Punk/Garage/Pub-rock

Suicide came to prominence in New York during the early years of the new wave. Their sound came to engage the infinite modulations of the minimalists on a solid foundation of rockabilly. At that time, their sound was enveloped by an essence of spectral metro anxiety, very closely related to the Velvet Underground.

Suicide were a duo consisting of the cursed rocker Alan Vega, who played in the decade old tradition of wild rockabilly country, made up of the rocker cursed Alan Vega, who played the tradition of wild rockabilly country, and haunting keyboardist Martin Rev, who represented the intellectual and revolutionary aspect of the urban new wave. In reality, Vega was a sculptor of light and dark, while Rev played free jazz.

 

The duo have their roots in 1971 in Manhattan, where they performed apocalyptic blues in Art Galleries. Little by little, they were contaminated by the climate of self-destruction that reigned among the intelligentsia of Soho.

 

Suicide (Red Star, 1977) (reissued in 1981 with unreleased material) is an album of musical revelation, and it is one of the cornerstones of the new wave. The songs within are delusions of suicidal ramblers in metropolitan mazes. They are exercises in self-flagellation that reach a paranoid pathos through a monolithic and existential catalepsy. The small but relentless sound texture is suddenly pierced by desperate, ghastly cries that arise from nothing, amorphous, and cling to the walls of endless skyscrapers. The music is rife with chilling moans that propagate through echo effects, evocative and hallucinatory, predicting, through whispers in catacombs, the death of humanity. Their masterwork is a lament which conducts impulses of the busy streets in glacial silence: the tender, majestic, moving litany of Cherie, which is a mixture of haunting melodic phrases and delicate tintinnabulation; the cosmic tribalism of Rocket USA; the crushing syncopation of Ghost Rider; the psychotic rockabilly of Johnny; the lewd groans Girl; the industrial nightmare of I Remember. The songs are cadaverous, made up of long silences, panting, reverbs, and the icy pulsations of Rev, producing an atmosphere of almost religious intensity. The band, torn between “fatal” stories and political harangues, created a songbook that does not give mercy to the human condition. Frankie Teardrop is the ultimate nightmare, a sort of Sister Ray of the millennium. Its dizzying pace is possessed by the story of the break in the consciousness of an atrophied underclass metropolitan father. It is a bright, maniacal, egotistical projection on a dark screen, and goes through a sequence of sounds that passes from realistic noise to a cacophonous tornado which echoes in the finale, a charge of dynamite exploded in slow motion. The suspense of the drama is maintained by Vega, whose voice is almost casual, yet tense and quivering. It pauses between endless noise scattered randomly, disconnectedly screaming throughout the final sequence of echoes and cacophony, making it all the more creepy. It is one of the most gloomy and distressing songs in the entire history of rock. Suicide represented the typical attitude of the intellectuals roaming the underground of Manhattan at the turn of the decade: going adrift in the eddies of repressed emotions, releasing the stinging hidden under an apparent imperturbability.

 

 

 

The single Dream Baby Dream/Radiation (Ze, 1979) gave a measure of metamorphosis in the band’s progress, from pure neurosis to catastrophic cyber ballad, which is fully realized on the second album.

Their second eponymous album, sometimes referred to as Alan Vega/Martin Rev (Ze, 1980 - Restless, 1990) assumes the sound of electro-rock disco: transcendent lullabies (Touch Me); tribalism (Mr. Ray); industrial dances (Dance). These songs cynically exploit the metronomic rhythms. The band employs the alienating keyboards of Rev, and Vega's reverberating singing to create their songs (Sweetheart) and disco (Diamonds, Shadazz)

This record stands on the desperate urbanization of Harlem, and the deterioration of the last great melodramatic electronic duo. It is set in a wild and apocalyptic conversation, where Vega sings over Rev’s rhythms of hell straight into a crescendo of suspense.

 

For the recovery of Teutonic electronic experimentation, for the poetry of dehumanization and for the formula of a duo consisting of a singer and an electronics manager, Suicide can be considered the precursors of new and exciting trends in the new new wave to come.

 

In the same, Martin Rev published his first album for keyboards, Martin Rev (Infidelity, 1980), reprinted as Marvel (Daft, 1996) with unpublished material. All of the songs found on the record are performed in the name of a floating repetitiveness of minimalism. They make use of synthesized rhythm typical of Suicide, with songs including the transcendent Mari, the lush and exotic Baby O Baby, and the concrete music of 1986 for bells and other effects, which are all pale reflections on urban neurosis of the past. The most original ideas are found in the disco mantra of Temptations, the cosmic-industrial music of Jomo, and the cacophonous rockabilly of Asia, which is found between vortices of electronic rhythm and metallurgy.

