TEENBEAT !

The Fall already had a slew of brilliant records under their belt by the time Hex Enduction Hour emerged, but when it did, the result was a bona fide classic on all fronts. Honing the vicious edge of his lyrics to a new level of ability, Smith led his by-now seasoned band — at this time sporting the double-drumming lineup of Paul Hanley and Karl Burns — to create a literal hour’s worth of entertaining bile. The Marc Riley/Craig Scanlon team had even more of a clattering, industrial edge than before, now inventing its own style of riff and melody that any number of later groups would borrow, with varying degrees of success. “Iceland” itself tips its hat toward where part of the album was recorded, and it’s little surprise that the Sugarcubes and any number of contemporaneous bands from that country ended up with a deep Fall fetish. Of the many song highlights, perhaps the most notorious was the opening “The Classical,” an art rock groove like no other, racketing around with heavy-duty beats and stabbing bass from Steve Hanley. Apparently, the band was on the verge of signing with Motown, at least until they heard Smith delivering the poisonous line, “Where are the obligatory niggers?/Hey there, fuckface!” Politically correct or not, it set the tone for the misanthropic assault of the entire album, including the hilarious dressing down of “misunderstood” rock critics, “Hip Priest” (“He…is…not…ap-PRE-ciated!”) and the targeting-everyone attack “Who Makes the Nazis?” Musically, all kinds of approaches are assayed and the results are a triumph throughout, from “Hip Priest” and its tense exchange between slow, dark mood and sudden guitar bursts to the motorik drone touch of “Fortress/Deer Park.” As a concluding anti-anthem, “And This Day” ranks up with “The N.W.R.A.,” ten minutes of ramalama genius. (Ned Raggett, Allmusic)

MX-80 Sound’s first full album found the band balanced in some sort of weird zone where punk, art metal, and a drawling sort of humor Stephen Malkmus would chase down in later years could all happily coexist. That the band was a contemporary (in terms of time, if not exact location) of Devo and Pere Ubu makes a perfect sort of sense — the quartet’s songs were less immediately anthemic, but something in the Ohio water seems to have seeped over to Indiana as well. Lines like “There’s an electrical alliance when you turn on that appliance” could be pure spud-boy attitude, while the nervous frazzle of the music and the semi-sci-fi identity the band used for their appearances and photos make for pure herky-jerky fun. If anything, Hard Attack may just well be the secret counterpart to the Fall at the time, and for good reason (even the two-drummer team of Armour and Mahoney arguably beat Mark E. Smith and company to the punch). Stim is a wonderfully offbeat singer, ranting without ever raving, as prone to talk over, around, and beside the beat as to sing anything straightforward, while his occasional turns on horn seem like the type of thing he would do for the hell of it. The rhythm section’s affinity for prog rock’s tempo switching and jazzy breakdowns never become an end in and of itself; the goal instead is to keep both the noise and the groove on, and they do it with raunchy power. Lead guitarist Anderson makes some righteously giddy feedback and circus/carnival riffs (Stim aiding him at points, other times finding its own path), and the end result is a sharp balance between insanity and just enough control. Outrageously funny/bad lyrical joke: “A horse that lives for a year is a yearling, but a horse that lives for a week, is it a weakling?” (Ned Raggett, Allmusic)

MX-80 Sound - PCB’s

AKA was formed in 1978 and broke up in 1980. They self-released an EP called Red Therapy on Seoul Dog Records. AKA included Dense Milt (vocals/sax), Alex Varty (guitar and bass), Warren Hunter (bass and guitars), Warren Ash (drums), and Andy Graffiti (keyboards, guitars, percussion). We did our first show at the Pumps Art Gallery for an erotic photography show with Angela Kaja singing and Tommy Wong on keyboards. Other shows of note included Smilin’ Buddha shows with Pink Section (from San Francisco), U-J3RK5, shows with DOA, The Subhumans, 54-40, The Monde Arte Cabaret at the Commodore (with Randy Pandora), Cowboy Mouth at the Arts Club Theatre on Seymour, Rock Against Prisons, (actually we rocked against just about everything), Rohans, New Orchestra Workshop space playing “unplugged” with toy instruments, and numerous halls. We opened up for Ultravox and for Captain Beefheart on his Doc at the Radar Station tour at the Commodore Ballroom. Our power was cut off several times while playing at the Smilin’ Buddha, because the owner Lachman thought we sounded like chickens being strangled. Songs of note that made it on the EP were God, City Drugs, Ragged Andys, Fear, Mental Timebombs. Songs of note that never made it on vinyl include The Human Remains, CIA, U -Sex- Me (Think I’m gonna be sick), Future Golfers, Lower Class Vertebrate and Overcast. After Alex Varty left the band in 1980, Colin Griffiths joined for a few shows. Later Scott Harding joined with Dense, and the two Warrens to form Rhythm Mission with Lee Kelsey from the Payolas. Rhythm Mission played from 1981-1989, and can be heard on Reverb Nation. In 1984, Dense and Scott Harding, and Lee Kelsey formed The Jazzmanian Devils, who continue to play to this day.

A short history of the Vancouver-based no-wave group AKA, written by lead singer Dense Milt and bassist/guitarist Alex Varty. If you’re a fan of the Contortions or Devo, or love squealing saxes and yelping vocals, give this a listen.

