Alan Vega
Station

Hey-oh collision drive...

I remember Suicide as the heroes of synthesized punk, angry and abrasive even without distorted guitars, leading figures of the electronic desperados, alternative in sound but not in content. I loved the hypnotic and sick atmosphere that came from Alan Vega's screeching voice, always full of hidden tension that accumulated piece by piece, the endless riff in its compulsive repetition, and the idea of having a mutant, degenerate, and crazy Elvis Presley on the turntable. It seemed like music suited to the times. Since then, a lot of time has passed, and many albums as well. Alan Vega and his partner Martin Rev have more or less enrolled in the long list of rock's losers. Their works — especially those by Vega — seemed pleasant at best or frankly weak in other cases (even resembling, as someone wrote, Billy Idol with a little organ), but I always managed to find something — sometimes a hint, sometimes more — of that vein of pseudo-rockabilly madness that cut the American dream with a knife. But in this “Station” that is coming out now, more than ten years after the works with Alex Chilton and nine since the first with Pan Sonic, there's a very, very changed Alan Vega.

He has certainly long since put aside the idea of recycling himself, and the approach to that deconstructed electronic noise that he had already shown in 1999 with the album “2007” must have opened new paths for him, and Alan has begun to follow them with a new determination and evidently also a new rage inside acting as fuel. The sonic massacre started 8 years ago (is it a coincidence or a clue that this new effort of his is being released in the year that gave the title to his previous work?) continues, more furious than ever. More determined and also more complete. More heartfelt, less random. Always totally deconstructed. No more verse and chorus; here is a mysterious soundscape, an electronic catastrophe of dirty, difficult sounds, where the voice erupts in groans of suffering that conclude the journey begun over twenty years ago with “Frankie Teardrop” like the screams of a shaman; dark, apocalyptic, distorted atmospheres... the end must be near or perhaps it has already arrived, waiting for us at the lonely station at the end of the journey. Trance and sonic violence together, without mercy, up to despair or surrender.

I like artists who know how to change and manage to renew themselves, always on a collision course: well done Alan, you've managed to create a sound sculpture worthy of you: monstrous, but compelling.

1. Freedom’s smashed
2. Station station
3. Psychopatha
4. Crime street cree
5. Traceman
6. Gun god game
7. 13 crosses 16 blazzin skulls
8. S.S eyes
9. Why couldn’t it be you
10. Warrior, fight ya life
11. Devasteted