XEEROX1979-1981(Anomia)lp$ 27.00
Unheard recordings of proto-punk madness, primordial industrial ooze, and untrained no wave expressionism! Yes, those dates in the title speak to the timeframe for Xeerox, a shortlived conglomeration of anarchists, anti-musicians, and electronic dilettantes who had some pretty solid connections (if not overlap) with the seminal Spanish industrial outfit Esplendor Geometrico. One of the principle members of Xeerox was a feverishly enthusiastic fellow named Krishna Goineau, who fled Barcelona for Germany where he went on to found Liaisons Dangereuses with Beate Bartel (Malaria!) and Chris Haas (DAF). From the onset, Xeerox hoisted the ideological flag of punk but rejected much of the aesthetics of punk's rock revisionism. Their initial sound was an atonal fug of Sister Ray-isms glommed onto motorik drum-kit pulses with distantly megaphone barked vocals, presumably by Goineau. The grimy distortion which dominates the first side of untitled tracks speaks not only of the shitty cassettes that they recorded onto but also a glowing appreciation of Crass later blossoming into a full-throttle one-note minimalism prescient of the work that was just getting started by Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca. Assuming the tracks are chronological, the second half of the record finds Xeerox really coming into their own with the monomaniacal march of metal bashed rhythms, insistent electronic blorps, weirdo tape-reverse effects, maddeningly repetitive guitar plucks that put us in the best kind of trance, and some torturous amplifier noise that would make Matthew Bower howl with respect. A pretty bloody awesome find; and a pretty bloody limited pressing of just 300 copies that comes with a nicely produced booklet of suitably xeroxed band photos and instructive history from Xeerox's Javier Hernandez.
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