AKA - City Drugs

Originally recorded in 1981, this 46 minute release has been reissued on CD for the edification of all modern cultures on this planet. The genre may be heavy metal, but the music fuses other elements to achieve its sound. Passionate saxophone belts out a steady flow of extraterrestrial flair, lending the tuneage space age crazy jazz qualities. Hyperreal drumming generates a solid foundation for the searing feedback guitar and thunderous bass. The vocals are hoarse and commanding, delivering urgent lyrics that cry of tomorrow’s cultural promise crashing into today’s lifestyle. The music is raw but hardly crude, hard-edged rock tuneage that grinds your teeth with primal sentiments as it expands your mind. Outer space is the main topic, clearly an obsession for Von Lmo. Possessing touches of spacey electronic effects, the focus is straight-on rock though, a blend of frenzied traditional R&B and punkified metal. As with such music, you can expect critical guitar solos that blaze their way through the mix, burning riffs into your cerebellum with severe energy and relentless result. There are just as many sax outbursts too, as the horns scream for dominance amid the guitar, bass and drums tapestry. Do not expect the sax to sedate the music, for the sax has monstrous intentions, scheming with wild notes and surging passages to upset the balance of sonic power that seethes here. Overall, the cumulative effect of this cacophony is invigorating. These dynamic songs are consecrated in galaxies in collision, flaring with interstellar fury and searching to impact with the listeners with explosive resolve. The music is devoted to merging the average man-in-the-street with their unrealized cosmic identity, priming all for a galactic union of purpose. This release shares some of the same songs as “Cosmic Interception”, although presented in alternate performances.

Von Lmo - Crash Landing ‘88

It’s still hard to fathom that the Screamers, the biggest and best band of the late-’70s L.A. punk scene (along with their friends, the Weirdos), never released a record — they thought the medium passé — and hadn’t been documented by one posthumously two decades later. Listeners must content themselves instead with bootlegs such as this (and the hotter 7” boot Live From the Masque Dec. ‘78). This inept, anonymous label doesn’t even list song titles, but that aside, this is another longed-for glimpse of what made this trio such a fearsome legend. In the early, pre-close-minded days of punk, they could exist with just a banging, relentless drummer (K.K.), a weird, Wall of Sound keyboard player (Gear), and most of all, the outrageous, fierce, frightening, blunt, sneering singer Tomato du Plenty (whose straight-up-in-the-air hair and violently screaming visage are still famous via the Gary Panter t-shirt drawing that forms the cover of this 7”). Without any guitar or bass, the Screamers sound as dangerous, ingenious, intellectual, and primal as anything the punk genre ever fabricated and ingested.

Fresh off their appearance on No New York, Brain Eno’s controversial compilation of atonal New York miscreants, Chance and his Contortionists signed to the ZE imprint and released two albums in 1979. In honor of the 25th anniversary, ZE are reissuing their back catalogue. On Buy, Chance and company contort their way through nine funky jazz/punk tunes which come across like a mad marriage between Captain Beefheart and Richard Hell & The Voidoids, whose Robert Quine appears on the second of Chance’s ‘79 releases, Off White. Guitarists Pat Place and Jody Harris trade Quine-like angular riffs, which would influence future guitar heroes from Leeds (Gang of Four’s Andy Gill and Delta 5’s Alan Briggs) to Athens (Pylon’s Randy Bewley and The B-52’s late Ricky Wilson). “Don’t Want To Be Happy” features a smooth backbeat that’ll have your pointed shoes shuffling across the dancefloor, while German-born organist, Adele Bertei adds just the right amount of cheese to bring us to the edge of kitsch without falling into the abyss. While The B-52’s took these rhythms, smoothed off the edges, and built an entire career around them, Chance never truly received his just rewards, so perhaps these reissues will rekindle an examination of his far-reaching influence, particularly on the New Wave dance scene and artists such as the Bush Tetras (formed by Place), Liquid Liquid, Medium Medium, and Killing Joke, to name but a few. Of course, it’s easy to hear why these albums didn’t find much of an audience beyond the No Wave cultists upon their initial release. I can’t imagine anyone outside a Ritalin junkie being able to match the manic moves of “Contort Yourself” (different versions of which appear on most of these reissues) or keep time to the seriously deranged jam of “Roving Eye.”

While listening to Boss, the Magik Markers’ second album for Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly which change is the biggest between this set of songs and albums like Feel the Crayon, I Trust My Guitar, etc., and the Markers’ many CD-Rs. Actually, the fact that Boss has pieces of music that could comfortably be called “songs” might be the most radical thing about it. With the help of Lee Ranaldo as producer and occasional guitarist and glockenspiel player — and without former bassist Leah Quimby — on Boss the Markers strip away the most abrasive parts of their previous work, add just the right amount of melodies and structure, and somehow maintain the free-flowing, experimental heart of their music. It’s not much of a stretch to say that the results are something of a revelation. Even the Magik Markers’ biggest fans probably couldn’t have predicted that the band would have been able to put their own spin on a more accessible sound and make such a drastic change sound so effortless, or that the husky twang of Elisa Ambrogio’s singing on tracks like “Axis Mundi” would be just as compelling as the fearsome style she used before. Sonic Youth’s influence pops up from time to time, especially on “Body Rot,” which sounds a little like a scrappy kid sister to Goo’s “Kool Thing,” but the Magik Markers’ new approach feels unique. The band sounds equally comfortable with sexy, bluesy swagger (the excellent “Taste”), sultry piano ballads (“Empty Bottles”), and poetic, stream-of-consciousness jams (“Last of the Lemach Line,” “Circle”). If truly experimental music is about change, growth, and openness to all possibilities, then Boss is a very good example of it.

Swell Maps’ debut album was a scattershot affair, ranging from blistering three-chord punk to free-form noise experiments, that was intriguing, yet frequently incoherent.