Throbbing Gristle mark 50 years with TG50 at the ICA on 18 October and a 36-show ‘TG24+’ USB box set
Throbbing Gristle celebrate their 50th anniversary with TG50 at the ICA, London on 18 October 2026, plus “TG24+”, a USB box of 36 live shows due 4 December.
Fifty years to the day after Throbbing Gristle played the ICA as part of their “Prostitution” exhibition, the London gallery hosts TG50, a day of films, talks, music and merchandise on Sunday 18 October 2026. Throbbing Gristle – Cosey Fanni Tutti, Chris Carter, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (1950-2020) and Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson (1955-2010) – date their start to 3 September 1976, and the announcement lands on that anniversary. The same day, Mute opens registration for “TG24+”, a limited-edition USB box set with 36 live performances newly mastered and restored by Chris Carter, due on 4 December 2026.
The event is free to attend and runs as a drop-in through the day, with separate paid tickets for the limited-capacity cinema screenings and talks. The screening programme has not been announced yet. One item is already on sale: Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti in conversation with Luke Turner, editor of The Quietus, at 6pm in Cinema 2. The ICA says the two will “reflect on the early days of Throbbing Gristle, their experience of London at the time, and the ways in which they forged new forms of music and art amid the city’s cultural underground”. The day also launches a new range of TG merchandise, with some items sold only at the event. The ICA presents TG50 in partnership with Mute.
TG50 at the ICA on 18 October 2026
The date is not random. “Prostitution”, the October 1976 exhibition by the performance group COUM Transmissions at the ICA, doubled as the public debut of Throbbing Gristle, and the band’s performance there took place on 18 October 1976. The show drew the headlines “MP’s fury at porn palace” (Daily Mirror) and “Bust-up at Gallery of Porn” (Daily Express), and Conservative MP Nicholas Fairbairn called the group “wreckers of civilisation” in Parliament. That phrase later became the title of Simon Ford’s 1999 book on COUM and TG.
The ICA describes TG50 as a day that brings fans together “to share memories, stories and reflections on the band and what their work has meant to them”. The band returned to the same building in June 2007 for a three-day recording session, sold afterwards as the 12-CD “The Desertshore Installation”.
“TG24+” continues a series that began in 1980, when Industrial Records issued “TG24” as a box of 24 cassettes covering the band’s first 24 concerts. Mute reissued it as a CD box in December 2002, with 26 performances, and followed it with “TG+”, which added ten more. The new USB edition carries 36 shows, the combined total of those two sets, in Chris Carter’s new masters. Pricing and the exact contents have not been published; Mute is taking registrations of interest ahead of the 4 December release.
About Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle grew out of COUM Transmissions, the performance group Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti ran in Kingston upon Hull before moving to Hackney, London in 1973. There they met Chris Carter, then a television sound recordist, and Peter Christopherson, then a member of the design collective Hipgnosis, and built a studio they named “The Death Factory”. The four went public as Throbbing Gristle at the ICA in October 1976 and set up their own label, Industrial Records, which gave the genre its name. “The Second Annual Report” (November 1977, first pressed in 786 copies) was followed by the single “United / Zyklon B Zombie”, “D.o.A: The Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle” (1978), “20 Jazz Funk Greats” (1979) and “Heathen Earth” (1980). In 1980 they also scored Neil Ruttenberg’s horror film “Mask of Sarnath”, a soundtrack that resurfaced last year on the “Mask of Sarnath” DVD. After a final show in San Francisco on 29 May 1981, the band mailed out postcards on 23 June 1981 declaring their mission terminated.
The members split into Psychic TV (P-Orridge and Christopherson), Chris & Cosey and later Coil (Christopherson with John Balance). The 2002 “TG24” reissue on Mute preceded a reunion in 2004, which produced “TG Now”, a first comeback show at the London Astoria on 16 May 2004 and a set at All Tomorrow’s Parties in Camber Sands on 3 December 2004. “Part Two: The Endless Not” followed on 2 April 2007, recorded in Berlin, with shows at the Donaufestival in Krems, Tate Modern and the ICA installation the same year. A US tour in April 2009, including Coachella, coincided with “The Third Mind Movements”. P-Orridge left in October 2010, Christopherson died in November 2010, and Carter and Tutti finished the group’s work as X-TG with “Desertshore / The Final Report” (2012). P-Orridge died in March 2020.
Mute has kept the catalogue in circulation since: the reissue series was “relaunched with ‘TGCD1’ and ‘The Third Mind Movements'” in July 2024, the previously unreleased track “Scabs & Saws” surfaced in October 2024, a “Hamburger Lady” live video arrived in April 2025 and “Live at the Volksbühne Berlin, New Year’s Eve 2005” came out in May 2025. Carter and Tutti continue to record as Carter Tutti and Carter Tutti Void, and Tutti was named the Innovator Award recipient at the AIM Independent Music Awards 2025. TG50 on 18 October 2026 returns the two surviving members to the room where the band first played, and “TG24+” on 4 December puts the live archive that started with the 1980 cassette box onto a single USB drive.
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