Superior Viaduct   Page 5

Urinals

S/t

Superior Viaduct

Hailing from the late-’70s underground of Los Angeles, The Urinals were often called “the American Wire” for their graceful tension, wild energy and trademark brevity. Recorded with a sole microphone and guitar / bass running through a single amplifier, their debut 1978 EP defies its limitations while defining The Urinals’ unique aesthetic. “Dead Flowers,” “Hologram” and “Last Days of Man on Earth” are not simply classic songs, they are venerable punk haiku—raw and unrestrained.

Urinals

Sex / Go Away Girl

Superior Viaduct

The Urinals’ third 7-inch, from 1980, demonstrates the group’s increased technical proficiency and fuller production that the same members would later bring to their next project, 100 Flowers, under which moniker they produced an outstanding album (also available on Superior Viaduct). “Sex” and “Go Away Girl” (penned by David Nolte of The Last) are propulsive, lo-fi statements that lay waste to the A-side in under three minutes—classic Urinals form. Faithfully restored with test tones on the B-side to ensure your hi-fi is set properly for these sounds.

Flynt, Henry

Graduation

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Henry Flynt took a high-brow approach to so-called low-brow music. Combining sounds from his native North Carolina with an avant-garde sensibility honed in New York City’s loft scene in the 1960s, Flynt created what he describes as “new American ethnic music.” As a student of Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath alongside La Monte Young and Terry Riley, an associate of the Fluxus movement, and even a live collaborator with the Velvet Underground, Flynt was a part of one of the 20th century’s richest art and music milieus. Graduation, recorded between 1975 and 1979, was meant to be the debut of his avant-garde hillbilly music. The album’s title track is a slow, twisted ballad that unfolds like a funeral dream over dirge-like country riffs. “Celestial Power,” the album’s 20-minute closing track, is an entrancing minimalist composition performed strictly with oscillating vibrato guitar. As Flynt explains, “I aspire to a beauty which is ecstatic and perpetual, while at the same time being concretely human and emotionally profound.” Shelved upon its completion in 1980, Graduation was not released until after the turn of the century. In 2013, it still sounds years ahead of its time.

Monitor

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An errant project of suburban Los Angeles art collective World Imitation Productions, Monitor was the sonic outlet of four young artists grappling with their terror and amazement in the convergence of the late 1970s punk scene and Southern California’s consumerist decadence. As with the collective’s visual artwork and events, Monitor blends archaic influences with modern technology into one of the era’s most curious albums. Eerie synthesizer, menacing guitar leads and morose vocal chants make “In Terrae Interium” an evocative ballad of paranoia. “I Saw Dead Jim’s Shade” showcases Monitor’s idiosyncratic vocal interplay in a sinister tale of a stolen hand. When “Hair” required a tempo beyond Monitor’s instrumental chops, the band appropriated The Meat Puppets to record the track for them. Acquainted at first through mail art, World Imitation found a kindred spirit in DEVO associate Ed Barger, who meticulously recorded this LP in 1980, burying the presence of shrieking cats, closing doors and tape loops deep in the mix. Monitor associated with the original Hollywood punk scene but often met with ambivalence for their incongruity in the face of the movement’s increasingly codified appearance and sound. Loosely aligned with like-minded pioneers such as Nervous Gender, Human Hands, BPeople and NON, who together constituted the sub-scene known as the Associated Skull Bands, Monitor operated in its own space within a progressive, diverse musical milieu. Few groups so deftly encapsulate the existential dread and delight particular to Southern California’s antiquated culture of artifice.

100 Flowers

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100 Flowers (previously known as The Urinals) were a power trio whose sole 1983 album is an enduring document of the Southern California underground. Based in crime-ridden ’80s Los Angeles against the backdrop of juvenile hardcore and vapid hard rock, 100 Flowers crafted a sound that rests between the inspired bursts of The Minutemen and the pastoral jangle of the Dream Syndicate with similarities to the equally oblique Monitor and The Gun Club (who even included a Urinals cover in their set). The trio wielded a gripping visual aesthetic and hyper-literate lyrical content that reflected their art-school backgrounds, while a ferocity and frustration borne out of their bleak urban environment permeates their songs. Strains of UK post-punk can be heard on “All Sexed Up” and skittish tension on “Presence of Mind.” A far cry from the beach punk and surf rock of their contemporaries, album closer “California’s Falling into the Ocean” contains all of their signature qualities: off-kilter delivery, subversive sentiments and an irrefutable pop sensibility that reflects their immersion in LA’s burgeoning Paisley Underground scene. The band splintered shortly after the release of this album, but time has only intensified the urgency of 100 Flowers’ music.  “Cool musicality with critical intelligence. And they thrash on a high level.” —Thurston Moore “This stuff both ignites my pilot light and blasts my boiler.” —Mike Watt

Rev, Martin

S/t

Superior Viaduct

***BACK IN PRINT!!!  In 1980, shortly after Suicide’s second full-length, Martin Rev released his first solo album on preeminent No Wave label Infidelity (Lust/Unlust). Uninhibited by the trappings of a collaborator, Rev was freed to explore his most experimental and pop leanings with dirty synths, dark melodies and dreamlike textures, and produced a masterpiece of modern alienation that captures a uniquely New York landscape.  Echoing other electronic forerunners such as Silver Apples and Kraftwerk, and foreshadowing the work of Aphex Twin and Air, Rev’s solo outing rests firmly in the lineage of unnerving sounds from the furthest fringe of maladjustment.

