★Superior Viaduct
Lesson No. 1
Long awaited, finally available as an expanded double-LP set, here's the repress of no wave pioneer Glenn Branca's iconic Lesson No 1. After cutting his teeth in the late '70s No Wave scene with bands Theoretical Girl and The Static, Glenn Branca made his first solo statement, Lesson No. 1, in 1980. The inaugural release on legendary post-punk / dance label 99 Records, Lesson No. 1 unveils Branca's visionary guitar concepts with two monstrous, side-long compositions that helped forge NYC's downt…
From the edge of the world: California Punk, 1977-81
Born in New York, Ruby Ray migrated to San Francisco in the mid-'70s. She entered the underground scene while working at Tower Records in North Beach. When she acquired her first camera, she quickly turned it into a weapon. RAY shot using a Nikon FM and Tri-X 400 film, the fastest film of its time. While documenting new bands and people for Search & Destroy magazine, she wielded her lens like many young DIY artists were brandishing guitars – bold, carefree and absolutely necessary.
As a fixture …
Negative Trend
Negative Trend were ground zero for California punk. Formed in San Francisco in 1977, they shared the stage with other now- legendary bands such as Dead Kennedys, The Dils, The Avengers, and The Sleepers. Their sole EP first appeared in 1978 to reveal the shape of punk to come. "Black and Red" features guitarist Craig Gray's nihilistic riffs and singer Mikal Waters' ominous battle cries. "Meathouse" is a hardcore anti-ballad to the Mabuhay Gardens, San Francisco's answer to CBGB's. The group dis…
Comme A La Radio
Sensational reissue!!! In 1969, a French chanteuse, an Algerian multi-instrumentalist, and a Chicago jazz quartet undertook an experimental, exploratory, revolutionary musical voyage; a redrawing of musical parameters that, to this day, stands as a glittering beacon, glowing in the dark abyss of 'out' music. Featuring Areski Belkacem and Aart Ensemble of Chicago, Comme a la Radio is the sophomore album in Brigitte Fontaine's prolific career. Four decades on, and Comme à la Radio still sounds…
No Tears
Their 1978 debut EP, No Tears, was recorded with vocalist Winston Tong and sound engineer Tommy Tadlock. Replete with tense synth swells, devastating live drums and a psychotic ode to the "creatures of the night," the title track is a crucial entry in the synth-punk canon that stacks up next to the best work by UNITS and THE SCREAMERS. Reininger's electric violin congeals with electronic atmospherics to unnerving ends on the instrumental "Litebulb Overkill." Few records do justice to the mania a…
Scream With a View
Founded by Steven Brown and Blaine Reininger in San Francisco, Tuxedomoon are a futuristic alternate reality of delirium and existential dread. Aligned with fellow Bay Area experimentalists The Residents (to whose Ralph Records the group eventually signed) and Robin Crutchfield's post-DNA project Dark Day, Tuxedomoon developed a unique combination of synthesizer and guitar that placed them at the forefront of the US post-punk movement in the late '70s and early '80s.Scream With A View, recorded …
Put Me On The Guest List
GLAXO BABIES are the greatest UK post-punk band you've never heard. Formed in Bristol in late 1977 and named after the British pharmaceutical giant who allegedly inoculated thousands with a toxic vaccine, the original lineup included Rob Chapman (vocals), Dan Catsis (guitar), Tom Nichols (bass), and Geoff Alsopp (drums). The band's pioneering mix of metallic guitar, dubbed-out rhythms and shamanistic chants found its way into the bloodlines of generations on both sides of the pond. Naturally, GL…
Nine Months To The Disco
The most impressive, but also the most overlooked of all the bands that lurched around the mutant extremes that trail through Gang of Four, the Mekons, and, ultimately, the Pop Group, the Glaxo Babies' debut album was actually cut following the collapse of the original band -- both vocalist/songwriter Rob Chapman and drummer Geoff Alsopp had departed, with saxophonist Tony Wrafter explaining the reason for the rift. "Rob was into songs and we weren't." Too true! Under Chapman's aegis, Glaxo Babi…
Hardcore Vol. 1 & 2
**Volumes 1 & 2 of the recently reissued vinyl versions collected together on double CD** San Francisco's cherry-picking reissue label, Superior Viaduct, give new life to these crucial volumes of art-pop and pre-punk prototypes from Akron, Ohio's finest. 'Hardcore' documents the formative years, 1974-1977, of the brothers Mothersbaugh (Mark, Bob, and Jim) and Brothers Casale (Jerry and Bob) and their drummer Alan Myers (recently deceased, RIP), whose concept of DE-eVOlved blues is consi…
Nommos
Restocked! First appearing incongruously on John Fahey's Takoma label in 1981, Nommos remains enshrouded in impenetrable mystery – from its understated artwork to the rich assemblage of analog synths contained inside. According to Head Heritage, Nommos is the "missing link between the proto-industrial rhythm and drone of Suicide and the whole minimalist drone / static / repetition method of Terry Riley and La Monte Young." Best known as a producer, CRAIG LEON worked on landmark debuts from SUICI…
