The Inhuman We Will Build / Cheap Novocain 7″
The INHUMAN was the short-lived one-man project of a Tucson, Arizona weirdo named Joel Schenkenberg, who recorded a demo of completely warped art-punk in his bedroom circa 1983. That tape essentially vanished into the black hole of history before two tracks were rescued for this single in late 2019 by Lumpy Records, leading haven for the 21st century iteration of American oddball DIY. Schenkenberg’s vocals are all sneering outsider paranoia, buried in a claustrophobic, sub-lo-fi mix of blown-out guitar, rudimentary synth presets, and drum machine drone circling the same orbit as COUNT VERTIGO, the electro side of 39 CLOCKS, the first couple of CABARET VOLTAIRE singles, and the more left-field early ’80s Subterranean Records groups. “We Will Build” is almost conventionally post-punk with its scribbly guitar solo and anxiously repetitive oscillating pulse, while “Cheap Novocain” slows to a doomed, dystopian crawl perfectly suited to a rasped incantation like “Anaesthetize your brain to pain / Drinking cheap novocain.” Total degeneration by way of the desert!