Various Artists - Death Before Disco
(Prince House)
Ghost Orchids - The King is Dead
(Prince House)
Compilations are fun as time capsules. I have a handful of punk/new wave compilations that are twenty plus years old now and its great to hear what kinds of crazy crap the kids were pumping out, because on compilations you don't get a nice summation of the best of the era/genre (the stuff that survives, the stuff that we have all heard). What you get is a more accurate reflection of what was happening. You get the bands that gigged around and disappeared. Some of it deserves to disappear, but some of it is truly eye opening.
San Francisco's Prince House Records is working furiously to get the world to recognize that skinny, greasy kids like synths and dancing even outside of Brooklyn. So they are trying to create a cohesive scene out of left coast electroclash, discopunk (what the old folks used to call avant funk), and related artists. Part of this effort includes the Death Before Disco compilation, with a full fifteen separate groups that want you to dance in their darkness.
They've got a couple names to help shift units, like I Am Spoonbender, Adult., Dance Disaster Movement, and stalwarts Gogogo Airheart. They've also got a number of notable up and comers like Ghost Orchids, A Tension, and Vanishing. What is notable about this batch of artists is the proto-industrial/goth aesthetic that they are bringing to the table. Rather than electroclash born of cheap disco, this stuff sounds more like its coming out of the dark Throbbing Gristle/Cabaret Voltaire closet of electronic music.
I don't know how many of these groups are going to become underground superstars. Some of the stuff which leans more towards conventional house and techno kind of sucks, some is fairly uninspired, but there is enough intriguing material here to hopefully turn on some kid to early 21st century cheap electronics halfway through the century.
One group in particular, Ghost Orchids, deserves longevity. I initially approached their record, The King is Dead with some trepidation because the track included on Death Before Disco, "Keep Your Secrets," didn't grab me (despite the fact it cribs lyrics from The Clash, a plus in my book) and was, I thought, a poor lead off to the compilation. It turns out it works out better within the context of their album, but, even then, its perhaps the weakest track. Perhaps this was for the best, though, because, man, The King is Dead really freaked me out.
Spare arrangements highlight the starkness of their music. The moods range from brooding menacingly to menacing. They match up the homemade electronics sound of the aforementioned early industrial artists with live bass, which provides a deeper low-end, and a groove, so that you can more readily dance to the creepiness. "Love Inversions" invokes an earlier Coil, from their trance phase, bridging the gap between primal urges and smoother electronics. "Fierce Child," is almost purely percussive, a pastiche of pulsing electronics, ticking drum machines, and some electronic beats that punch through the silence, all backing breathless female vocals whispering secrets like "it was moving, it was inside, but it was not me." Its not until the title track, three-quarters of the way through the record that they really let loose. Electronic drones move simultaneously up and down in pitch, the vocals move from strained to screaming and back again, all creating a spinning sensation, which will occasionally abruptly halt. It's a startling achievement (made more deliciously so by lyrics stolen from The Smiths).
Ghost Orchids, although spare and low-tech, have a fully realized sound that one looks forward to hearing become more refined in the future.
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