Wire emerged out of the British punk explosion but, from the outset, maintained a distance from that scene and resisted easy categorization. While punk rapidly became a caricature of itself, Wire's musical identity -- focused on experimentation and process -- was constantly metamorphosing. Their first three albums alone attest to a startling... [+] Read More

Wire emerged out of the British punk explosion but, from the outset, maintained a distance from that scene and resisted easy categorization. While punk rapidly became a caricature of itself, Wire's musical identity -- focused on experimentation and process -- was constantly metamorphosing. Their first three albums alone attest to a startling evolution as the band repeatedly reinvented itself between 1977 and 1979. That capacity for self-reinvention, coupled with a willingness to stop recording indefinitely when ideas weren't forthcoming, has been crucial to Wire's longevity and continued relevance.

By the time of punk, British art schools had long been a hotbed of musical activity, spawning some of the nation's most innovative rock acts from the '60s onward. Like many punk contemporaries, Wire had roots in the art school tradition. At Watford Art College in 1976, guitarists Colin Newman and George Gill formed Overload with audiovisual technician Bruce Gilbert (also on guitar). Subsequently, the three recruited bassist Graham Lewis and drummer Robert Gotobed (aka Robert Grey), and the first Wire lineup was in place.

Wire began playing dates in London and, having ousted Gill, started from scratch, writing new material and taking a more pared-down, experimental approach. A gig at the Roxy in early 1977 proved auspicious. Wire met EMI's Mike Thorne, who was recording groups for a live punk album, The Roxy, London WC2. Thorne included two Wire tracks and was then instrumental in bringing the band to EMI in September. By then, with Newman writing most of the music, they were eager to record before they lost interest in material, abandoned it, and moved on; a pattern that would define the group.

Produced by Thorne, 1977's amphetamine-paced Pink Flag found Wire taking punk to extremes while also keeping an ironic distance from it by introducing elements of tension and abstraction. Pink Flag's 21 highly original tracks (each averaging just over a minute and a half) compressed and twisted rock into often jagged, taut shapes. The album met with critical acclaim and a follow-up was recorded in spring 1978.

Chairs Missing was a radical departure. Although the phrase "early Pink Floyd" was uttered dismissively in some quarters, it was well-received. With Thorne playing keyboards and producing, this was a more complex, multi-dimensional record that supplemented Pink Flag's harsh minimalism with dense, occasionally unsettling atmospherics. Wire albums usually feature one near-perfect pop song and Chairs Missing's "Outdoor Miner" almost became a hit, until it was scuppered by a payola scandal at EMI.

This was an enormously creative phase. Songs were being written and jettisoned at a considerable rate and the band was gigging relentlessly. In summer 1978, Wire played in the U.S. for the first time and, in March 1979, toured Europe with Roxy Music. Although Chairs Missing had been released only months before, live sets included a significant amount of material that would appear on 154. Indeed, Wire often tended to bewilder live audiences by playing new, unrecorded tracks rather than the numbers people expected to hear.

If Chairs Missing saw Wire exploring the possibilities offered by the recording studio, on 154 they took fuller advantage of that environment. With Lewis emerging as a vocalist alongside Newman, the result was an expansive, textured album with a more pronounced melodic orientation. 154 was Wire's most accomplished statement to date and the group seemed poised for success. The opposite happened. Wire's relationship with EMI unraveled and they were soon label-less. In February 1980 at London's Electric Ballroom, the band played an infamously chaotic show (captured on Document and Eyewitness) that was more like performance art than a rock performance. A five-year hiatus ensued.

Following a period of intense activity away from Wire, the members regrouped in 1985, referring to their new incarnation as a "beat combo" -- a no-nonsense, stripped-down unit. The 1986 "comeback" EP, Snakedrill, begat "Drill," a track built on a paradigmatic Wire rhythm, which bridged the gap between the group's past and its present. "Drill" would stand as an evolving metaphor for the band's shifting identity. It mutated through multiple versions, changing from performance to performance. (In 1991, Wire would release The Drill, an album composed entirely of versions of the track.)

