Customer Reviews

2nd Annual Report

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It's only right to warn potential customers that most of this CD is pretty dodgy when it comes to recording quality. Some of these tracks were recorded on cassette tape, plenty of bootlegs sound better than this. Of course, this band was never big on pleasing consumers anyway. The duff sound may actually improve the album. Instead of being the loud assault of TG's other records, the general mood and sound remind me of three things. 1) The feeling of being in a closet hearing disturbing sounds you can't quite define and becoming scared as hell. 2) the sonic and aesthetic influence of Stanley Kubrick, Wendy Carlos and Pink Floyd - this CD is not so different from the sound FX in 'Umugumma' or even the (very) few decent Tangerine Dream records. 3) I think this CD captures the basic schizophrenia of the only worthwhile 'Industrial' band. Was TG scary or silly? Earnest or pulling pranks? Is this band's music a brave uncompromising look at a cold loveless world? Or is it a very outre and somewhat sly psychedelic detour? Perhaps Throbbing Gristle could be all of these things. Although I wouldn't advise this CD as the first purchase in any Gristle collection ('DOA-Third & Final Report...' would be a better choice), make this your second buy. And for anyone who says you can't be lulled to sleep by this band, the 20 minutes of "After Cease to Exist" will prove you wrong. For better or worse, we'll never see another band like this.

Listening to this album for the first time one could be excused for thinking that the tracks "Slug Bait" etc. are a celebration of psychotic behaviour. Nothing could be further from the truth. This album does not celebrate or condemn the psychotic personality, rather it represents a "commodity" that Industrial Society can be proud of "producing" in the form presented on the album. This commodity IS the psychotic personality. If decent bourgeois individuals are offened at what they hear in this album then to be consistent they would also need to be offened by the very socio-economic system that produces those "products". The logo of the album sums it up: "Industrial Music For Industrial People".

This was the first above-ground release by Throbbing Gristle. There was a prior cassette-only release that sometimes one sees as a bootleg ("Music From the Death Factory" is the title sometimes applied to this release), but this was the first taste everyone got. And it's a rather unpleasant taste. The first half consists of different versions of varying audio quality of two tracks, plus a concert intro, and while some versions of this work, others are just unpleasant sludge. Granted, this does play into TG's industrial aesthetic, but at the same time one thinks better material could have been chosen. Especially in the light of the second half, which contains the brilliant soundtrack for 'After Cease to Exist'. Some 'electronica' wag a few years back coined the term 'illbient'. This tag much more applies here. A strange meander of odd noises, drones, bleak atmospherics...this is the real show on the release. The 7" tracks 'United' and 'Zyklon B Zombie' are also on here, the former being the unlikely 'hit' that brought TG to the fore during the heyday of the UK punk scene. Not easy listening, and not a good start point, but worthwhile for those into TG's sound.

Luis Mejia - Throbbing Gristle's The Second Annual Report was, at least in release order, their first concrete work as a band and maybe the first so called "industrial" album to exist. Through the listens of same-named songs and few cohersive avant-garde electronic inclinations, it's notorious for any advanced listener how the album differs from awesome pieces like D.O.A. and Jazz Funk Greats; it's less scary, a little more compelling, and almost completely anti-melodic. Here the music is softly palpable, the uneasy, sampled sounds sleaze through your mind, but even less bombastic. Sure this may be a great piece in the experimental music collector, but the high points of the album are the very first piece of "Slug Bait", the sluggish and heavy "Zyclon B Zombie", the crude satire of the 'hopeful' "United", and still "After Cease To Exist", a nearly progressive 20 min piece witch encompasses everything from the feeling of a dead corpse. Don't get fooled, their music is an extremely confrontational art expression all in a trash bin of sound pieces, but the sweetness of this band is that they generally leave us with the doubt if the music is an excuse for insanity...