German Shepherds

Music For Sick Queers

Superior Viaduct

Formed by Stephen Scheatzle and Sandy Stark (a.k.a. Mark Hutchinson), German Shepherds grew out of San Francisco’s art-punk scene in the early ’80s. Their first single, “I Adore You,” is a lost minimal synth nugget with an unforgettable rhythm box pattern, and their second, “THC,” showcases Stark’s menacing and child-like vocals. Music for Sick Queers (originally released in 1985) brings together these and more beautifully disturbing songs with electronic noise reminiscent of Allen Ravenstine (Pere Ubu) and the best of The Residents, Suicide and Psychic TV. While more tracks would appear on compilations, such as Mykel Board’s infamous The “You’ll Hate This Record” Record, German Shepherds themselves virtually disappeared as their self-released album went out-of-print for decades. After years of searching the catacombs, Superior Viaduct finally caught up with only surviving member, Stark, and uncovered the band’s secret history growing up in Ohio.  This first-time reissue comes from the original master tapes and features a special bonus 7-inch containing previously unreleased material plus archival inserts and a digital download card.  “A masterpiece of minimal synth combined with experimental and noisy synth punkish elements!” —Mutant Sound

Factrix

Scheintot

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***Arguably the most prescient band of the entire late ‘70s San Francisco underground, FACTRIX released just one 7-inch and two pioneering LPs in the early ‘80s. Formed in 1978 by COLE PALME (one-time member of the LAFMS group AIRWAY) and BOND BERGLAND (later of SAQQARA DOGS), the two initially called themselves MINIMAL MAN and performed a handful of shows along with PATRICK MILLER (who would go on to have a great solo career under the MM moniker). Soon they enlisted bassist JOSEPH T. JACOBS (BAY OF PIGS) and emerged from their Mission-district basement with their own unique take on the burgeoning English and New York post-punk scenes. The results were throbbing walls of damaged electronics, grim lyrical musings, droning bass, piercing guitar, and a modified Roland CR-78 played at 1/4 its slowest speed. Factrix’s sole "studio" album, 1981's Scheintot, is a dark, moody, and penetrating work that grows more contemporary every year. Genuinely disturbing at times and often disorientating, it filters the influence of peers such as Cabaret Voltaire and DNA through the sonic and structural sensibilities of The Velvet Underground. An underappreciated masterpiece of the early industrial/No Wave era, Scheintot is a record that compels the listener to lift the needle from the run-out groove and listen again and again. Julian Cope describes it best: "Facrix’s Scheintot deserves to be experienced several times, preferably in the darkness and in a state of near exhaustion (and/or informed by psychoactive chemicals)." This first time reissue comes from the original analog source....

Factrix / Cazazza

California Babylon

Superior Viaduct

***California Babylon is a far more sparse and caustic offering than FACTRIX's debut, Scheintot, documenting their live collaboration with notorious artist MONTE CAZAZZA, who along with recording for Throbbing Gristle’s Industrial label also coined its "Industrial Music for Industrial People" motto. Originally released on the seminal Subterranean Records in 1982, California Babylon remains one of the best collections of violent guitar and primitive machine-noise resonance ever released. Featuring a musical treatment of the Brion Gysin permutation poem, "Kick That Habit Man," with avant-garde percussionist Z'EV backing the band. This first time reissue comes from the original analog source. LP with archival inserts. CD+DVD contains bonus material of four studio tracks previously unreleased in the US, the "Prescient Dreams" single, and a feature-length movie, the so-called Night of the Succubus (live in San Francisco 1981), complete with special appearance by MARK PAULINE from SURVIVAL RESEARCH LABS.

Avengers, The

Teenage Rebel / Friends Of Mine

Superior Viaduct

***THE AVENGERS emerged as one of the best bands from San Francisco's first wave punk scene in 1977. "Teenage Rebel" remains the anthem for every disaffected youth on the planet. Not included on the infamous Pink album, this song is a two-minute package of pure adolescent vitriol. Backed with "Friends of Mine," a declaration of solidarity for the punks of San Francisco. Recorded in 1978 at the famed Iguana Studios on Folsom Street. Second pressing on black vinyl.

Black Humor

Love God - Love One Another

Superior Viaduct

***BLACK HUMOR was an experimental rock band from San Francisco in the early ‘80s. (Not to be confused with "blackhumor," alias of noise artist Frazer Hall.) They released just one, very hard to find LP on Fowl Records in 1982. Only 1,000 records were pressed, each with unique handmade covers: thick slabs of paint, collage, parrot feathers, dirt, whatever else happened to be laying around their Tenderloin flat. Many of these have since gone for high, collector prices or ended up in oblivion. Existing in a parallel universe to other bands of the era, Black Humor’s music is filled with jarring images of urban decay and desperation, bass-driven melodies, and layers of dissonant guitar and percussion. And perhaps the only known recording of a parrot that was taught to say "Fuck You." "A very unusual blend of punk, industrial, and a unique DIY/art aspect."—Min Yee (A FRAMES / Z Gun mag)