AA.VV.
No New York

Perhaps the album that has influenced rock more than any other in the past 25 years. And it's no joke. If you're willing to make a small sacrifice to get it, you can safely flush half of the noise, grunge, or alternative albums you have at home down the toilet (or at least sell them, which is more practical). The compilation is composed of sixteen tracks produced by Brian Eno and composed by four bands from the Big Apple, united only by their desire to tear apart the unwritten rules of rock; their weapons were: rawness, experimentation, and paranoia.

The first four tracks are by James Chance & the Contortions, perhaps the best of the bunch, with "Dish It Out" already marking a masterpiece: fast rhythm backed by a "rubbery" bass, noise interference from the saxophone, and then the unprecedented entry of James Chance's voice. Many had sung rock with anger until then, but none with such ferocity and lucid madness; Chance’s fierce singing greatly influenced the alternative music of the '80s and '90s. Equally splendid and compelling is "Flip Your Face," featuring a bass reminiscent perhaps of Nirvana's sound thirteen years later, only that in this case, it's in the service of a track far more radical than the verse-chorus-verse formula of the Seattle group. "Jaded," on the other hand, is a slow and sick piece lashed by the "two voices" of Chance: his own and that of his noise-sax.

The Contortions bid farewell with an excellent and twisted cover of James Brown and pass the baton to Teenage Jesus & the Jerks by Lydia Lunch, who instead of singing, seems to cry plaintively. Their songs are chants that at some point seem to jolt, accelerate, and then, instead of exploding, they calm down and return to the previous agonizing lament. The trio also gifts us the adrenaline rush of "Red Alert," an instrumental hammering that is adrenaline-fueled even in duration (just over thirty seconds).

The Mars craft a masterpiece with the ultra-noise of "Helen Fordsdale," and after listening to it, Sonic Youth might suddenly seem less brilliant than you thought. The other three tracks by Mars are noise improvisations with vocals that become distant and unintelligible screams. D.N.A. closes magnificently with tracks that, unlike their companions, also feature raw and disorienting electronic experiments by Robin Crutchfield, complemented by the hammering of the Japanese Ikue Mori and the sharp (and obviously noisy) guitar of Arto Lindsay. All this was done in the year 1978. Five flat.