Even more ambiguous are the atmospheric ballads found on Clouds Of Glory (New Rose, 1985).

 

The electronic shaman Alan Vega, in fact, continued alone in the path of electro-rockabilly, for which he had set the precedent with Suicide.

Vega's first single was Jukebox Babe, from his solo debut Alan Vega (Ze, 1980). The characteristics of this song, and the rest of the record, are the scanning and cold sobs and cries of the vocalist, mixed with robotic effects, rockabilly fever cadence, metallic tones of guitars, and slight reverberation almost like reggae. Vega, like all the authors and artists, has his own expressive language, a continuity in his work that appears, in different forms, in each of his works. This language, deeply embedded especially in this first solo record, is that of the futuristic and decadent rockabilly.

This album also includes savvy interpretations of two other surreal rockabilly tunes, Kung Foo Cowboy and Fireball, as well as the epileptic bluegrass of Speedway (which basically is a preview of the Gun Club). These songs crown his search for a personal voice, and prove that Vega is a singer-songwriter like Bob Dylan and Neil Young, but he needs to entrust his cursed stories to neurasthenic rhythm.

The lugubrious rhythm and blues of Love Cry, set at the pace of a dirge, with the piano and guitar chords emitting pure sadness, and especially the terrific and monumental plantation blues of Bye Bye Bayou, set to the rhythm of a locomotive, enhance the charm and bewitching pessimistic revival of Vega in a futurist key.

Vega’s true program is a natural continuation of Suicide, but without the apocalyptic background electronics of Rev, and with the same emphasis and evil genius towards the dehumanizing goal of deconstructing rock and roll from its roots.

 

Collision Drive (Celluloid, 1982) begins with another of his classic, demonic rockabilly pieces, Magdalena 83, which is a new slice of anguish set at an incredible pace. Raver, Rebel Rocker, and especially the “southern” heavy metal of Outlaw, in the key of ZZ Top, continue with his basic agenda.

His voice, with vague "Reed-ian" ancestry, and its cold, bored, and metallic idiosyncrasies (cynical and nonchalant), emerged as one of the most characteristic of the 80s. Viet Vet, a thirteen minute tour de force, is a psychotic song mated with a mesmerizing phlegm, a psychodrama reminiscent of Jim Morrison, which rails against American values over a dying blues full of noise and guitar distortion.

 

His third album, Saturn Strip (Ze, 1983), using more wide-ranging orchestration, reaches a fusion of disco music and rockabilly (Video Babe, Saturn Strip) with overtones to the Velvet Underground (American Dreamer). The album reconciles commercially, and in the process loses the grit that had marked his previous recordings.

Hermetic and Gothic, his style remains the most authentic descendant of the delusions of Suicide.

 

Alan Vega and Martin Rev got back together first for A Way Of Life (Chapter 22, 1988) (Wax Trax, 1989), and even managed to carve out a hymn worthy of their past, Jukebox Baby 96.

 

They spent another three years before reconvening, and returned with what was in the end only the fourth album in sixteen years of existence: Why Be Blue (Enemy, 1992). Even without the abrasive and violent onset, and some fall into true disco, some songs retain the manic minimalism (especially Pump It) and the electrifying “talking blues” (the title, which makes a sales pitch) of their debut. At this point, they have become masters of composition (Cheat-Cheat), gray atmospheres, depression, and fatality. Alan Vega retains the unique qualities of the neurotic and ironic, seductive and enigmatic (Last Time) “storyteller,” but has become satisfied with the role of the nightclub entertainer.

 

After the anthology Vega (Celluloid, 1989), the solo career of Alan Vega continued with Deuce Avenue (Musidisc, 1990). Accompanied only by Liz Lamere on the “machines,” Vega stubbornly repeats the numbers that made him famous while simply changing their titles: BeBop Jive, Deuce Avenue, and La La Bola.

 

But, Vega was always more attracted to other art forms: in 1990 he released his first book of photography, "Deuce Avenue War," and on year later came a book of prose and poetry, “Cripple Nation.”

 

Distracted and unmotivated, Vega’s subsequent record turn out bad. Power On To Zero Hour (1991) and New Raceion (1995) are perhaps his worst.

 

It takes two years after the 1994 recording dates with Alex Chilton and Ben Vaughn, but Cubist Blues (Thirsty Ear, 1996) was released in 1996.

