Before Throbbing Gristle the four members had worked in Performance Art as COUM Transmissions and created an international media scandal with a show called PROSTITUTION at the ICA gallery in London. This show was to mark the end of COUM Transmissions as an active part within the Art Establishment and the emergence of Throbbing Gristle into the Music Establishment. Both had similar aims, the confronting of ALL assumptions in ALL aspects of that particular genre of culture. Considered mischief with a motive of evaluation and rejuvenation if the medium itself, in this case music, was not indeed as worthless as it appeared. The live launch of TG was in October 86 at the ICA (although a couple of trial runs had occurred in Art situations slightly earlier that year). The resulting press and media furore predated and prophesied exactly the Sex Pistols onslaught just a few weeks later. The policy of TG to record every live disconcert was a left-over from the Art world days when documentation was normally the only residual evidence of live works executed and thus essential for reference and accumulation of a measurable body of work. It is worth noting that many of TG's later techniques and policies are far more logical and clear if viewed in this light. They used the methods of radical artists in the arena of music just to "see what would happen" to spectacular effect. Many of the decisions as to what to do next and how were made spontaneously with a view to confounding the norm more or less for its own sake, a tried and tested subversive cultural technique. Fused with this ongoing expressive perversion was the more basic concern of limited resources. The thin compressed sound of 2nd Annual Report, so often copied and strived for was achieved by recording all the material bar "After Cease To Exist" on SONY cassette recorder with condenser mike. That was all we could afford. It also attacked the roots of recording tradition and method. It suited both purposes.
When it was released the cheapest possible covers were white card with black and white stickers stuck on by hand. The members of TG, ably helped by an old collaborator and friend Monte Cazazza proceeded to assemble all the covers themselves. Once again dual relevance seemed to achieve pragmatic practicality and a literal use of Industrial assembly line techniques. The reduction of glamour paralleled the reduction of music. TG considered calling the label Factory Records, but rejected it as less widely applicable to all cultural manifestations, seeming to imply, as it did, the CONTAINER rather than the process. It was once more Monte Cazazza who came to the rescue and suggested INDUSTRIAL RECORDS. He also coined the legendary corporate slogan of "lndustrial Music for Industrial People" and thus invoked and labelled a new genre of musical, performance and graphic style that has been accepted and developed worldwide ever since.
The first compilation of TG Industrial Music was called "The Best Of...Volume Two" and was copied by hand and sent to just a few friends by mail. Following what was to become an underlying motif of satirising established music business archetypes by the application of corporate language, something that seemed to strike closer to the truth of the artist/label relationship than the pose of artistic concern and love of music to camouflage capitalist greed and exploitation that prevailed then on traditional record labels, the LP was named "SECOND ANNUAL REPORT" mimicking boardroom and shareholders concerns.
In deference to the first cassette, and just for spite, the LP was given the index number IR 002. COUM Transmissions had for years invented, designed, abandoned various cynical comments upon bureaucracy and information collation, trying to exorcise the power of social monoliths and institutions. These had included "L'ECOLE DE L'ART INFANTILE", and "THE MINISTRY OF ANTISOCIAL INSECURITY" in particular. Both these pseudo-institutions existed primarily in the various forms and rubber stamps and the process itself of dissemination and retrieval to an absurd length of information for its own sake. Thus it seemed normal policy to continue this thread and to include a questionnaire, this time parodying consumer research, inside each LP. It also might be actually useful to find out who might purchase our work and know how to keep them informed of future manifestations, should we continue this latest tactic. Once again a TG move served practical, creative and ironic/cynical ends simultaneously and thus a modus operandi developed. Due to incisive and positive reviews in the music press by Jon Savage and Sandy Robertson in particular this first release sold out quickly. TG used this unexpected platform and support to develop their parody of crass commercialism further. They concocted publicity photos of the group. The first with long hair, jeans and black leather jackets, all wearing sunglasses. Ironically an image that was totally unfashionable at that specific time. This initial provocation was later refined to camouflage, once again deglamourising, functional, symbolic. There was never a photographer for "Official" TG photos, an automatic timer or a self-triggered lead seemed more appropriate.
