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Well, generally when we talk about lo-fi, we mean "lo-fi pop," that is, college rock with a sentimental backdrop and a hint of melody... the music that bands like Beat Happening and Pavement played, in short... the HJ, on the other hand, were different: they left much less room for melody, they were more intellectual, more openly experimental, their technical clumsiness was a much more studied and programmatic thing compared to Beat Happening... in short, the HJ had nothing to do with "pop" at all... it’s clear, though, that if one understands lo-fi as any low-fidelity rock music, then the HJ fits right in... but at this point, we would need to trace back at least to the usual Velvet Underground to find some initiators... P.S. Let’s also include the early Cure among the godfathers of "lo-fi pop," shall we...

God, how beautiful All The Way From Memphis! Covered by Brian May in '98, it's fantastic then...

of the Dickinson era remains my favorite album...clearly the first two albums (with Di Anno), especially Killers, are on another planet...

I don't like these guys (except for Indian Summer)... but the review perfectly captures the spirit of the band... just a couple of considerations: 1) in my opinion, Half Japanese has nothing to do with lo-fi as it's usually understood... if we are talking about "lo-fi pop" (as a variant of indie-rock), and referring to various Pavement, Sebadoh, Beat Happening, etc... then at this point, among the pioneers, we should mention the Californian Urinals, who had a more sentimental, lyrical, and introverted flair compared to HJ... HJ, on the other hand, were doing no-wave, which is a somewhat different thing... they were psychopathic (in a good way, of course)... Johnson and Barlow were "normal" guys... 2) and here I address Vortex: dear Vortex, explain this phrase of yours: "Among the few to ennoble a period otherwise full of releases but lacking in content." :-OOO

surf's up is one of the most bittersweet songs I've ever heard: the "never ending summer" ends right at that moment...

"...When I was little, I had a pair of made in China sneakers, the kind you always saw at the beach stalls in summer, on the Adriatic, with all the pretty lights that, when you turned them on, started moving to the rhythm of a melody from some folk song, or at least that's how I've always thought of it. Here it goes, "The Shining Path"..." <<< The melody you're referring to is the Lambada, the most popular Latin-American dance in the early 90s... so many memories... probably you and I were neighboring beach umbrella buddies :-) Fantastic disco: a brilliant mockery of the ethnomusic amateurs (so trendy last decade, a bit less so today)...

never gone crazy for these guys...too pretentious...songs too complex to (want to) be hardcore (in spirit, if not in form)...nice Caress and Chamelion, the rest is worth less, including the acclaimed If It Kills You...as a release valve, I prefer to take refuge in the "usual" 80s...

I prefer to listen to the early albums (Terminal Tower, Modern Dance, and especially Dub Housing, my favorite)... starting from NPT, Pere Ubu abandoned rock, abandoned new wave, abandoned songwriting, abandoned any contact with reality (which was always present, albeit transfigured, in the early works)... in this album, as in the subsequent Art Of Walking, it's all about a playful indulgence in pure experimentation, where neither intelligence nor irony is ever lacking... after all, they could afford it... just as, for example, King Crimson could afford surreal albums like Lark Tongues and Red after having said everything there was to say in the more canonical progressive rock...

better the second, more brazen...horrible the last track, for the rest it's lip-smacking good...seminal album, no bullshit...industrial, noise, ambient, electronic, post-rock: everything is already here in this album...and all with one note or maybe a bit more: it’s confirmation that often a minimalist approach is at the root of the greatest musical innovations of recent decades...

don't listen to this record through headphones, it shakes you to the core... it's a debut that already makes you understand the greatness of the band and the talent of its members... Levene, Wobble, Lydon, Walker were all people with clear ideas who thought big... in Theme, there's already a good part of Second Edition... in Fodderstompf, a good part of Flower of Romance... the two souls of PIL, the noise and the electronic... in between, a series of remarkable post-punk tracks for their radicalism, but tedious in wanting to insist too long on the same note... a fundamental record, but without the measure of the subsequent masterpieces...