It seems likely that P-Orridge and his cohorts in fellow band Psychic TV were among the first to import the new Detroit techno music to England and to fuse it with a psychedelic attitude via a series of pseudo-compilation albums designed to suggest that such a scene already existed. In this sense, their role in shifting early electronic dance music (i.e.: Kraftwerk/Human League as filtered via Detroit techno music and emerging above-ground again in New Order's "Blue Monday") towards a concern with a "revival of the archaic" was seminal. A Psychic TV picture disc was the first to have the phrase "Acid House" written on it.

   P-Orridge has been associated with the culture of body modification, as well as magical or religious movements. He founded Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth, aka TOPY. The idea was to demystify magic, strip it of its mysticism, and let it re-enter popular culture.

   In 1992 Christian fundamentalists accused TOPY of being a "satanic cult", and a video was shown in a Channel 4 documentary purporting to be that of a supposed "ritual murder". The police were spurred to investigate, and P-Orridge and his family was forced to flee to exile in America. The video was later revealed to be an art film by Derek Jarman, and the charges were dropped.