The bandmembers' solo endeavors during the early '80s proved crucial to Wire's new direction: the avant-pop sensibility developed by Newman on his albums and the experimental inclinations of Lewis and Gilbert were channeled into the nascent digital context in which the band was now working. The Ideal Copy (1987), the first full-length example of Wire's new approach to the processes of composition and recording with sequencing technology, found the group's smart, state-of-the-art grooves skirting the dancefloor. While first-generation fans were glad to have Wire back, their new sound drew a new audience in the U.S. and an American tour followed. They continued in an electronically oriented direction with the more homogeneous A Bell Is a Cup...Until It Is Struck(1988), whose combination of hypnotic, melodic patterns and impenetrable yet catchy lyrics made for surreal, brainy pop.

Wire had already made one of rock's more unorthodox live records but they further deconstructed the cliché of the "live album" for 1989's It's Beginning to & Back Again. Performance recordings were stripped down in the studio, sometimes to a drumbeat or a baseline, which was then used as the starting point for rebuilding the track. Wire continued to experiment with ways of letting studio technologies affect their creative process on Manscape (1990), which forayed deeper into computer-based electronics and programming. Drummer Robert Gotobed was less enthusiastic about changing his role in the developing digital version of Wire and left the band just before a 1990 tour. Dropping the "e" from the group's name, Gilbert, Lewis, and Newman carried on as Wir, releasing The First Letter. In 1991, another hiatus began and the three returned to their diverse solo ventures.

In the '80s, American bands like R.E.M. and Big Black had covered Wire songs. By the mid-'90s, Wire's influence started to manifest itself among a younger generation of Britpop artists, most notoriously Elastica, whose appropriation of Pink Flag's "Three Girl Rhumba" resulted in a settlement between the groups' respective music publishing companies. Having briefly resurfaced with Robert Gotobed in 1996 for a performance of "Drill" to celebrate Bruce Gilbert's 50th birthday, Wire remained silent until 1999, when they began rehearsing again. In 2000, the band played live in the U.K. (including an event at London's Royal Festival Hall) and completed a U.S. tour; unpredictable as ever, Wire performed almost exclusively old numbers.

Although reworkings of older tracks taped during 1999 rehearsals appeared on The Third Day (2000), Wire soon initiated their next phase. Completely new material appeared in the form of 2002's Read & Burn 01, the first in a projected series of releases to be developed at Newman's Swim studios. While the fast, loud menace of Read & Burn 01 harked back to Pink Flag, Wire sounded more like they were stomping all over their roots than nostalgically returning to them. A second Read & Burn was out by the end of the year; Send, a full-length containing brand new songs and Read & Burn material, was released in May of 2003. ~ Wilson Neate, All Music Guide [-] Hide

Few of punk rock's founding fathers could have anticipated the extreme to which Half Japanese took the music's do-it-yourself ethos. Founded by brothers Jad and David Fair, Half Japanese was quite probably the most amateurish rock band to make a record since the Shaggs, all but ignoring musical basics like chords, rhythms, and melody. However,... [+] Read More