 

With Dujang Prang (1996) Vega was suddenly reborn. He discovered a terrifying sound and, in the music, is tossed around by body and soul, like a vampire. Instead of rock instruments, Vega entirely opts for modern electronics, but does so with the same rebellious spirit of his origins, a spirit that is worthy of punk-rock. Hammered, Life is Not Life, Big Daddy Stat’s Livin’ On Tron, and so on are not worth much as compositions, but the execution is horrifying. At his best, Vega has few rivals in the world.

 

Rev was meanwhile wasting his talent by recording a tribute to doo-wop and girl-group music, See Me Ridin' (ROIR, 1996).

 

Vega completed his artistic rebirth recording with Ilpo Vaisanen and Mike Vainio of Pan Sonic with two discs: Endless (Blast First, 1998) and Resurrection River (Mego, 2005).

 

For some reason, critics have always believed that Suicide should not make another album, and are resentful whenever Vega and Rev violate this. Yet, one of the greatest things about this group is that they have not sold out to the masses, as many of their (ungrateful) disciples are doing.

 

In reality, Suicide’s music has not changed since the start. Today, as in the 70s and 80s, Suicide express through electronic rock the anguish of living, alienation, and neurosis of the metropolitan man. Their work is important in the history of rock for teaching how to use is not changed anything since the start. Today, as then the Suicide express through electronic rock the anguish of living, alienation and neurosis metropolitan man. Their work is important in the history of rock for setting a precedent on how to use electronics for the non-pictorial and the futurists.

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Дебютник очень смелый. Гораздо более смелый, чем у так любимых тогда за показной радикализм панков. Может быть, это самая откровенная "пощечина обшественному вкусу" в те годы. Но ее как-то не очень заметили, все одуревали от Пистолетов да Рамонов (а от чего там дуреть-то было - непонятно).

Когда слушаешь Suicide 1977, всегда посещает мысль, что этот альбом – высший комплимент Velvet Underground. Он же и прямое доказательство того, что без Лу мир вполне мог быть на каплю целомудреннее, но музыка при этом на океан банальнее.
Алан Вега изначально был непосредственным участником настоящего панк-движения и кровью уличной культуры. Далеко не самый однозначный и простой человек, и даже не такой оригинальный, как хочется верить с первого взгляда, но, тем не менее, он безусловно был не статистом, а частью богемы. Когда речь идет о таких группах необходимо четко понимать, что панк – это не Clash или Pistols, это рок-н-рольный андеграунд Нью-Йорка 60-70ых годов. Разница в том, что при всем упадке и развращенности за гранью добра и зла это была богема, это были люди искусства, нередко крайне образованные (в том числе и мудростью улиц). Поэтому панк в действительности был и театром, и мюзиклами, поэзией, кинематографом, стилем жизни, философией и музыкой, которая впитывала в себя опыт антиискусства во всем многообразии.
Поэтому такие пластинки - не музыка в привычном понимании, это скорее перфоманс, попытка переступить границы жанров искусства, спровоцировать реакции и эмоции, не важно каких полюсов, не важно какими средствами. И здесь Suicide безусловно добились огромных успехов. К большому сожалению, такая сложная форма просто не могла работать годами и раз за разом повторяться, а потому альбомно группа сгорела быстро. Но из-за сложности насыщения, из-за сложности архитектуры, из-за опоры, в том числе, на настоящую культуру, влияние даже только одного альбома оказалось безграничным. При достаточно спорных методах и средствах достижения цели Suicide 77 в конечном итоге оказался гораздо большим, нежели просто хорошей или плохой пластинкой, он – искусство.

Алан Вега умер.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jul/17/suicide-frontman-and-electronic-music-pioneer-alan-vega-dies-aged-78

Ой

Уходит старая гвардия.

Suicide - Suicide (1977)
Suicide - Suicide (1980)
Alan Vega - Station (2007)

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Дебютник - это нечто. Настолько монотонно, но в то же время захватывающе и гипнотически. Это действительно была самая настоящая революция в музыке, а если ещё учесть год выпуска... Остальное не может с первым альбомом сравниться, увы.

Frankie Teardrop - пожалуй, самая страшная песня из всех, которые я слышал. Она наводит какую-то панику, реальный страх. Словно ощущаешь на себе безумство этого персонажа.

С этим даже столпы суицид блэк-метала не идут ни в какое сравнение. Здесь всё получилось слишком уж реалистичным, как будто и в правду это крики настоящего психически больного.

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Когда-то послушивал дебют
Помню, впечатления оставались смешанные
Сегодня освежил - все не так плохо, как я думал
Хорошо пошел

недавно слушал сольники рёва.to live очень крутой