The uniforms in turn led to the logical step of regalia. So stark badges embroidered patches, dark T-shirts were designed and distributed. A logo that evoked military, political, corporate entities crossed by a flash of electricity to represent the short-circuiting of control. To maintain a non-specific ideological position this hard-paranoia inducing image was paralleled by more and more absurd references to consumerism. TG posed in front of TESCO supermarkets, which in turn gave birth to TESCO DISCO. This equally aggressive use of whimsy reached its peak later in the cover design of "20 Jazz Funk Greats". A black and white poster was made of the record label logo. A cold, ascetic photo of the main ovens at Auschwitz that it was agreed symbolised unequivocally and with unerring precision that malignancy they intended to expose and describe through the Industrial culture concept. A factory of death literally, just as a factory is symbolically the cause of creative death, death of self-worth to so many in Industrialised societies, and as TG rehearsed in the basement of the old factory immediately adjacent to a park built over plague pits the relevance seemed complete. A second slogan was born, "MUSlC FROM THE DEATH FACTORY". Another line of perceptual investigation was also opened up. The photo appeared to be simply a factory, any factory and provoking little comment until its identity was revealed, when it seemed to instantly transform and provoke revulsion and anger in many quarters. The difference between reaction to a thing itself, and reaction to the same thing differently as more information as to its actual nature. The way our response is triggered by what we are told, not what is there. A factory has no guilt. Is just a building. It is the human beings who use it that determine our attitude. The difference between the apparent and the conditioned became, through the necessity of explanation, another concern of TG.
As already stated, the A side of this LP was recorded on cassette. The B side on reel to reel. The original record was mastered to stereo reel to reel for cutting. Now the seminal "low-fi" recording that originally included a warning of unexpectedly unsophisticated sound quality can be rediscovered on CD. The ironies of history. Possibly the establishment can have the last laugh?
The soundtrack to the film COUM Transmissions called "After Cease To Exist" (an oblique reference to a Charles Manson song "Cease To Exist") was improvised live by Throbbing Gristle directly onto tape. It shows how close at the beginning were the concerns and interaction of structures of both projects as well as the seminal utilisation of documentary taped material that was and remains a hallmark of TG despite its colonisation justifiably by just about every type of musical style in contemporary times.
Additionally to the entire "2nd Annual Report" L.P. The original 7" Single by Throbbing Gristle, both sides, is included here. It was the second TG release. A deliberate contradiction of the rapidly solidifying general opinion of what a TG record must sound like. In fact, in many ways, after this first LP by TG most of their future actions were guided, even dictated by the paramount purpose of confounding and subverting expectations and preconceptions of friends and enemies alike. The single "UNlTED" was intended to be a potential football chant! Hence the spun in tape of a father encouraging his schoolboy footballer son to "Go On, Go On". In fact, during its recording on a hired 4 Track machine it mutated into a haunting song about communication across distance that many successful bands today see as the original initiator and example of the now accepted form of ElectroPop, even down to the deadpan underplayed and english accented vocals. "ZYCLON B ZOMBIE" was a verbal joke in deliberate bad taste, featuring the extensive mangling of instrument generated sounds in an attempt to project to the listener the actual feeling of hysteric coma whilst being gassed to death in Auschwitz. It was recorded live on a mono-cassette recorder. This single in many ways sums up the strengths and weaknesses of TG. The satire of a pop single, became a popular single that outsold all other TG releases before and after. It generated a commercial type of music that still sustains the corporate enemy, yet it tempted with its appeal both its audience and its originators. The position was less clear than they supposed. And its B side posed another problem, the boundary between journalism and gratification. It was only the foundation of compassion that absolved. There could be a strong argument that this single contains in microcosm all that TG were ultimately trying to resolve and express, for themselves, and for society, if we accept the concept of artist as voice for the populace.
The cover featuring a menacing, sterile block of flats in London, another interpretation of Death factory on the "United" side, and a figure in a shower on the "Zyclon" side. The potent contained, or triviaIised. History decides.
By the way, the voice of the DJ at the end of the A side of 2nd Annual Report is screaming at the AUDIENCE, not at Throbbing Gristle; finally clarifying probably the most asked TG question of all time. And the musical structure of "ZYCLON" was quite deliberately based on "l HEARD HER CALL MY NAME" by The Velvet Underground, even down to a specific lyrical reference.
genesis p-orridge London 88