Few of punk rock's founding fathers could have anticipated the extreme to which Half Japanese took the music's do-it-yourself ethos. Founded by brothers Jad and David Fair, Half Japanese was quite probably the most amateurish rock band to make a record since the Shaggs, all but ignoring musical basics like chords, rhythms, and melody. However, the brothers made that approach into a guiding aesthetic, steadfastly refusing to progress in their primitive musicianship over a career that lasted decades. David Fair's article "How to Play Guitar" outlined the Half Japanese philosophy: if you rejected conventional ideas about fingering, tuning, and even stringing a guitar, there were no limits on how you could express yourself on what was, after all, your instrument. The band's proponents (who included Kurt Cobain) saw them as the epitome of a pure, unbridled enthusiasm for rock & roll, the ultimate expression of punk's dictum that rock should be accessible to anyone who wanted to pick up an instrument and play. Detractors found them gratingly noisy, borderline unlistenable, and too self-conscious and willful about their naïveté. That naïveté extended to their lyrical outlook too, not just their technical abilities; when they weren't singing about horror movies or tabloid headlines, most of their songs were about girls, veering between innocent longing and wounded sexual frustration. Early on, with less outside influence, their work was more chaotic and cathartic; as time passed, David Fair became a sporadic contributor, and the prolific Jad built a core of semi-regular backing musicians who brought a rudimentary sense of songcraft to the proceedings. Jad and David Fair formed Half Japanese in their bedroom in the mid-'70s. Accounts differ as to exactly when (somewhere around 1975-77) and where (either Michigan or their eventual base of Maryland; the family apparently moved around a lot). It is known that the brothers made their first home recordings in 1977, issuing their debut EP that year, Calling All Girls, on their own 50 Skidillion Watts label. Several homemade cassettes circulated in the underground, which resulted in a deal with the small British independent Armageddon. In 1980, Half Japanese became the first band in history to release a three-record box set as their debut album; 1/2 Gentlemen/Not Beasts collected some of their earlier home recordings, while throwing in barely recognizable covers (the Temptations, Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan) and sound experiments cobbled together from guitar noise, electronics, and odd effects. Yet their primary influences were clearly the minimalism of the Velvet Underground and the innocence of Jonathan Richman, with some Iggy Pop angst at times. Over the years, 1/2 Gentlemen/Not Beasts became something of a cult legend (helped out by its scarcity), and foreshadowed the lo-fi movement of early-'90s indie rock. A second album for Armageddon, the aptly titled Loud, followed in 1981; it matched the brothers' atonal squall and stream-of-consciousness compositions with a supporting cast of free jazz musicians. The Horrible EP -- a collection of songs paying tribute to horror movies -- followed on Press in 1983. Around that time, Jad Fair began a concurrent and equally prolific solo career, releasing records under his own name, and in collaborative side projects well into the '90s. Moving to the Iridescence label, Half Japanese took a musical step forward on 1984's Our Solar System, which flitted between rock and improvised chamber jazz while using different musicians in different contexts. Some of those musicians -- multi-instrumentalist John Dreyfuss, guitarist Don Fleming (also of B.A.L.L., the Velvet Monkeys, and Gumball), bassist/guitarist Mark Jickling, and drummer Jay Spiegel among them -- would continue to work with Half Japanese in the years to come. Featuring many of the same musicians, the follow-up, 1984's Sing No Evil, was an even greater concession to accessibility (relatively speaking, of course) with its improved sense of songwriting and structure; it's still acclaimed by many as one of the band's best works. Iridescence subsequently went under, and the band revived its 50 Skidillion Watts imprint with help from an avowed fan, magician Penn Jillette. In 1987, David Fair took a temporary leave of absence to attend to his family; for the remainder of the band's existence, he would come and go as time permitted. Recording without his brother for the first time (as Half Japanese), Jad Fair worked with Shimmy-Disc label honcho Kramer on 1987's Music to Strip By, which spun off the single "U.S. Teens Are Spoiled Bums," and continued the trend toward greater musicality. David Fair returned for 1988's upbeat Charmed Life, which earned some of the strongest reviews of Half Japanese's career. He departed once again by the time of the more experimental follow-up, 1989's The Band That Would Be King, which found Jad Fair backed by Kramer and free improvisation gurus John Zorn and Fred Frith, along with several semi-regular bandmembers. The loose, spontaneous vibe carried over to the next album, 1990s uneven We Are They Who Ache With Amorous Love, which appeared on the New Jersey label T.E.C. Tones. It featured a large cast of Half Japanese cohorts past and present, including the musicians who would anchor the '90s lineup: guitarist John Sluggett, Swiss-born drummer Gilles-Vincent Rieder, guitarist/bassist Mick Hobbs, and bassist Jason Willett, plus longtime supporter Mark Jickling.

