Robert Rental and the Normal

  • Robert Rental and the Normal
  • Live: West Runton Pavilion 6/3/79 (Rough Trade) 1981 

Emerging from the do-it-yourself school of synthesizer playing, Robert Rental teamed up with the Normal (aka Daniel Miller, founder and leader of Mute Records) for this show, reproduced on a one-sided album. The compendium of noises involved bears relation to music only by inference, though it is an impressive display of live electronics, tape loops and devices, similar in scope and approach to avant-garde electronic events of the ’60s. Rental and the Normal are firmly rooted in rock, however, and this 25-minute-long demi-record proffers more ideas per minute than can be found anywhere, except the more esoteric recordings of Cabaret Voltaire.

[Steven Grant]