Special Interest Trust No Wave: The 2016 Demos LP

As we went to press, news off the wire is that New Orleans’ post-wave glam terrorists SPECIAL INTEREST have hooked up with storied post-punk purveyors Rough Trade to release the highly-rated group’s next full-length! Sorry, just testing out my music-weekly muscles. In anticipation, Disciples’ waxing of SPECIAL INTEREST’s first recordings arrives at the perfect time. Mainly, what these demos show is that SPECIAL INTEREST had it down from the jump—their sound was immediately striking and they have only managed to further hone it into something both freakier and more accessible. But you are not getting mere dregs and toss-offs here, these five-year old recordings more than hold their own. I kinda wish I could’ve seen SPECIAL INTEREST strafe an early 2000s electroclash party on Driggs Ave (Williamsburg, NY, USA), but it’s somehow far more satisfying to imagine them in an abandoned warehouse on the edge of a hidden New Orleans ward, camping coolers of Four Loko sweating as hard as the congregation of disparate strangers made instant friends by righteous noise bondage. These demos could have landed SPECIAL INTEREST anywhere: Wax Trax! in 1985, Industrial in 1979, Troubleman in 2003, Rough Trade in 1981 or 2021.

• Reviewer Erick Bradshaw
• Label Disciples
• Issue MRR #458 • July 2021