1993 brought Half Japanese the greatest visibility of their career. Longtime fan Kurt Cobain -- a champion of innocent, amateurish indie rock acts like the Vaselines and the Raincoats -- invited Half Japanese to open the East Coast leg of Nirvana's In Utero tour. A documentary film on Half Japanese, titled The Band That Would Be King, after their recent album, was released to art-house theaters by director Jeff Feuerzeig, and T.E.C. Tones also reissued 1/2 Gentlemen/Not Beasts as a two-CD set. In the meantime, Half Japanese released a new album, Fire in the Sky, on the Safe House label. One of the most straightforward rock records in their catalog, it boasted a guest appearance from one-time Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker, who sometimes used Half Japanese as a touring band, and frequently welcomed Jad Fair as a guest on her own records. 1995's Hot continued the rock-oriented approach of its predecessor; the same year, Safe House released a double-disc, career-spanning retrospective, the ironically titled Greatest Hits. The following year, Jad and David reunited under their own names to record the album Best Friends. 1997 brought Heaven Sent, which appeared on drummer Gilles Vincent's own Kitty Kitty label; its title track -- the product of a session for Amsterdam radio -- was over an hour long, and was believed to be the longest "song" ever released. The same year, Half Japanese signed with Alternative Tentacles and issued Bone Head. In the years that followed, Jad Fair's flood of recorded material finally began to slow to a trickle, although he did continue his work in the visual arts (his paintings were exhibited periodically in Europe). After a four-year absence, Half Japanese finally returned in 2001 with their second album for Alternative Tentacles, Hello. ~ Steve Huey, All Music Guide [-] Hide

Though largely overlooked during their relatively brief lifespan, Slint grew to become one of the most influential and far-reaching bands to emerge from the American underground rock community of the 1980s; innovative and iconoclastic, the group's deft, extremist manipulations of volume, tempo, and structure cast them as clear progenitors of the... [+] Read More

Though largely overlooked during their relatively brief lifespan, Slint grew to become one of the most influential and far-reaching bands to emerge from the American underground rock community of the 1980s; innovative and iconoclastic, the group's deft, extremist manipulations of volume, tempo, and structure cast them as clear progenitors of the post-rock movement which blossomed during the following decade.

Whatever the extent of Slint's own influence, the group grew out of Louisville, Kentucky's legendary Squirrel Bait, another seminal band which languished in relative obscurity during its own lifetime but ultimately spawned the likes of Gastr del Sol, Big Wheel, and Bastro. Guitarist/vocalist Brian McMahan formed his first group at the age of 12; within a few years, he teamed with drummer Britt Walford, and after the addition of vocalist Peter Searcy, guitarist David Grubbs, and bassist Clark Johnson, they founded Squirrel Bait in the mid-'80s. After two ferocious records, a self-titled 1985 effort and 1987's Skag Heaven, the group disbanded, leaving McMahan and Walford to continue on as Slint with guitarist David Pajo and bassist Ethan Buckler.

With producer Steve Albini, the quartet recorded 1989's Tweez, issued on their own Jennifer Hartman label; a collection of odd stylistic approaches, fractured rhythms, and strange lyrical fragments, the album owed debts to few (if any) historical precedents and steadfastly defied easy classification. Shortly after the record's completion, Buckler left to form King Kong, and was replaced by bassist Todd Brashear for 1991's Spiderland, an even more sophisticated and adventurous set.

With the exception of a posthumous 1994 EP (originally recorded between the two full-length albums), Spiderland was Slint's swan song, although the individual members remained key figures in the independent scene. After attending art college, Pajo joined the ranks of Tortoise, while Walford (under the alias Shannon Doughton) played drums with the Breeders before rejoining Buckler in King Kong. McMahan and Brashear, meanwhile, aided Will Oldham in his ever-shifting Palace aggregate (which additionally housed Pajo and Walford at one point or another); McMahan and Pajo also briefly reunited as members of the For Carnation. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide [-] Hide

"There is no group more mythical than Faust," wrote Julian Cope in his book Krautrocksampler, which detailed the pivotal influence the German band exerted over the development of ambient and industrial textures. Producer/overseer Uwe Nettelbeck, a onetime music journalist, formed Faust in Wumme, Germany, in 1971 with founding members Hans... [+] Read More

"There is no group more mythical than Faust," wrote Julian Cope in his book Krautrocksampler, which detailed the pivotal influence the German band exerted over the development of ambient and industrial textures. Producer/overseer Uwe Nettelbeck, a onetime music journalist, formed Faust in Wumme, Germany, in 1971 with founding members Hans Joachim Irmler, Jean Hervé Peron, Werner "Zappi" Diermaier, Rudolf Sosna, Gunther Wusthoff, and Armulf Meifert. Upon receiving advance money from their label, Nettelbeck converted an old schoolhouse into a recording studio, where the group spent the first several months of its existence in almost total isolation, honing its unique cacophonous sound with the aid of occasional guests like minimalist composer Tony Conrad and members of Slapp Happy.

