar names, each including the word "foetus". The "members" of the project are aliases of Thirlwell; they include Frank Want, Phillip Toss, Clint Ruin, Manorexia and Xordox. Commentators on Thirlwell's music, which combines percussion, strings, distortion, brass, electric guitars, electronic sounds and voice, have described it as "industrial cabaret" which pre-empts the styles of artists like Nine Inch Nails and Tom Waits. After studying Fine Art in Melbourne Thirlwell moved to London in 1978 where he played with post punk band prag VEC and formed his musical project Foetus. In the 1980s, under the pseudonyms Clint Ruin and Frank Want, he contributed to works by Nurse With Wound, Marc Almond, The The, and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. He co-wrote "Wings Off Flies" on From Her to Eternity, the first Bad Seeds album. In November 1983, Foetus undertook a tour with Marc Almond, Nick Cave and Lydia Lunch in the short-lived partnership known as The Immaculate Consumptive. Thirlwell released two of his best albums Hole and Nail in 1982/84 under the name Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel. These releases are regarded by critics as seminal to the industrial music genre. To-date he has released 14 studio albums. Outstanding releases include Hole, Nail, Thaw, Gash, Flow, Love, Halt and the live album Male. All Foetus LP album titles are four-letter, one-syllable words, often with ambiguous connotations. Thirlwell also releases works under his own name, mainly soundtracks such as the excellent series of Venture Brothers TV series compilations.

Artist Website: foetus.org

Featured Albums: Foetus

Related Artists: Soft Cell, Lydia Lunch, Nurse With Wound, Pigface, Nick Cave, JG Thirlwell