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Gunfire & Pianos
Zig-Zag/Situation Two
1985

What a monster! This compilation of early goth/post-punk/just plain weird bands shifts and glides through so many moods you might well be a manic-depressive by the end. Read below the cut the full review and listen to every track of this record (all mp3’s taken from the original vinyl.)

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Reprint from DDM Issue 2 (Subscribe HERE)

You Don’t Love Me, You Love Magazines

By Seth Styles

Nose up against the wall of severe writer’s block, I mentioned to a friend of mine my desire to write an epic article on the beginning of Californian synth punk but that I had n

o clue where to begin.  Automatically, he retorts that I could begin talking about the fact that the synthesizer as an instrument was a gender juggernaut to the hetero guitar machismo of rock music at the time or that the somewhat affordable and easy to use nature of the instrument placed it precisely in line with the DIY ethos.  Can you tell he’s a grad student?  And here I was going to spout out some story about my father watching Brian Eno with Roxy Music.
But how right my pal was.  The lads and ladies lining up to join the future were often crypto-homo androgynous bursting with equal amounts charisma and inspiration with little time for the hassles of rigorous practice.  Rather than find themselves ensnared by strings, they opted for the instrument that you could stumble into blindly and still make a decent sound.  Woe are we that live in the age in which the EBM grubs sustain on random brushes with pre-programmed synths, but fear not as this tale takes place in a time where ideas reigned over all else.  And as you’re about to find out, these weren’t acne-scarred hacks using samplers to fight God from their parent’s basements.  These were manic artists using a relatively unexplored instrument to kill anything that moved.

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Reprint from DDM Issue 2 (Subscribe HERE)

Album: You Goddam Kids!
Artist: Geza X and the Mommymen
Record Label: Dionysus Record,
2002 (recorded: 1982),

Savor this review, as it’s not often that you’ll read about a project that fuses psychedelia, avant-garde jazz, funk, and punk into a party album.  Geza X may be most recognized for his production work for Black Flag, but he was easily one of the most experimental producers to touch a mixing board, let alone have a conversation with one.  But despite the fact that Mercutio was easily more interesting than Romeo, his import was as a supporting character and such was normally the case with Geza X, whether performing guitar for The Deadbeats and The Bags or mixing singles for just about any worthwhile punk band to come out of California. Fortunately for you, listener, an increasing obsession with a specific family of chords dubbed “X chords” that were considered fatal crimes in bygone times prompted Geza to form his own project.  Perhaps the most taboo aspect of the project involved a heart-on-sleeve distorted valentine to artists like Frank Zappa and Bonzo Dog Band imbedded in each song.

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