The French name to the contrary, Mikel Rouse originally formed his trio in Kansas City, relocating it to New York in 1979. As a singer, Rouse shows promise, but Etudes borrows far too much from early Talking Heads to be accused of originality and is rhythmically monotonous to boot. Following a Belgian LP release, Tirez…
One of the simpler pleasures of the noisy-post-new-wave thang, the Velvet Monkeys don’t attach any highbrow pretensions to their love of cheesy pop clamor. Whatever irony their work possesses is strictly an afterthought. In the band’s earliest incarnation, leader Don Fleming (vocals/guitar) wrote songs with time-honored trash themes (“Let’s go to the drive-in tonight”) and…
One is naturally wary when Italians and Germans get together, and at least some of this caution is justified by Pankow, which uses Florence as its operational base. Multi- instrumentalist (okay, sample-meister) Maurizio Fasolo and singer Alex Spalck form the core of this intermittently interesting and conscientiously provocative group that gets Adrian Sherwood to do…
Lumpy Gravy-era Zappa, free jazz, early King Crimson, serial music — Henry Cow (the group’s name is a truncation of American composer Henry Cowell) brought all of these influences to bear on its early music. Coming together at Cambridge University, these talented British composers/multi-instrumentalists (foremost among them guitarist/violinist Fred Frith, who has since become a…
P-Funk keyboardist and composer Worrell’s synthesizer basslines helped redefine modern funk, a fact that wasn’t lost on the legions of stiff new wave white boys suddenly possessed by the need to get down. Hence, when David Byrne fell under that compulsion in the early ’80, he enrolled Worrell in the extended Talking Heads family. Stints…
Though based in New York, this all-instrumental big-band ensemble had its debut album first released in Germany. On it, nine men and women — covering guitars, horns, woodwinds, strings and percussion — make a totally unique and marvelous sound, combining styles and eras with equanimity. Polytonality rules here with a twisted but firm hand, guiding…
The first LP from this Canadian quintet seemed like a godsend to many aging rock fans; Love Junk combines grown-up irony with obsessive adolescent lust, setting it all in a convincing, energetic hard rock-pop crunch. Lead singer/songwriter/guitarist Moe Berg’s lyrics are simultaneously literate, wise, poignant and irremediably horny. The key cut on the LP is…
Cardiff’s Young Marble Giants — singer Alison Statton and the Moxham brothers, Philip (bass) and Stuart (guitar, organ) — managed to stay together long enough to produce one oddball album before apathy got the upper hand. Using few overdubs, Colossal Youth re-creates the mythical ambience of a beatnik coffeehouse. Statton’s gentleness and the soft accompaniment…
Impossible to categorize (forget that Gallic Pogues nonsense), this bizarre eight-man group indulges the typically French fascination for exoticism without giving up any native ground. The instrumentation on Mlah — mostly acoustic guitars, accordion, horns, Spanish-and-African flavored percussion — is in the tradition of Parisian buskers, but the sound isn’t. Heady, invigorating and often dark,…
As an unknown, Straw — one of very few vocalists to whom the description “honey-throated” can be accurately applied — swiped the spotlight on the Golden Palominos’ Visions of Excess from the likes of Michael Stipe, Jack Bruce and John Lydon. On Blast of Silence she provided grace notes to an otherwise confused product. Her…
Peter Blegvad’s work contains some of the most oblique and poetic wordplay ever to make its way to song. An affecting singer and a fine guitarist, Blegvad has an uncanny knack for creating literate lyrics — a golden triangle of emotion, intellect and humor — and combining them with enduring melodies. A restless spirit that…
London DJs Matt Black and Jonathan More were at the vanguard of the British warehouse party scene, and their dissection of popular dance music into “bootleg” records full of samples made them a name on trendsetters’ lips from the start. Yet had these collagists never done anything after pairing the wailing of Ofra Haza to…
Newark-born guitarist Marc Ribot is largely known for his work as a sideman. He got his start in the Real Tones, a pickup band that backed NYC-visiting soul singers, including Wilson Pickett; since then, his edgy playing can be heard on albums by Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Sam Phillips, Syd Straw, Marianne Faithfull, Foetus and…
Public Image, taking a cue from Can (whose drummer, Jaki Liebezeit, made that band’s most far-flung journeys swing), mixed disco beats with arty noise on Metal Box. Revolting Cocks — a highly productive collaboration between Chicago powerhouse Al Jourgensen (Ministry, etc.) and Belgian producer/musician Luc Van Acker, joined by Belgian technoid Richard 23 of Front…
Originally formed to back Daevid Allen when the erstwhile Gong leader first toured the US, Material began as a small core of New York-based musicians around which an endless string of interesting one-shot gigging and recording bands formed. Bassist/producer Bill Laswell alone continues to use the Material name, but the original triumvirate with Michael Beinhorn…
After disbanding England’s ironically poppy — and, at home, wildly popular — Housemartins in 1988, frontman Paul Heaton wasted little time in maintaining the Hull band’s chart momentum with the less jangly but similarly double-edged Beautiful South. (Another ex-member, Norman Cook, launched Beats International and subsequently became a massive star as Fatboy Slim.) Though the…
Rock is a young person’s game, but extreme literate weirdness is best left to those who’ve been around the block enough times to know where the real bizarre shit can be dug up. Red Crayola first surfaced on Texas’ International Artists label during the psychedelic ’60s. Barbecued Texas original Mayo Thompson (guitar, vocals) would remain…
“Your hair on cars/your arms detach/your eyes fly by/your torso in wax.” With those immortal words Mars caterwauled into the hearts of noise lovers everywhere, marking the quartet’s four-song appearance on No New York with an absolutely total lack of musical ability. (All the other bands on the Eno-produced compilation contained at least one member…
After the Housemartins disbanded, bassist Norman Cook returned to his original career as a DJ and became one of England’s most successful remixers; that led him to form Beats International, less a group than a conglomeration of singers, musicians and, most important, samples. The music tracks on Let Them Eat Bingo are constructed almost entirely…
Some of those prone to facile analogies have compared this latter-day power trio led by guitarist Dave Rick (an early member of Yo La Tengo and a frequent participant in Bongwater and B.A.L.L. before joining King Missile fulltime in 1990) to Hüsker Dü and the Minutemen, but New York’s Phantom Tollbooth was more like a…
