Customer Reviews

First Annual Report

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

On my way to a party in Athens, Georgia one night, driving throught the dark countryside, stoned out of my mind, the track "Very Friendly" came on the college radio station WUOG. "There's been a murder.....Ian Brady, very friendly.." on and on it went, for over 15 minutes. Gruesome details of an axe murder were part of the lyrics, delivered by Genesis P Orridge in a monotone, deadpan delivery. Scared the hell out of me. I had to pull over at the next well lit convenience store and go inside. True story. What remains on this album is much the same. Anti-pop. Truly scary, intense music, with no regard to traditional song structure or melody. This is one of the few bands that I consider not only radical and alternative, but also incredibly influential. Possibly not the best place to start, if you are new to Throbbing Gristle ( I'd recommend DOA or 20 Jazz Funk Greats, as they are slightly more accesible). But an enjoyable, if unsettling listen, nontheless.

For years, the first Throbbing Gristle album was 2nd Annual Report, and in hindsight, it would be just like the band to call their first album a "sequel," just to mess with your head. Some didn't buy that, and went looking for The First Annual Report. To their dismay, the suspiciously small number of copies of the album (a hundred or so at most), led people to believe that it never did exist, or that it was an early concert bootleg (It didn't help that the band stayed hush-hush about it). So when it go re-released this past year (I forget if it was remastered - I've lent my copy), what suprised everone was the original release date: 1975! And it's almost all percussive noise blasts (If you catch a synth melody, or Cosey Fanni Tutti's guitar-work, it's a rare treat) and it can really make you feel physically ill. First Annual Report has none of the Neu!-inspired synth melodies of Jazz-Funk Greats. The 18-minute long first track, Very Friendly, is about a sexual encounter/axe murder with Genesis P-Orridge repeating "Ian brady, very friendly" and "There's been a murder" for minutes on end. It'll make you sweat with panic, give you an ulcer, make you short of breath. So not unlike 1975's other mythical noise album, Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, First Annual Report is for the boldest fans of the Gristle and/or DHR Records only.

I've taken a liking to this group ever since I heard a couple songs a couple week ago. I notice that the group has a very different sound from this far back in the day. The music itself is very,very primitive compared to even the 80's standards. But this group basically helped that movement alot by creating "industrial".

I like the sound of Very Friendly but GPO sounds so creepy I cant really listen to the noise, only the graphic details of an axe murder. Noise-wise it is something that could catch yr attention but the static-ness enahances it a bit. Very f*cked up is more like GPO's point of view. Dead Bait is a boring but kinda interesting exprimentation with the small sounds throughout the song. 10 Pence I never cared for, I don't like the static analog sounds being randomly used. It does sound like something, disturbing though. Whorle of Sound is dark noise-smaple crap with some interesting sounds. I like Final Musak alot for some reason, the percussive background sounds like a broken acoustic guitar, yet it still feels dark. Scars of E is nicely done with REAL instruments and synth noises. Only if GPO could sing though. "He" sounds downright evil at times throughout "his" music.

Assume Power Focus has better stuff then this. and those tracks were pretty early on in their time. Worth hearing Very Friendly and Final Musak.

Luis Mejia - Despite the commercial randomness and insecurity of the album's release, you can take the first generic efforts of commercial stupidity taken onto the early levels of anti-melodic music. As being the early and first recordings of Throbbing Gristle, the sense of industrial music was still somewhat far, but this approaching and founding effort gets to the head on the early 70s' artistic period; a generation which explored an art movement on the dark side of popular belongings and expressed themselves as underground radicals. The doings on the album are gladly arranged; but each contain the same style of drop-dead, suffering atmosphere, rennovating onto ongoing and ongoing sounds of crude tape-loop explosions to the point of seeming effortless (who knows...). But the tracks are different from their other famous recording; "Very Friendly" takes it too far onto a narration of an odd murder story, and the impressive side of the rest of the recordings is that they iddentify all with the center piece, the title and the tracks of the style. While it is understandable even for them and refreshing to the crushed mind, it's not truly scary as I can comment on D.O.A. and The Second Annual Report, which, while not better neither of them, they are masterpieces in achiving truly frightening chills. And for the rest, it doesn't sound as pop-like (if I can really apply this term) as 20 Jazz Funk Greats. But yet it commits the perfect job of splashing you in the face with a very own sense of manic humor, cheating their movement, their art, and everything else that can be done as alternative, and that's simply sweet.

the first two releases from throbbing gristle are propbably their best, in any case, this album is seminal for the punk music genre, the goth music genre, the metal genre, etc. i reccomend buying this album and listening to it in a dark room at mid level volume.

This is certainly a TG recording, and an early one, but the bizzare and more or less stupid sleeve's claim that it's some sort of 'secret, unreleased album' is ridiculous. TG recorded alomst every performance, on audio and video, and released most of those. If it actually IS first annual report, it wasn't secret, it was just sent to their friends.
They get no money from non-Mute Recordings releases, so don't buy this.