Missing Foundation
1933

LA RECENSIONE

Talking about an album like this is akin to recounting a monstrous, indescribable experience... without comparison!

"1933" is just over 35 minutes long, the second work by New York's 'Missing Foundation', a band with a terrifying sound, among the most extreme and anarchic of the late 1980s underground scene, yet those 35 minutes reveal an anxiety of rebellion, a moral filth, and a profound unrest that have few rivals.

The group's absolutely nonconformist attitude, combined with the spartan production without any refinement, makes it a masterpiece of crudeness and baseness. The tracks contained are authentic retches, spits in the face of the American oligarchy's propriety. Feral growls, inhuman screams, percussion (though it would be more accurate to say "destruction") caused by instruments hurled everywhere and smashed to pieces: these are what make up the first track, "Kingsland 61", which is nothing more than a homicidal outburst, dictated by the rawest and most irrational violence and madness.

The next one, "Burn Trees" is already more accessible, yet still devoid of any logic, with spastic screams emitted with the finesse of a gorilla that counterbalance a bassline that is inhumanly distorted and repetitive. You'll never find "lyrics" from Missing Foundation; the tracks of this group don't have "lyrics" in the common sense of the word; they don't care about people singing their songs, they care about being branded into consciousnesses (it may seem paradoxical, but tell me: is it easier to remember a hundred words or a hundred screams?). "Invasion of your privacy" is pure avant-garde: the title of the track is repeated to the point of exhaustion over a catastrophic backdrop, where a little bit of everything happens, just as a lot happens in "At The Gates": again a scream, again distortion, again absence of humanity, again bestiality.

The tracks are often steeped in the atmosphere typical of the most radical demonstrations and protests (and this showcases the political side of the band). "Message from hell" is a chilling chant from the flames of hell, while "Go Sit On The Beach" takes the form of the desperate cry of a condemned man who finds only emptiness around him and echoes upon himself. "Jamees Turmoil" is the most "chromian" track, which showcases notable percussive skill; the title-track finally seems set in a Nazi camp; thuds, tracks, and industrial presses form its "melodic" base.

An extremely underrated album, "1933" is one of the most formidable examples of extreme Dadaism, a perfect suture point between the industrial Dadaism of Throbbing Gristle and the visceral fury of hardcore groups. It would be wrong to approach this album with the intent to "label" it: "1933" should be listened to without prejudice and without the intent of aesthetic judgment, it must be "absorbed" literally.

Afterward, you might not be the same.