Under his various monikers (Foetus, Steroid Maximus, Wiseblood et. al.) J.G. Thirlwell has long fostered a cinematic quality with his recordings. His latest release, the soundtrack to seasons 1-3 of Cartoon Network’s animated series “The Venture Bros.” finds a home for the visual aspects of his music. But whereas much of the score is drastically diminished throughout the show, removing it from the television screen gives the music a life of its own.

When the Australian-born New Yorker came stateside in the early ‘80s he was playing in a little known band called the Immaculate Consumptive alongside fellow Aussie Nick Cave. According to legend the band split up soon after Thirlwell ruined their piano by playing it with his feet. The story may or may not be true, but it illustrates the off-kilter composer’s sense of humor and awkward modes of expression.

Though he’s often associated with industrial music luminaries Throbbing Gristle, Einsturzende Neubauten and Cabaret Voltaire, Thirlwell is cut from a different cloth. His records straddle numerous avenues of music, careening from symphonic clatter, atmospheric drones, punk, jazz, metal and big band explosions. On “The Venture Bros.” “Tuff” lays the groundwork for fast-paced thrills that snake through a maze of horns, staccato drumming and electronic rhythms in “Node Wrestling.” “Mississippi Noir” switches gears with a sparse round of banjo, and “No Vacancy” erupts with a finale of piano, horn and bass clusters that are seething with high-drama and intrigue. Taken in all at once, it can be a challenge to the attention span. But from beginning to end “The Venture Bros.” soundtrack roars with the same teeth-gnashing rush that has come to characterize Thirwell’s sound.

Chad Radford:  How long ago were you approached for The Venture Bros. Soundtrack?

J.G. Thirlwell:  Oh I think we first started talking about it in like 2002 or 2003. Right now I’m working on the score for the fourth season. The soundtrack comprises scenes that were drawn from the first three seasons, but there is a lot more music that’s on the score.

The show’s creator Jasckson Publick first approached me when they were working on the pilot. He heard a Steroid Maximus album, called ¡Quilombo! that had crystallized the idea for "The Venture Bros." in his head. He approached me about it and I wasn’t in a position where I really wanted to score it at that time. I had been working on Steroid Maximus and Manorexia tracks that eventually became the score. I edited it together and submitted it to the Cartoon Network. They picked it up and came back to me again and I thought that it could be an opportunity to stretch out into another field and do something that I hadn’t done before.

Were you apprehensive about it?

I already had a good sense that Jackson Publick was smart and articulate. One of the most important skills to have is being able to articulate a vision and not just say “I want something, but I don’t know what it is,” and then give you the option of something between jazz and Gamelan music. Jackson was pretty articulate, but the vision was already hung on what I had created with Steroid Maximus, so it was a chance to stretch out in that. My main apprehension was just the amount of time it would take away from my other projects, but I’ve managed to settle that.

The Steroid Maximus album ¡Quilombo! actually influenced Jackson Publick to create "The Venture Bros.?"

Yep, according to Jackson it did.

Your albums have always been very cinematic, so it kind of makes sense.

I think so. That’s a hallmark of my music.

What sort of prompts did he give you for composing the soundtrack?

With the pilot I had given them material and they kind of cut it up. But when it comes down to actually scoring each episode I work from an animatic, which is a story board with the dialogue already embedded on it for what will get sent to Korea for animating. I like to work way in advance, so there’s a 12-16 week turnaround between receiving the animatic and receiving the edited, animated show. So if I can work on things far in advance I can get sidetracked with another project and get closer to a deadline and not feel stressed for time. So working from an animatic I will block out my que ideas of what I think would go well with the score or make notes and then I sit down with Jackson and sometimes the ideas are correct and sometimes they’re not. Sometimes I can rework an existing que and sometimes I’ve got to work from scratch. There may be a three minute arc of drama and action that needs like one piece, and then sometimes I will have to write a new piece altogether. I really work from episode to episode. Obviously the location that the episode is set in, or sometimes there are scenes that pop up to flash back to another episode, so I will have to create something specifically for that. Sometimes a que is just 25 seconds long, but it might take a couple of days to do.

Do you have a favorite piece on the soundtrack?

When I make albums I don’t really think of having favorite pieces because each piece educates the next one. I think the soundtrack works very well as a whole, and its intention is to bring to the fore the score that hasn’t had a chance to breath much outside of the show. It’s a very dense score, and it gave me a chance to revisit some of the ques. When I look at something in the context of an album I’m going to work on it with a different criteria than I am when know that it’s going to have dialogue and sound design over it. There are certain instruments and certain frequencies that clash with dialogue so you have to bring those down if not take them out altogether. It gave me a chance to realize these songs as compositions in and of themselves.

There’s a song on the score called “Mississippi Noir” that reminds me of the “St. Louis Blues…”

Probably, but they’re all written of a similar form. That one in particular was written for the show when one of the characters was going to jail and was being represented by a Southern lawyer. The basic scene came out of that, but for that song I really had a chance to rework it for the soundtrack and add the trumpet and vocals and stuff like that, which wouldn’t have fit in the context of the show. Sometimes these ques come in and they call for me to write something that’s fairly elaborate but then it ends up being only 15 seconds long.

The soundtrack is credited to J. G. Thirlwell. What’s the difference between doing something under your own name vs. Foetus, Steroid Maximus or any of the other various identities that you have used?

The first thing I started off with was Foetus and all of the variations on that, Foetus Interuptus, Foetus Under Glass, Scraping Foetus off the Wheel… those variations on the Foetus title all had discreetly differing intentions. I also had a great scope of musical style that I touched on with Foetus. Then when I started branching off into non-Foetus names, say for example Steroid Maximus, it was to extract the way Foetus was becoming increasingly 50/50 instrumental and wanted to take on a project where I could let the instrumental work breath and just concentrate on that. Wiseblood was born out of a collaboration between me and Roli Mosimann and I wanted to distinguish that. Clint Ruin was a persona off-shoot of Foetus that I was using. At one time there were 7 different names that I was using under the Foetus umbrella. They all had different intentions. Some pieces have become a little bit interchangeable whereas a Steroid Maximus piece could end up with vocals on it and used for something else. Sometimes a Foetus track has had the vocals removed and used as a Steroid Maximus piece, but they are all unique to the character and take on their own identities. Manorexia was born as a reaction to the density that I had created with Foetus and Steroid Maximus. I wanted something that was much more spacious. Now Manorexia has taken on an organic musical identity. It began as a really intuitive project but has grown to where I have created scores for it that use a string quartet, piano, percussion and laptop. So now it has this other chamber music side to it. And of course all of the old experiments come back and inform the other projects in the family.

Is The Venture Bros. Soundtrack the first thing you’ve done under your own name?

It’s the first album of J.G. Thirlwell. I’ve wanted to do it for a long time, but the right project just hadn’t come along until now.

Do you think that being tagged as an industrial music guy, or being lumped in with artists, like Throbbing Gristle or Einsturzende Neubauten was misleading or incorrect when it came to your stuff?

Yes. Well, Throbbing Gristle and Einsturzende Neubauten were, in my mind, both worthy of the title "industrial." But the term got really over used and when I got slapped with it, I think it was just kind of lazy journalism or categorization. I don’t identify with that or any other label, really. I touch on a lot of different kinds of music. Someone once described me as “liminal” and that’s fairly accurate. I straddle a lot of areas at the intersection of a lot of different styles and forms of expression. One song can be totally atmospheric and the next one can be punk jazz, and kind of all over the place -- sometimes all in the same song. Just put me under A-to-Z!

(Photo by Lydia Lunch)