Review/Rock; 60's Moods, 90's Methods

Genesis P-Orridge, the singer and ringleader of the English band Psychic TV, has some of the trappings of an unrepentant hippie. He writes essays about ''magick,'' and his voice can take on the throaty tone of Jim Morrison and the eccentric vibrato of Marc Bolan. He also sings about ''intoxication: wow, wow, wow'' as if the antidrug fervor of recent years was still to come. During the band's two-hour set at the Ritz on Saturday night, strobe lights flashed, and the stage was filled with variously flailing dancers.

But it is 1990, and Psychic TV wouldn't be mistaken for a hippie band. Its onstage slide show mixed images of skulls with European art treasures; the dancers, male and female, struck raunchier poses than those of the go-go girls of 25 years ago. Psychic TV's music uses booming modern drum-machine rhythms behind wailing guitar and tape loops of voices, putting it close to the ominous, mechanized pounding of industrial rock; Mr. P-Orridge was a founding member of Throbbing Gristle, one of the first industrial bands.

He has a knack for concise hook phrases, like ''It's elusive/but I'm conducive/to change,'' and his songs are more often bleak than playful. Mostly, though, they're extended vamps for dancing.

The stage show, with everyone gyrating to Mr. P-Orridge's darkest tidings, tilts the proceedings toward decadence; the youngest member of the onstage troupe, Caresse, looked to be about 10 years old and spoke-sang Jimi Hendrix's ''Are You Experienced.''

But decadence is balanced by cheerful defiance. ''These youngsters today have no respect for the old fascist Christians at all,'' Mr. P-Orridge growled between songs. Even as the brutal beat and impersonal voices, tokens of the outside world, threaten its equanimity, Psychic TV keeps on dancing.