Solaris Original Soundtrack
Superior Viaduct is honored to present the first-time official release of Artemiev's original soundtrack for the film (not to be confused with the previously available re-recording of the music). It's only appropriate that Solaris, Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's psychological sci-fi classic from 1972, contains an equally original and mind-bending score. Solarisexplores the inadequacies of time and memory on an enigmatic planet below a derelict space station. To reinforce the film's chillin…
Fragments Of Light
Facsimile reissue of Franco Falsini's stellar debut album of proggy krautrock "Sensations' Fix guitarist, keyboardist and occasional vocalist Franco Falsini cut his teeth with Italian groups in the '60s before assimilating the heady guitar virtuosity of English rock. In 1969, he moved to Virginia and built a recording studio in his girlfriend's basement, employing little more than his guitar, the newly available Minimoog synthesizer and a 4-track machine. These raw tracks, intended to be simple …
Interface
Awesome, monolithic slab of metal machine music from 1977, France, Paris...Heldon! A prog/early electronic holy grail replete with breathtaking and far-out Heldon's most crystalline work, building to the epic crescendo of the title track. Many fans consider this to be their masterpiece, but more importantly, Interface is a record that will continue to unfold for centuries to come. Richard Pinhas is an artistic iconoclast. A French intellectual as likely to collaborate with MAGMA as the radica…
100 Flowers
First-time reissue of underground Los Angeles classic originally released in 1983. For fans of The Urinals, The Minutemen, Sonic Youth, Television Personalities, Desperate Bicycles. Includes digital download card! 100 Flowers (previously known as The Urinals) were a power trio whose sole 1983 album is an enduring document of the Southern California underground. Based in crime-ridden ’80s Los Angeles against the backdrop of juvenile hardcore and vapid hard rock, 100 Flowers crafted a sound that r…
Hard Attack
MX-80 SOUND is one of the real oddities in American music. Their debut album, Hard Attack (released in the UK on Island Records), found little-to-no audience in the States upon its release in 1977, yet remains a key document of the mid-'70s proto-punk zeitgeist. Hailing from Bloomington, Indiana, MX-80 SOUND is lead by guitarist Bruce Anderson and defies simple classification with relentless riffs, dual drummers and vocalist Rich Stim's absurdist prose and dizzying sax. Assimilating the avant-ro…
Graduation
2020 repress. Necessary vinyl edition of some of the greatest minimalist/hillbilly/rock/psych music of the century, the goddamn motherlode from violinist/composer/philosopher/artist Henry Flynt: Flynt penned a bunch of amazing texts across the years (check the special issue of Richard Grossinger’s Io journal dedicated to his thought, 1989’s Being = Space x Action for more on that), he studied with Terry Riley and LaMonte Young and was briefly associated with The Velvet Underground, though Lou Re…
Martin Rev
In 1980, shortly after Suicide's second full-length, Martin Rev released his first solo album on preeminent No Wave label Infidelity (Lust/Unlust). Uninhibited by the trappings of a collaborator, Rev was freed to explore his most experimental and pop leanings with dirty synths, dark melodies and dreamlike textures, and produced a masterpiece of modern alienation that captures a uniquely New York landscape.
Echoing other electronic forerunners such as Silver Apples and Kraftwerk, and foreshadowi…
Music for Sick Queers
The German Shepherds, formed by Sandy Stark and Stephen Scheatzle in Nov. 1981, released a three song ep in early "82 with "Booty Jones" -- to child molester and kidnapper Kenneth Parnell; "I Adore You" -- an offering of prayer and submission and "Message from JJ" -- a rousing sermon by Peoples Temple chief Rev. Jim Jones. Later that year a dub version of "I Adore You" and "The Earthquake Has Come" appeared on the "You'll Hate This Record, Record" compilation lp. In 1983 the Shepherds began work…
Scheintot
LP version. "Arguably the most prescient band of the entire late '70s San Francisco underground, Factrix released just one 7-inch and two pioneering LP's in the early '80s. Formed in 1978 by Cole Palme (one-time member of the LAFMS group Airway) and Bond Bergland (later of Saqqara Dogs), the two initially called themselves Minimal Man and performed a handful of shows along with Patrick Miller (who would go on to have a great solo career under the MM moniker). Soon they enlisted bassist Joseph T.…
Love God, Love One Another
Black Humor was an experimental rock band from San Francisco in the early 80's. (Not to be confused with "blackhumor," alias of noise artist Frazer Hall.) They released just one, very hard to find LP on Fowl Records in 1982. Only 1,000 records were pressed, each with unique handmade covers: thick slabs of paint, collage, parrot feathers, dirt, whatever else happened to be laying around their Tenderloin flat. Many of these have since gone for high, collector prices or ended up in oblivion.…