Cosey Fanni Tutti on Sound, RE-SISTERS, and 2t2.

Transmission 222: Interview with Cosey Fanni Tutti

Cosey Fanni Tutti is a British musician, performance artist, and writer. She began her career with COUM Transmissions in the late 1960s, later co-founding Throbbing Gristle in 1975. The group’s work introduced techniques such as tape loops, noise, and improvised electronics into live performance contexts, contributing to the formation of industrial music. After its disbandment in 1981, she continued recording with Chris Carter as Chris & Cosey, later reconfigured as Carter Tutti, alternating between rhythmic structures and more minimal experimental forms.

Title: 2t2
Artist: Cosey Fanni Tutti
Genres: Electronica, Experimental Music, Industrial Music
Label: Conspiracy International
Description: An interview with Cosey Fanni Tutti. Explore the life, art, and music of the industrial pioneer and Throbbing Gristle co-founder.

Her solo recordings often function as both compositional works and personal documents. 2t2, released on 13 June 2025 via Conspiracy International, follows TUTTI (2019) and features nine tracks composed, performed, and produced independently. Alongside her musical work, Cosey has written two books—Art Sex Music (2017) and RE-SISTERS (2022)—and collaborated on film and performance projects. Her early exhibitions, including Prostitution (ICA, 1976), addressed themes of sexual labor and representation using both live action and archival material.

When did you first realize that sound on its own could express something personal or political?

I suppose when I heard sounds that triggered my emotions. I would’ve been really quite young, but I wouldn’t, because I was so young, necessarily analyse it in that way. I think you do that more as a teenager, because music is really important then—you’re going out, experiencing new things, meeting people, making associations and relationships. It helps in that way; you lock into certain sounds and music because they express how you feel.

So it starts quite young, I think.

You first performed under the name Cosmosis—what pushed the transition into becoming Cosey Fanni Tutti?

I was doing mail art at the time, and I had a correspondence with a guy called Robin Klassnik. He sent me a postcard and addressed it to Cosi Fanni Tutti, and I kept the name after that.

Can you describe how the idea for 2T2 was initially formed? Was there a specific catalyst?

I started the album two years before I finished it, and then a lot of things happened, so I couldn’t get back to it for a long time. By the time I returned to it, the mood had completely changed—so much had gone on, and that influenced the album totally.

Like you were saying at the beginning, the music’s there to express your feelings and what’s been happening to you in the world, and the world around me.

The album is structured in two parts – one percussive, one subdued. Was that division something you planned, or did the material naturally fall that way?

It wasn’t planned at all. Again, it goes back to the mood when I first connected with it. I suppose I was quite angry at what was going on in the world, and angry about what had happened to me and my family and friends. The more rhythmic pieces echo that—when you feel angry, but also feel resistance, and you have to dig deep for strength to get through something. That’s the rhythmic side of it.

Then I came through, and I was just working on sounds—particular ones evoked the feelings I had when I was thinking about people I’d lost and things that had happened that were difficult. It was more of a peaceful moment for me, amidst all the chaos, and that’s what they represented, but with an undertone of, I suppose, dread—because I didn’t know what was going to come next. So that’s the two sides of it.

The two sides of when you’re trying to deal with difficult things—you think, right, I’ve got to get through this, I need some strength, I need to be a little more optimistic. And at the same time, I need to reflect and enjoy the good memories and things like that of people.

RE-SISTERS intersects three women’s lives—yours, Delia Derbyshire’s, and Margery Kempe’s. How did the structure of that book evolve? What led you to write about Margery Kempe in particular?

I suppose it was triggered when I worked on the film with Caroline Catz, the film about Delia Derbyshire. I was looking into her life and researching it as part of getting the music right—so I could understand what kind of sounds to use to represent her with my own work, because I knew she didn’t like her own music being messed with at all, so I wasn’t going to do that.

I researched her a lot and realised just how much she’d been through. In certain instances throughout her life, it completely echoed my own. I thought, we’ve been through so much of the same, only eight or twelve years apart in age.

Then I happened to pick up this book in a town where I live, about this Margery Kempe, a medieval mystic. I started reading it and thought, this woman is going against everything to be who she is—just like Delia did and just like I am.

How could someone from the 1300s have so much in common with me and Delia? But she did. That’s why it was called RE-SISTERS, because we worked around the systems to be who we wanted to be in the world and do what we wanted to do.

A documentary on your life is in the works. Are you actively involved in shaping its narrative?

I’m working collaboratively with Caroline on the creative documentary. It’s not a biopic, so that’s really exciting. We’ve been working together for quite a while now on it. We’ve still got some shoots to do, but it’s all going really well.

How did your work with COUM Transmissions evolve from actions and interventions into structured sound?

There was no sound with COUM. The only sound was acoustic originally, and a little bit when John Lacey joined us—we wired up to PAs and things.

But other than that, no. Are you talking about Throbbing Gristle maybe? Because COUM ended, and Throbbing Gristle began in its own right.

It was never an extension of COUM.

What were the first technical or social obstacles you encountered when trying to produce your own sound pieces?

Yeah. That would be Time to Tell—it was the first one I ever did, back in ’82, ’84. We just lived in a terraced house in London. We had a small studio in a spare bedroom—me and Chris. And we just had the equipment we had.

I just sat down one day, took the keyboard and other instruments, my guitar and everything, and then I narrated the lecture I’d done about my work. That’s how that came about.

Other than that, it’s difficult—because when I work on my own, it’s not like working with Chris at all. We’re very different in the kind of things we prefer. I suppose that’s why, when we work together, the marriage of that sound is so good—because we’re quite different. Although we both really love rhythm and melody.

So when I’m on my own, it’s quite different. I don’t have to think someone else is going to bring in another sound—I can just bring in what I want. It’s very, very different.

Are you currently working on new projects?

Yeah, but I can’t say anything about them—not yet. They’ll come to light. I think doing the film is enough for now.

Photos courtesy of Cosey Fanni Tutti

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others