Foetus: Gash

Release Information

Purchase Album as MP3

CD 1995 Sony (advance copy) #SRCS 7758 Made in Japan
CD 1995 Sony/Columbia #CK66461 Made in the US
CS 1995 Sony/Columbia (advance copy) #ACC66461 Made in the US
CS 1995 Sony/Columbia #66461 Made in the US
CD 1995 Big Cat #ABB 88 CD Made in the UK
CD 1995 Sony/Columbia #?? Made in Canada
CD 1995 Sony #?? Made in Japan

Track Listing

01. Mortgage
02. Mighty Whity
03. Friend or Foe
04. Hammer Falls
05. Downfall
06. Take It Outside Godboy
07. Verklemmt
08. They Are Not So True
09. Slung
10. Steal Your Life Away
11. Mutapump
12. See Ya Later

The Japanese Sony release contained bonus tracks taken from Null:

* Be Thankful
* Butter
* Into the Light

Linear Notes

Composed, Produced, Arranged and Performed by J.G. Thirlwell

All tracks written by J.G. Thirlwell

Engineered by ROB ROK SUTTON

Pre-Production at Self Immolation Studios, Brooklyn

Recorded and Mixed at Unique, NYC

Mastered by Howie Weinberg

With Very Special Guests:

TOD ASHLEY – Bass on tracks 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 11, 12

VINNIE SIGNORELLI – Drums on tracks 5, 9

MARC RIBOT – Guitar on tracks 3, 9, 12

MARCELLUS HALL – Harmonica on track 3

STEVE BERNSTEIN – Trumpet on tracks 2, 5, 6, 11, 12

THE HERESY HORNS on tracks 2, 4, 9

STEVE BERNSTEIN – Trumpt

ART BARRON – Trombone

PABLO CALOGERO – Baritone Sax

FRANK LONDON – Trumpet

The Heresy Horns Arranged by STEVE BERNSTEIN and J.G. THIRLWELL

Tod Ashley appears courtesy of Cop Shoot Cop/Interscope Records

Vinnie Signorelli appears courtesy of Unsane/Matador Records

Marcellus Hall appears courtesy of Railroad Jerk/Matador Records

A&R: David Kahne

Product Manager/Puppet Master: Gerard Babitts

Legal: Loren Chodosh

Sony Video 1: Evelyn Ackley

Long Slow Wet One: DC

(you’re the boss)

An Ectopic Entertainment Production

Self Immolation/Ectopic Ents.

Art Direction: Brian Wallace

Concept & Digital Artwork Designed by J.G. Thirlwell

Photographed by Alex Winter

Computer Imaging: Adam Sanders

Graphic Artist: Richard White

Release Notes

Gash is a Foetus album released in 1995 by Sony/Columbia. Gash is the only Foetus album to appear on a major label and their most widely-distributed, with releases in North America, Europe, and Japan. Gash is Columbia Records #CK 66461.

Be Thankful, Butter and Into The Light appear only on the Japanese versions of Gash, and are taken from the Null release (and for that matter, those three tracks, plus Friend Or Foe also appear on the Null/Void release).

Verklemmt and Be Thankful also appear on the Verklemmt / Be Thankful 7″, and Verklemmt also appears on the Null release, the CMJ New Music Monthly #20 CD and the Various Artists F CD 14 release.

Steal Your Life Away also appears on the Ticket Please (Airwalk shoes promo sampler) CD release.

The Alex Winter credited with photography is half of the famed Bill & Ted film duo (though I have no clue which guy he was – Bill or Ted…).

If one (carefully) removes the CD tray, there is a picture of Thirlwell underneath (which he claims was taken when he was thrown out of a strip club in Times Square).

Reviews

Since the early `80s, Jim Thirlwell and his various monikers (including Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel, Clint Ruin and Steroid Maximus) have been pushing the industrial envelope to the breaking point, taking the genre into new, unheard-of and unimagined directions with each successive release. With Gash, he’s outdone himself once again, toying with the textures and rhythms of big band jazz to supplement his artful chaos. While still a faithful master of the shredded vocal and densely layered guitar torrent-conventions established by Foetus long before Ministry or Nine Inch Nails were even a glimmer in the genre’s developing eye-Mr. Thirlwell is also a boundlessly clever experimenter, bringing together seemingly incongruous sounds, instruments and styles into a powerfully cacophonous whole. Mighty Whity and Verklemmt are more straightforward, visceral Foetus hoe-downs, while Hammer Falls uses a sitar, some crashing drum noise and gargantuan tuba squonks to paint its sinister picture. Slung and Steal Your Life Away are full-blown swinging jazz numbers, complete with muted brass and upright bass. The space in between these two disparate styles is the knowingly dark and frightening zone Foetus creates, shredding musical convention like paper.

CMJ New Music Report, Issue# 424 (24 Apr 1995), by Colin Helms.

Finally swept into major-label clutches in ‘95, Foetus spewed up Gash, a magnificent chopper of industrial gruesomeness, vintage horn jazz (check the eleven-minute extravaganza Slung for snappy music your grandparents would not condone), sly samples and what can only be described as the string-laden lullaby of hell. Presumably working with the first big studio budget of his career, Foetus gets it all in the grooves, lashing together an eclectic collection as advanced and ambitious as anything he’s done. -Trouser Press