Issued on clear vinyl in a transparent sleeve, Faust's eponymously titled debut LP surfaced in 1971. Although sales were notoriously bad, the album -- a noisy sound collage of cut-and-paste musical fragments -- did earn the group a solid cult following. Another lavishly packaged work, Faust So Far, followed in 1972, and earned the group a contract with Virgin, which issued 1973's The Faust Tapes -- a fan-assembled collection of home recordings -- for about the price of a single, a marketing ploy that earned considerable media interest. After Outside the Dream Syndicate, a collaboration with Tony Conrad, Faust released 1973's Faust IV, a commercial failure that resulted in the loss of their contract with Virgin, which refused to release their planned fifth long-player.

When Nettelbeck turned his focus away from the group, Faust disbanded in 1975, and the members scattered throughout Germany. However, after more than a decade of playing together in various incarnations, Faust officially reunited around the nucleus of Irmler, Peron, and Diermaier for a handful of European performances at the outset of the 1990s. In 1993, they made their first-ever U.S. live appearance backing Conrad, followed by a series of other stateside performances. After several live releases, a pair of new studio albums, Rien and You Know FaUSt, followed in 1996. Ravvivando appeared three years later. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide [-] Hide

In the 1970s, Tom Waits combined a lyrical focus on desperate, lowlife characters with a persona that seemed to embody the same lifestyle, which he sang about in a raspy, gravelly voice. From the '80s on, his work became increasingly theatrical as he moved into acting and composing. Growing up in southern California, Waits attracted the... [+] Read More

In the 1970s, Tom Waits combined a lyrical focus on desperate, lowlife characters with a persona that seemed to embody the same lifestyle, which he sang about in a raspy, gravelly voice. From the '80s on, his work became increasingly theatrical as he moved into acting and composing. Growing up in southern California, Waits attracted the attention of manager Herb Cohen, who also handled Frank Zappa, and was signed by him at the beginning of the 1970s, resulting in the material later released as The Early Years and The Early Years, Vol. 2. His formal recording debut came with Closing Time (1973) on Asylum Records, an album that contained "Ol' 55," which was covered by labelmates the Eagles for their On the Border album. Waits attracted critical acclaim and a cult audience for his subsequent albums, The Heart of Saturday Night (1974), the two-LP live set Nighthawks at the Diner (1975), Small Change (1976), Foreign Affairs (1977), Blue Valentine (1978), and Heart Attack and Vine (1980). His music and persona proved highly cinematic, and, starting in 1978, he launched parallel careers as an actor and as a composer of movie music. He wrote songs for and appeared in Paradise Alley (1978), wrote the title song for On the Nickel (1980), and was hired by director Francis Coppola to write the music for One from the Heart (1982), which earned him an Academy Award nomination. While working on that project, Waits met and married playwright Kathleen Brennan, with whom he later collaborated.

Moving to Island Records, Waits made Swordfishtrombones (1983), which found him experimenting with horns and percussion and using unusual recording techniques. The same year, he appeared in Coppola's Rumble Fish and The Outsiders, and, in 1984, he appeared in the director's The Cotton Club. In 1985, he released Rain Dogs. In 1986, he appeared in Down By Law and made his theatrical debut with Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre in Frank's Wild Years, a musical play he had written with Brennan. An album based on the play was released in 1987, the same year Waits appeared in the films Candy Mountain and Ironweed. In 1988, he released a film and soundtrack album depicting one of his concerts, Big Time. In 1989, he appeared in the films Bearskin: An Urban Fairytale, Cold Feet, and Wait Until Spring. His work for the theater continued in 1990 when Waits partnered with opera director Robert Wilson and beat novelist William Burroughs and staged The Black Rider in Hamburg, Germany. In 1991, he appeared in the films Queens' Logic, The Fisher King, and At Play in the Fields of the Lord. In 1992, he scored the film Night on Earth; released the album Bone Machine, which won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album; appeared in the film Bram Stoker's Dracula; and returned to Hamburg for the staging of his second collaboration with Robert Wilson, Alice. The The Black Rider was documented on CD in 1993, the same year Waits appeared in the film Short Cuts.

