The first record on Industrial Records, the artefact that established the method of the genre, and the document in which the slogan and catalogue scheme that named the form first appeared together.
The Second Annual Report is the debut LP by Throbbing Gristle, released in November 1977 by Industrial Records (filed at Industrial Records) as the catalogue's first numbered release, IR0002 (IR0001 having been deliberately left empty as an gesture documented in the Industrial Records file). The record was the founding artefact of the genre that this archive mainly covers and the consequence of its November 1977 release was that the slogan "Industrial Music for Industrial People", the IR catalogue scheme, the band's own method and the name of the genre itself first appeared together as a coherent commercial-cultural proposition in this single document.
The album's content combines live recordings from four of the band's five 1976–1977 live performances (the ICA London engagement of 18 October 1976, the Southampton, Brighton and Rat Club engagements of late 1976 and early 1977) with the band's first studio recording (Maggot Death, recorded at the Industrial Records studio at 50 Beck Road in Hackney (S·002)) and the original soundtrack of the After Cease To Exist film by Coum Transmissions (which premiered in Arnhem, Netherlands in July 1977 and for which Throbbing Gristle were invited to perform live during the film's screening). The declaration printed on the original sleeve documents the method explicitly: "All recordings were made in one take without any overdubs or any recording treatment other than standard playing procedures that we employ. Within the limitations of the recording techniques used the sound on this record is exactly as it was heard at the moment of its production."
The statement is the method, and the method is the statement. The contemporary commercial-music environment of late 1977 assumed that recording happened through commercial-studio multitrack workflows with overdub, editing and production treatment as a default; the album's declaration that none of this had been done is therefore a deliberate move against the contemporary default. The band-owned-studio method (filed at S·002), the cassette-network underground that the IRC·00-IRC·35+ series later scaled into practice, the first-wave industrial-and-adjacent commitment to one-take live-in-room recording: all of this is founded in the declaration on the sleeve of The Second Annual Report.
The packaging is the second gesture. The plain white card sleeve with xerox-printed information stickers was deliberately bootleg-like in its presentation, against the contemporary record-industry assumption that commercial-music sleeves were designed objects produced through commercial-design workflows. The first 785 copies were numbered by hand, with the band's iconography (the lightning-flash IR logo, the small black-and-white sticker reading "Nothing Short Of A Total War", a red-and-black TG lightning-flash sticker and a xerox-strip technical-note warning about the recording's deliberate limitations) included as separate adhesive inserts. The consequence was that the artefact's commercial presentation was simultaneously the artefact's editorial position: the record was what it claimed to be and the claim was that the contemporary music-industry default was unnecessary.
The musical content is live: Slug Bait in its three live versions (ICA London, Southampton, Brighton) plus Maggot Death in its studio version and three further live versions (Rat Club, Southampton, Brighton) constitute Side One. Slug Bait's lyrical mode (P-Orridge's deliberately graphic murder-and-flesh narration over Cosey Fanni Tutti's distorted guitar, Chris Carter's synthesiser drones and Peter Christopherson's tape manipulations) is the founding statement of the transgressive-content vein that the form's later four decades have developed. Maggot Death's composition is more abstract, with the live-performance versions documenting the band's method of performing the same composition differently at each occasion. After Cease To Exist on Side Two is the original film-soundtrack recording, more drone-and-texture-focused than the Side One material, recorded at Beck Road for the Coum Transmissions film premiere in Arnhem.
The album's reception was divided. The contemporary music press's response ranged from confused-to-hostile (the incomprehension reaction to TG's method that later characterised the band's entire commercial-press record) to qualifiedly engaged (selected pieces by John Peel and a small contemporary number of critics recognised the significance of the declaration). The consequence is that the album defined the reception template for the form across its later four decades: the genre's position with respect to commercial music-industry methods has remained the position the album declared in November 1977.
The later four decades of the album's life document the genre's commercial-availability arc. The original Industrial Records master plates were destroyed after the 1977 first pressing; Fetish Records re-pressed the album in 1979 (2,000 copies + 2 further pressings) using new master plates cut by Steve Angel; later Mute Records pressings (the 1991 CD reissue with bonus tracks from the United / Zyklon B Zombie 7" added) extended the album's commercial availability across the 1991 onward period. The 2017 Industrial Records 40th-anniversary remaster (with bonus live tracks and updated liner notes) is the most-recent reissue. The album remains in continuing commercial availability through Throbbing Gristle's Bandcamp at throbbinggristle.bandcamp.com and through Mute's distribution arrangements. Original first-pressing copies trade at auction at four-figure to low-five-figure sums, making the album the most-collected industrial record of the 1976–1985 period.
The Bureau holds The Second Annual Report as the founding LP of the genre this archive mainly covers, filed at R·001 because the method, the IR catalogue programme, the cassette-network underground default and the genre's reception template are all founded in this single November 1977 artefact. The record is the artefact the Industrial Records file documents the catalogue of, the file documents the premises of and the Throbbing Gristle file documents the producing band of. The R·001 filing is the centre of the genre's recorded-music founding.
Filed by Bureau editor · VAGO · c. the Georgian era · last revised c. the Restoration