Bender, John

Bender, John

Pop Surgery

Superior Viaduct

Following the release of lo-fi electronic masterpiece I Don’t Remember Now / I Don’t Want To Talk About It and his brilliant follow-up Plaster Falling, Cincinnati-based artist John Bender began assembling his third and last album, Pop Surgery, in late 1982. While all of Bender’s work draws from intimate home recordings—featuring the artist alone with various keyboards, analogue sequencers and tape delays—Pop Surgery remains the one that perhaps best distills his arrant deconstruction of the “pop” concept. These twelve frenetic tracks, meticulously stitched together with dubbed-out vocals and disjointed drum machines, stretch the boundaries of bedroom electronics. Bender would forgo the handmade LP sleeves typical of his Record Sluts imprint. The cover depicts an imposing scrapyard crane, ready to pick up discarded objects with its bright red electromagnet, while the center labels détourn Columbia’s classic ’70s style. “I pressed a single run of 500 copies,” Bender recounts. “The only review I remember railed at the poor production quality. The DIY era had clearly come to an end.” This first-time standalone reissue is recommended for fans of Suicide, TG’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats and early Cabaret Voltaire. Liner notes by John Bender.

Bender, John

Plaster Falling

Superior Viaduct

Plaster Falling was recorded at the same time as John Bender’s first album, I Don’t Remember Now / I Don’t Want To Talk About It. Released in 1981 on the artist’s own Record Sluts label, copies of Plaster Falling’s initial pressing came hermetically sealed in plaster (and later latex). Thus, listeners had to literally break open the record to find what’s hidden inside. Produced in relative isolation, Plaster Falling is a beacon of brilliance in the nascent minimal-wave sphere. Veering towards skeletal urgency, these recordings set bright analogue melodies against half-whispered vocals and expand Bender’s electronic cryptography thru a series of lone signifiers: “Station,” “Plaster,” “Women,” etc. As Bender explains in the liner notes, “I began to distance myself from the present and describe scenes as if in a movie – seeking concrete, terse, juxtaposed imagery.” This first-time standalone reissue is recommended for fans of Gareth Williams & Mary Currie’s Flaming Tunes, Minimal Man and Grouper. Pressed on translucent blue vinyl in a limited / numbered edition of 1,000 copies.

Bender, John

I Don't Remember Now / I Don't Want To Talk About It

Superior Viaduct

John Bender recorded voraciously between 1978 and 1980 at his home in Cincinnati, Ohio. Not even song titles could slow down his creative pace, as he named all the tracks after their position on the original tapes. “36A2,” for example, was cassette #36 side A, piece #2. To close the DIY aesthetic circle, Bender made sleeves by hand with no two covers alike and pressed the LPs in hyper-limited editions on his own Record Sluts imprint. I Don’t Remember Now / I Don’t Want To Talk About It, Bender’s first album from 1980, is the holy grail of minimal lo-fi electronics. Layers of fractured melodies, distorted synthesizers, hollowed-out rhythms and claustrophobic vocals unfold over the 40 minutes of this lost masterpiece. “It’s A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl,” one of Faust’s greatest songs, is perfectly deconstructed by a distinct punk-meets-experimentalist sensibility.  While I Don’t Remember Now is impossibly rare and the man behind the music remains shrouded in self-imposed mystery, the real surprise is that it has taken 35+ years for listeners to discover Bender’s warm, art-damaged immediacy. This first-time standalone reissue is recommended for fans of Pere Ubu, Brian Eno and Robert Ashley.  Liner notes by John Bender.