A long absence from recording resulted in the 1998 release of Beautiful Maladies, a retrospective of his work for Island. In 1999, Waits finally returned with a new album, Mule Variations. The record was a critical success, winning a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk album, and was also his first for the independent Epitaph Records' Anti subsidiary. A small tour followed, but Waits jumped right back into the studio and began working on not one but two new albums. By the time he emerged in the spring of 2002, both Alice and Blood Money were released on Anti Records. Blood Money consisted of the songs from the third Wilson/Waits collaboration that was staged in Denmark in 2000 and won Best Drama of the year. After limited touring in support of these two endeavors, Waits returned to the recording studio and issued Real Gone in 2004. The album marked a large departure for him, in that it contained no keyboards at all, focusing only on rhythm-stringed instruments. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide [-] Hide

One of the most ambitious debuts in rock history, Freak Out! was a seminal concept album that somehow foreshadowed both art rock and punk at the same time. Its four LP sides deconstruct rock conventions right and left, eventually pushing into territory inspired by avant-garde classical composers. Yet the album is sequenced in an accessibly... [+] Read More

One of the most ambitious debuts in rock history, Freak Out! was a seminal concept album that somehow foreshadowed both art rock and punk at the same time. Its four LP sides deconstruct rock conventions right and left, eventually pushing into territory inspired by avant-garde classical composers. Yet the album is sequenced in an accessibly logical progression; the first half is dedicated to catchy, satirical pop/rock songs that question assumptions about pop music, setting the tone for the radical new directions of the second half. Opening with the nonconformist call to arms "Hungry Freaks, Daddy," Freak Out! quickly posits the Mothers of Invention as the antithesis of teen-idol bands, often with sneering mockeries of the teen-romance songs that had long been rock's commercial stock-in-trade. Despite his genuine emotional alienation and dissatisfaction with pop conventions, though, Frank Zappa was actually a skilled pop composer; even with the raw performances and his stinging guitar work, there's a subtle sophistication apparent in his unorthodox arrangements and tight, unpredictable melodicism. After returning to social criticism on the first song of the second half, the perceptive Watts riot protest "Trouble Every Day," Zappa exchanges pop song structure for experiments with musique concrète, amelodic dissonance, shifting time signatures, and studio effects. It's the first salvo in his career-long project of synthesizing popular and art music, high and low culture; while these pieces can meander, they virtually explode the limits of what can appear on a rock album, and effectively illustrate Freak Out!'s underlying principles: acceptance of differences and free individual expression. Zappa would spend much of his career developing and exploring ideas -- both musical and conceptual -- first put forth here; while his myriad directions often produced more sophisticated work, Freak Out! contains at least the rudiments of almost everything that followed, and few of Zappa's records can match its excitement over its own sense of possibility. ~ Steve Huey, All Music Guide [-] Hide

This collection of "Scott's best self-composed songs" features 20 Walker originals from his 1967-1970 heyday. While he covered some interesting material on his albums during this period, paying tribute to Jacques Brel with special devotion and frequency, his original compositions are his most enduring achievements. Besides such highlights as... [+] Read More

