Throbbing Gristle-The First Annual Report (Unreleased, 1975)

Throbbing Gristle were an experimental music collective from England that were best known for two things: (1) the invention of the industrial music genre, and (2) for coining the term “industrial music”, which reminds me of how Negativland coined the term “culture jamming” back in 1984 during one of their famous radio broadcasts.

Beginning as a side project of the infamous COUM Transmissions performance art collective, this band recorded their first major documented work in 1975, given the title The First Annual Report. Recorded in 1975, this was not officially released at the time (and it still does remain officially unreleased to this day), so TG decided to release The Second Annual Report as their debut album in 1977.

Despite being unreleased, I believe that The First Annual Report is more interesting than the album that came after this, because it shows how TG were trying to find their signature industrial sound, since COUM Transmissions first began as a psychedelic rock group.

The tracks:

“Very Friendly”-Kicking things off with Genesis P-Orridge’s edgy, droning fuzz bazz riff, things start to go on a more psychedelic edge with distorted guitar chords and Genesis doing a very obvious 1967 Velvet Underground-era Lou Reed impression, albeit with a British drawl. Futuristic synthesizer sweeps and bloops also come about. It goes on in this manner for pretty much the rest of this track, continuing to decay with every passing minute, before a highly synthesizer-driven/musique concrete climax. You can hear a possible Intersystems influence in this track. Intersystems were a Canadian experimental electronic group from the late 1960’s whose music predates industrial music by a decade.

“Dead Bait”-Beginning with fuzzy synthesizer effects and crackling, it gradually becomes more and more rhythmic and percussive, with some trippy background noise behind it (this is more noticeable with good headphones). A synth begins to buzz like a fly, with a little bit of voice samples to start it off, until deep synth washes come in.

“10 Pence”-This track starts with fuzzed-out guitar and synthesizer effects, with Genesis singing in his British-drawl Lou Reed voice. This track is surprisingly more melodic than “Very Friendly”. Listen to both this track and “Very Friendly”, and you’ll know what I’m talking about. After that, there’s collage of voice samples and fuzz bass, recalling the Beatles track “Revolution 9”, but immediately goes back to the song’s normal structure, with the vocals, which sounds higher in pitch than earlier.

“Whorle of Sound”-Opening with voice samples and synthesizer, distorted bass and guitar develops, and the track eventually decays into a pure electronic freak-out, with more voice samples. The voice samples sounds like they came from American, not British, radio broadcasts. I can tell because the English is not spoken with a British accent. This track perfectly comes to mind of “#19”, a song from the first Negativland album from 1980.

“Final Muzak”-A much more noisy tune consisting entirely of machine-like sound effects. Contrary to what this description says, the track actually has a melody to it! However, this melody is very continuous.

“Scars of E”-This track is much more psychedelic in sound, consisting of out-of-tune violin and acoustic guitar sounds backed by a booming bass drum rhythm and percussion. Distorted vocals and synth effects also come in. This is what you get if the Residents were trying to be more weirder when they recorded The Warner Bros. Album back in 1971, with a synthesizer added.

After listening to it, I would like to say that this is not a great industrial music album, but I will say that it is a good listen. There may be points that get way too monotone at times, but if that’s what Throbbing Gristle was going for, that’s totally fine.

 

☥__SLØUGH__☥-Jennifer’s Nightmare (2015)

Here’s my third digital album review, coming from a friend of mine who lives in the East Coast (Jacksonville, Florida). His name is Sam Shadow, but his artist name is SLOUGH (stylized as ☥__SLØUGH__☥). Sam first started making industrial and dark ambient music, later moving on to Vaporwave and Plunderphonics music. His most recent release, 2015’s Jennifer’s Nightmare, continues the artist’s typical Plunderphonics style, but it is slightly less Vaporwave, being focused more on industrial-sounding Cyberpunk-style music. The album consists almost entirely of samples, with the only original instrumentation coming from Sam’s keyboard playing. The album is ridiculously short, containing only 6 tracks and clocking in at around 11 minutes. This album is fun to listen to, and is great for those who like Plunderphonics music.

Here are the tracks, in order:

“Computer Duster Punk”-This consists of a sampled heavy metal-sounding punk jam backed by electronic sound effects, such as that of telephone beeps. This reminds me of Motörhead, but with a more experimental sound.

“Interzone Junk Addict”-This track consists of chopped-up and looped voice samples, backed by bubbly synthesizer effects. This ends with mechanical electric noises followed by a Southern-style voice sample.

“Immigrant Dog”-Starting with an early Negativland-style collage with warping electronic noises and a French guy speaking, it all leads to Led Zeppelin recordings getting cut into tiny little pieces and glued together, a lot like John Oswald’s works. I also hear what appears to be choir-like vocals in the background.

“Unrest in Peking 1997”-This piece consists of samples of the theme song from the dystopian novelty video game Hong Kong 97 that gets chopped-up and sped-up. This is the only piece on the album that would be considered Vaporwave, simply because of the samples used. It ends with the samples exploding and increasing heavily in atmospherics and delay, like John Oswald’s Michael Jackson-based sound collage “Dab”.

“Straw Boss”-This has a chopped-up punk rock jam that lasts for only 50 seconds, making it the shortest track on the album.

“Jennifer’s Nightmare”-The closing title track begins with a sample of a girl’s voice, followed by various ambient sound effects and ominous, horror movie-style grand piano. Later, you hear bubbly synthesizer, and in a few parts, you hear the piano warping a little bit. The track ends with samples of what sounds like an investigation on dead bodies.

You can find this album on SoundCloud and Bandcamp really easily. This album is filled with a ton of strange and rather interesting influences, all chopped-up and re-arranged into a jagged collage that is campy, edgy, and futuristic all at the same time. it is a great album, and I suggest you go to ☥__SLØUGH__☥’s SoundCloud or Bandcamp, listen to it, and have fun. Hopefully, Sam can do similar stuff like this in the future.