•
Rating: The Glaxo Babies are one of the various groups (along with Maximum Joy, Rip Rig & Panic, Pigbag) spawned from a rib of the seminal Pop Group, a group born at the end of the seventies, authors of a funk/punk (punk only because no one knew how to play their instrument well) psychotic and bewildering sound that reaches its peak in the formidable debut album Y.
Dan Catsis is a founding member of the Glaxo Babies, a bassist featured in the recording of the ever-formidable second album of the Pop Group, "For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder," who, along with Tom Nichols and Tony Wrafter, gave birth to this "Nine Months To The Disco" in 1980. The album, entirely instrumental if you exclude some pre-recorded voices, starts off at full throttle with Maximum Sexual Joy (a reference to Maximum Joy), a sort of outtake from the aforementioned "Pop Group," a frenetic and direct funky with treated and filtered voice intrusions. Until now, however, it's something already heard (even though well done), it's with This Is Vendetta that things change; the album gains a gloomy and cryptic aura, black bass lines and snare echoes bringing light to the deepest underground. The crooked structure of Seven Days is transfigured by a piano free from rules and punctuated by trumpet spikes creating breathlessness and a certain anxiety. Only the bass line is well defined, a decisive stroke on multicolored shades. An orgy of horns dominates Electric Church, a cabaret sketch played by the Residents on amphetamine. The first side closes with the Title Track, a dub with reverse drums always in dark and strong shades.
The second side starts like the first, Promise Land is a hammering, accelerated 4/4 submerged by a marasma of voices with a final crescendo of noise until implosion. Passing through the horror film-like chant of The Tea, it speeds up again with Free Dem Cells, a fantastic piece that all the current punk/funk puppets should memorize (the bass line is memorable). In short, the Glaxo Babies play with the listener’s perceptions, displacing with sudden mood changes that only share a primitive and rough soul, they tend to create dense and immobile clouds of smoke only to tear them apart with sudden and monolithic funk blocks (namely Maximum Sexual Joy, Free Dem Cells, Conscience, which for some reason bring to mind the Theoretical Girls, the Contortions, and a few other No Wave groans) creating a work not for everyone, where only the last track, Shake The Foundation, settles on classic canons, appearing quite out of place.
The album cover says it all, a fascinating sketch in bright colors where the black shades appear brutal, and therefore even more sensual.
Loading comments slowly