WHEN COUM TRANSMISSIONS(THE CONTROVERSIAL EXHIBITION ART COLLECTIVE MASTERMINDED BY GENESIS P-ORRIDGE)MORPHED INTO THE SOUND EXPRESSIONIST GROUP HERE(T.G.),THE SLEEPY WORLD AT LARGE WAS THERE TO SCRATCH ITS HEAD.?WHAT THE HELL..!?I WON'T GO INTO GREAT BIOGRAPHY AS IT IS WELL CHRONICLED ALL OVER THE WEB AND PRY ALL OVER THE AMAZON REVIEWS FOR THEIR CDS TO AN EXTENT BUT I WILL GIVE YOU AN INFORMED OPINION WHY YOU SHOULD SNATCH THIS UP AND I'M ONE MUSIC COLLECTOR WITH LITERALLY THOUSANDS OF RECORDINGS.MUSICALLY THE SOUNDS OF THE SYNTH-WORK ON HERE WERE WAY AHEAD OF THEIR TIME.STUFF NEVER EXPLORED AND TO THIS DAY NEVER REALLY GONE INTO MUCH.THE GUITARIST BUCKETHEAD HAS DID SOME REAL SIMILAR STUFF ON GUITAR IN RECENT YEARS ONCE IN A WHILE BUT..THEY WERE AS BOLD AND CONTROVERSIAL AS YOU COULD EVER BE EVEN TO THIS DAY.FEARLESS IT WOULD SEEM.READY TO CHALLENGE PEOPLE'S MINDS AND TEST THEM.FIND WHAT MAKES THEM TICK AND PUSH THE BUTTONS AND CRUTCHES GOVERNMENT AND FOOLS EVERYWHERE LIKE TO HIDE BEHIND.SIMILAR TO WHAT FRANK ZAPPA DID YET NOT SO IMMERSED IN ORCHESTRATION,MUSIC THEORY AND ALL.I GOTTA SPLIT..SO,YOUR WAY BEHIND THE T.G TIMES SO CHECK IT OUT.MUCH BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.PLUS THEY JUST REFORMED AND HAVE A NEW CD,SOME GIGS.DVD RELEASES.IS'NT IT THRILLING TO BE ALIVE..WHEN ZAPPA DIED I HAD A DREAD OF LIVING IN A WORLD WITHOUT PEOPLE LIKE FRANK; IN SUCH CORRUPT,PHONY TIMES BUT I'M UNFORTUNATELY HAVING TO DEAL WITH IT. T.G. ARE IMPORTANT!

The cd says on it, "Industrial Music for Industrial People". I don't know what an industrial person is but I hope to meet the qualities. Face it, this is industrial music before the term became a cliche. Parts of it could almost pass for dark ambient. All I can say is that it sends a shiver down your back and makes you feel like your skin is crawling. Without bombastic guitar hooks, annoying chants or hyperactive drum machines, this cd captures the feeling of a decaying society as imagined by Philip K. Dick or J.G. Ballard. May be harmful if ingested in large quantities.

This is one of Throbbing Gristle's most consistent recordings; it flows successfully from beginning to end. Track 8 slightly disrupts everything, but the band's hostility towards the crowd provides a bit of comic relief. With Throbbing Gristle, that can be necessary.

"Slug Bait" is one of their best creations. Want to get inside the head of an anti-social personality? "Slug Bait" takes you there. It's chilling.

Is recording quality an issue? Possibly, but what you get is what you get. There's an overall sound that just tweeks your exposed soul.

"After Cease to Exist" is proof positive that you can be dragged into your subconscious by Gristle without thoughts of murder and suicide. I won't call it a happy place, but you can enter without extreme fear...

"United." You figure it out. That song is twisted...

Rare and out of print. First pressing, limited to 2000 copies, taken from the original Industrial Records plates, which were then destroyed. Second pressing, plates recut, music identical to the original. Quantity released unknown.

Tracklisting:

A1 Industrial Introduction

A2 Slug Bait - ICA

A3 Slug Bait - Live At Southampton

A4 Slug Bait - Live At Brighton

A5 Maggot Death - Live At The Rat Club

A6 Maggot Death - Studio

A7 Maggot Death - Southampton

A8 Maggot Death - Brighton

B After Cease To Exist -The Original Soundtrack of the Coum Transmission Film - Psychic TV "Live At Thee Ritz" /Limited Edition (Import) Vinyl LP - Entertainment Through Pain:A Tribute To Throbbing Gristle (Various) /Rare Audio CD - Puppy Gristle - HEATHEN EARTH - Psychic TV "Listen Today..." /Numbered Limited Edition CD Video - Dreams Less Sweet

The birth of TG is messy and disturbing to be sure - the sound quality is atrocious and some of the lyrics are truly frightening - but it is nothing if not unignorable and unforgetable. And for all the fuss about the din of noise, the industrial clatter blah blah blah, there are some quite beautiful moments on this cd. "After Cease to Exist" in particular is darkly ambient and almost relaxing. Not the best of the official TG releases, but an absolutely essential purchase.

