Richard Hell & The Voidoids- Black Generation
(Punk Rock, Art Punk)
Released: August 26, 1977 [Sire Records]
Producer(s): Richard Gottehrer, Richard Hell
It’s been a year and a half since BASIC first emerged out of a bare bones set up of two guitars (Chris Forsyth and Nick Millevoi) and a drum machine. That early experiment, inspired by the 1984 collaboration between Robert Quine and Fred Maher, put a boxy, machine-drilled framework around open-ended guitar jam. Mikel Patrick Avery tended the rough propulsion of the drum machine, enriching its stutter with additional improvised percussion, while Forsyth and Millevoi slashed away at one another on conventional and baritone guitar. It was, at once, disciplined and free-spirited, and you can see why it appealed to Forsyth. Christian Carey reviewed the full-length debut last year, writing “With a rattling drum pattern, synth lines embellished by bent notes and wah-wah, and effects enriched guitars, ‘Versatile Switch’ combines kraut rock and funky fusion in equal measures.”
Now, Forsyth returns with a slightly reconfigured ensemble.He continues to coax the tone-shifting treble from a blues guitar, while Avery again complicates and bolsters programmed percussion. But instead of Millevoi, we now have Doug McCombs, playing a grounding, growly, slightly funkier bass in place of another guitar. The result is, if anything, trancier and more full of shimmer than the first album’s compositions, with undertones of Dollar Bill-like Afro-influence in its polyrhythmic textures.
“Tension Envelope” rides a bright, uncomplicated riff across 11 minutes of shifting terrain, the guitar sifting glitter over repeated bass/drum syncopations. The drum beat bloops and glitches, rigorously timed but tonally adventurous, as cymbals shiver and a bass drum beat rampages, each boom elongating like lava lamp blobs in motion. You might wonder why it goes on for so long, when the cut has stated its thesis within the first minute or two, but there’s something about reiteration that turns the straightforward into smoke and mirrors. The more you hear, the less certain you become about it. From machine-stamped precision, the cut opens up into mystery. The envelope can’t contain the tension forever.
“Changes, Changing” is only a bit shorter, its percussion enlivened by a skritchy cuica-like gulp and squeak. McCombs and Forsyth come at each other from opposite ends of each musical ideas, crossing somewhere in a contentious middle. And yet while they jut and stab and joust at one another, the music runs on unperturbed.Its spiky, insistent propulsion calms rather than agitates. The title track, though brief, is in some ways the most expansive, letting jet contrails of psychedelic guitar distortion drift and dissipate over ricky-ticky beats. Here Forsyth gets a scream out of his guitar that might put you in mind of Hendrix, if Hendrix ever did a stint with Suicide, that is.
The whole thing was recorded quickly and mostly live, and you can hear an animated process of listening, discovery and response developing among the three principals. It’s a demonstration of how a rigid understructure can support the wildest sort of experimentation. A hard beat anchors extravagant spirals of improvisatory excess, locks it down and keeps it honest.
