Carter Tutti Void - Triumvirate

Triumvirate is the third and final album from Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti and Nik Void. The collaboration started back in 2011 and has already yielded two fine albums – one live and one studio. This album was made at Carter and Tutti’s Studio47 in Norfolk and features all new material with rhythms created by Carter over which Tutti and Void add vocals, guitars and anything else that comes to hand.

The album starts with an ominous pulse and gathering electronic and machine noise. This is T3.2. Carter’s rhythm track develops into a light, Industrial groove – harsh guitar, backwards sounds and dub-like effects are added over the top. It reminds me of that late 80s meeting between Acid House and Industrial Culture – which is quite a sweet spot. T3.3 follows. Again, Carter’s rhythm track is light but pulsing. The sounds are less harsh this time and the song sounds closer to more modern, out-there, Electronic/Techno artists like Helena Hauff or Void’s own Factory Floor. By the end, when the beat picks up, it has become something of a banger. T3.4 starts out quieter with Carter building up the beat this time. There seems to be more space, with Tutti and Void’s contributions being sparser at first. But the intensity builds as the kick drum becomes more powerful and is joined by other rhythmic noises. Tutti and Void’s contributions increase but they always leave a lot of space around the sounds that they produce. The stomping rhythms continue on T3.5. There are more disembodied vocals this time, along with the other sounds. As with previous tracks, the intensity builds somewhat. T3.1 (a bit of a curveball that) is a 7 minute monster that starts out quite swampy but picks up with a stomping four-to-the-floor beat and metallic sounds rain down upon us. There’s more identifiable guitar on this – there’s guitar on the rest of it, it’s just not as identifiable. The final track is, of course, T3.6. It starts out a little more ambient with muffled drums. The sounds are quite harsh though and hi-hats and a Techno bass raise the track into another unlikely banger.

I found Triumvirate quite difficult to write about. The sounds are hard to identify and therefore hard to describe. The album as a whole is easier to describe. It’s a really good combination of two worlds, but two worlds that share a lot of common ground. You can hear Carter and Tutti’s history in there but you can also hear how they continue to push themselves as artists. Void brings her own ideas from Factory Floor and NPVR, but also has that deep understanding of the history of Industrial and Electronic Music. The definition of Triumvirate is used in the press release and it provides the neatest description of what these great artists have achieved on this, their final album together – ‘the combined power of a group of three in creative collaboration’.