This collection of "Scott's best self-composed songs" features 20 Walker originals from his 1967-1970 heyday. While he covered some interesting material on his albums during this period, paying tribute to Jacques Brel with special devotion and frequency, his original compositions are his most enduring achievements. Besides such highlights as "Big Louise," "We Came Through," "The Seventh Seal," "Plastic Palace People," and "The Old Man's Back Again," it includes half a dozen songs that were not included on the four other solo albums that Fontana UK has reissued on CD. Some of those cuts are very strong, especially "The Rope and the Colt," a dramatic Western ballad with an arrangement that would do Ennio Morricone proud; the positively eloquent despair of the ennui-ridden "Time Operator"; and "The Plague," a representative sampling of Walker's taste for the disquieting and bizarre. This is a recommended starting point for those interested in checking out this singularly strange '60s phenomenon, who was a relatively unacknowledged and undetected, but nonetheless substantial, influence on David Bowie and other fashionably decadent British singers. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide [-] Hide

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Seemingly emerging out of nowhere following an initial single or two, Flying Saucer Attack's debut album crystallized an incipient 1990s underground as in thrall to folk music as to feedback blasts and Krautrock influences. The description the band members themselves used, also considered by some as an alternate title to this album, was "rural... [+] Read More

Seemingly emerging out of nowhere following an initial single or two, Flying Saucer Attack's debut album crystallized an incipient 1990s underground as in thrall to folk music as to feedback blasts and Krautrock influences. The description the band members themselves used, also considered by some as an alternate title to this album, was "rural psychedelia," and rarely has form so readily followed function. The original duo of Pearce and Brook, with some help from friend/Third Eye Foundation mainman Matt Elliott on percussion and clarinet (thus creating an even more alien atmosphere on "Moonset"), created a thick, evocatively haunting collection of modern mind-blowers. If any one thing could be singled out about the album, it's the continual contrast between Pearce's soft, reflective singing, often sunk deep into the overall mix and treated with heavy-duty echo, and his often tremendous guitar work, electric squalls, and drones piled atop one another. Songs like the exultant "Wish" and "A Silent Tide" are the breathtaking results. Initial comparisons were made to My Bloody Valentine and the shoegazing crowd, but they're misplaced -- it's a consciously different style employing some similar elements, but with notably varying results. Two astonishing drone/tribal instrumentals are named "Popol Vuh 2" and "Popol Vuh 1," both open tips of the hat to the long-lived German experimental group. The completely out-of-left-field number, though, is the cover of Suede's "The Drowners" -- changing nothing about the pace but overdriving the feedback and relentlessly toning down the vocals, FSA turn the neo-glam piece into a noisefest beyond description. Compared to later albums, Flying Saucer Attack sets more of an immediately consistent mood -- some numbers aside, the dreamy singing, the seemingly straightforward guitar parts that get more involved the more one listens, and more continue from track to track, generally speaking. The end results, though, are more than worth it. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide [-] Hide

By the mid-'90s, Material was simply another word for Bill Laswell, so as Laswell's fascination with ambient mysticism grew, so did Material's tendencies in that direction. After 1991's dark and reggae-inflected The Third Power, Hallucination Engine's long, spacy jams aren't exactly a dramatic departure, but the combination of Wayne Shorter and... [+] Read More

By the mid-'90s, Material was simply another word for Bill Laswell, so as Laswell's fascination with ambient mysticism grew, so did Material's tendencies in that direction. After 1991's dark and reggae-inflected The Third Power, Hallucination Engine's long, spacy jams aren't exactly a dramatic departure, but the combination of Wayne Shorter and various North African elements is certainly interesting. In fact, the array of guest musicians is more diverse than ever: Trilok Gurtu, Jonas Hellborg, Zakir Hussain, Bootsy Collins -- the list goes on and on and even includes William Burroughs (who intones a hilarious list of "Words of Advice" over a churning mid-tempo funk groove). In his ambient mode, Laswell has been accused of turning too little music into too much track length, and there's some justice to those criticisms; here, "Black Light" and the unbelievably well-named "Eternal Drift" both plod along for far too long with far too little development. But that William Burroughs track kicks in just as you're about to fall asleep, and it's followed immediately by a very funky and very jazzy remix of "Cucumber Slumber." "The Hidden Garden/Naima" proposes an interesting juxtaposition of Arabic pop song and modal jazz, with dramatic and beautiful results, while "Shadows of Paradise" brings the album to a close with a gentle whimper, not a bang. ~ Rick Anderson, All Music Guide [-] Hide