Plenty of awesomeness on the way this year from Seattle’s ultimate synth-wave label Medical Records. This coming February the label will feature a reissue of Laika‘s 1994 classic Silver Apples Of The Moon, which initially came out on Too Pure, but has been long out of print, since. In addition, Medical will reissue Tse-Tse‘s lone album, Land In Sicht, a short-lived project, but intriguing entry in the Neue Deutsche Welle story. Also on the docket for an early February release, this excellent LP from Post Industrial Noise, The Official Post Industrial Noise Anthology, a remastered collection of brilliantly forward thinking tracks from the Ohio-based “audio artsemble”.
Started in Columbus, OH in 1982, PIN included Robert Crise Jr, local performance artist Gerald F. Nelson, and OSU art student Dana Riashi Ritchey. Initially playing drum machine and guitars, with vocals, the group soon added synthesizers into the mix, for an eclectic sound that fell somewhere between post-punk and new wave, with cross-currents of techno and noise pointing towards the future. Around for only a brief time–Crise eventually went off to graduate school in Detroit, while Nelson and Ritchey would eventually join forces as Near Paris (reissued on Medical Records in 2013)–Post Industrial Noise would only see the release of an 8″ flexi disc, Symphony Of A Mind, as well as the cassette, The Official Post Industrial Noise Anthology–both put out in 1983.
In an article from Cleveland’s Spaces Gallery, accompanying the flexi disc release, which had gone out at the time in the OSU art tabloid “Dialogue”, the trio is compared to Tangerine Dream, PIL, and Kraftwerk; and, while that seems true, the group’s sonic work really points to many nascent, still underground, trends of the day–with hints of Throbbing Gristle, Devo, and Caberet Voltaire also thrown in for good measure. But more than a pastiche of current/future trends, PIN set their distinctly lo-fi sound apart with an incisive lyrical wit and adventurous compositional sense. As you might expect from an “audio artsemble” worth it’s critical weight, PIL directed their concern and invective towards a growingly corporatized society on the verge of a post-industrial transition, with a little something left over for the Me Generation’s solipsistic obsession with self-fulfillment.
On the track “Compartment Life“, Crise takes aim at suburban sprawl, ruing the replacement of farm lands with “compartment stores”, and ironically boasting “you’ve got everything out here/in compartment life”. Meanwhile, a low slung, downward turned bass line circles in warning over a phasing drum track, while washes of noxious guitar noise send out icy chills. Cold waves of synth pop also reverberate thru the faux majesty of the “Survivalist“, a tongue and cheek epic on which Crise and Ritchey combine vocally. Lyrically, the cut pits an ultimately ridiculous hipster “survivalist”–“he doesn’t pay any rent”, “eating his meals at random restaurants”– against the Spectacle’s ability to totalize ambivalence, with Ritchey ultimately assuring us, in an cool, disaffected voice reminiscent of a young Kim Gordon, “trust yourself/cause there’s no control anymore”.
While “Compartment Life” and “Survivalist” might point to other band’s working with similar thematic and sonic concerns (Devo, Throbbing Gristle, The Fall, amongst others), on tracks like “Outside Reality“, “Think“, and “Symphony Of A Mind“, PIL distinguish themselves with an increasingly baroque musical style, and surreal, psychedelically tuned lyrics. The resulting album is an exhilarating throwback of a listen that in no way sounds dated, but instead, seems to still sit on the cutting edge of our post, post-industrial reality. Not sure how they continually do it, but Medical Records makes it seem like beneath every rarely turned rock lies some regretfully unheard musical gem, ripe for renewed appraisal, and PIN’s Anthology is no exception!
