Reviews

Some Bizzare

Einstürzende Neubauten YÁ¼-Gung 12″

This is the one band you gotta keep your eye on. After their all-out noisefests, they’ve decided to hit back with their version of pop music. The title track here is a neat little marching Arabic tune very similar to early CAN, and it’s been remixed by Adrian Sherwood to give it this incredibly heavy-footed rhythm. The two songs on the other side are a creepy Exorcist-style tune and a straight version of LEE HAZELWOOD’s “Sand” that would make NICK CAVE proud.

Einstürzende Neubauten Halber Mensch LP

Another “noise band” that has managed to get better technically without sacrificing anxiety or power. Has the original mix of “Yu-Gung” that was released on an EP this year, and there’s even an angelic (or demonic?) choir style on the vocals that gives a neat haunting quality to their sound.

Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel Hole LP

FOETUS has done a lot of bizarre material in the past, but this LP is a classic. As always, this is all written and performed by lone FOETUS, and combines his morbid, poignant, biting poetry and an upbeat, precise musical inventiveness with out-and-out aggressiveness and recording skill. He is many steps beyond CREME & GODLEY, MARK STEWART, or NICK CAVE, although the comparisons are obvious. I can’t scrape it off my turntable.

Test Dept. Beating the Retreat 2×12″

A box set of two 12″ discs and literature documenting—via an Orwellian philosophy—the human struggle. Inordinately powerful, overwhelming, and mind-boggling in its successes, this package must be heard. I only need leave you with this quote from the record: “People submerged by the commonplace, programmed by a technology whose language of command, analysis, and control strangles the mind with a cold logic.” Indeed…