he Throbbing Gristle have passed to the history of the modern music to have coined a new kind, that of the industrial music. Although ` native and grown between the ranks of the intellectuals of London, the Throbbing Gristle were reported to the industrial towns of the north above all. Influenced by a flourishing literature fanta-horror (that it extends the apocalyptic prophecies of George Orwell), the Throbbing Gristle mailed their whole career on the denunciation of the dehumanization in the civilization ` industrial. Their music introduced sceneries dreadfully deteriorated that could be interpreted so much as the extreme synthesis of the noises of the industrial world (a literal reading) how much as an abstract transcript of the mental devastation caused by the alienation (a metaphoric reading). Industrial music was born as music of the noises of the cars, and, indirectly, as subgenre of the electronic music.

The Throbbing Gristle (in slang " erection ") they were born in 1976 to London from the meeting between the singer Genesis P-Orridge (Neil Megson), the guitarist Christine Carol Newby (in art "Cosey Fanni All") and the two experimenters Chris Carter and Peter Christopherson. In their exhibitions live (for the more ` in concomitance with artistic demonstrations) four was specialized in a show multimedia shutter-litteram. To make them famous in the lines of the underground they were so much the music (electronics and atonal) how much the show, hinged on a cruel and repellent scenography and on erotic provocation and sadomaso and awash of lights stroboscopiche. The public was stunned scientifically by a rain of sounds and unpleasant images.

The music was evolved progressively by simple therapeutic shock, from sonorous column for a delirious ritual, to one more ` aware manipulation of the sound in line with the experiments of the electronic vanguard: dissonant electronic bands, grisly pulsations of bass, collage of conversations, cacophonous turbulences, imitations of cars of shop. The nonconformist routine was completed by a maniacal predilection for the rape of acoustic tools of oriental origin and from a blind devotion to the metallofono. The bombardment was continuous and total.

Their performances were rather rare, but they made epoch. Famous that in which they spread from the loudspeakers "muzak for the traffic" on Tottenham Court Unknown from the metropolitan places, they looked for kindergarten near club of vanguard and cultural associations of periferia. They founded the Industrial Records finally, a label record that enacted ` the birth of the industrial " music ".

The first disk, Second Annual Report (Industrial, 1977 - Fetish, 1979 - Molts, 1983), subtitled "music from the factory of the death", and ` a relationship on the first year of activity `. The passages of their repertoire (Maggot Death, Slug Bait and the sonorous column of the film After Cease To Exist) have been recorded in different circumstances and, duly joined the one to the other (and the first two in more ` versions), they form an unique continuum of noises of the subway, sirens of ambulance, passer-bys' chatters, underground vibrations of the traffic, thuds of presses and rhombuses of machineries, electric and metallic shake, strenuous breaths and it howls petrified, booms in gallery and to rattle of trains, and they compose a spine-chilling fresco of the industrial metropolis as a whole.

The industrial music is revealed music of environment, conceived in operation of an environmental scenography. But and ` also, above all, death's music, as it allows to realize the logo of the Industrial Records, a Nazi concentration camp; and the music doesn't leave a lot of doubts on the wish ` to identify that place of atrocity ` with the same metropolis, other "the death's factory". The disk wants to be a documentary of the apocalypse an apocalypse that prefigures each other as a slow collective agony. The gloomy atmospheres of the Throbbing Gristle describe the magma of atrocious pangs that and ` the industrial daily paper. Their sound-truth ` and ` aimed at the process of social annihilation of the individual, on the dispersion of his/her personality ` in the voracious gears of that abnormal machinery that and ` the society ` modern, able to reduce the individual and a gear him same, endowed with a motion and of a noise fixes and periodic.

The traditional tools and the sintetizer develop a function of rhythmic or melodic accompaniment towards the base on ribbon. The result and ` a dense tangle a great deal of sounds, partly electronic and partly acoustic (but more and more ` or less impromptu). The in turn everything has as objective the theatrical representation. This art radical drift from a side from the gestualismo and from the other from the musique concrete. Particularly all of the experiments are felt on the manipulations of the voice to the Stockhausen, of the room music for sirens of Varese, of the dada suites of Subotnick, of the concerts for daily noises of Henry. The schools in Paris, New York and Darmstadt meet in a exult of cacophonies that it has to act from sonorous column for the industrial era. performance and rhythm.