This is the new 2016 edition of Soul Jazz Records' long out of print first New York Noise collection, Dance Music From The New York Underground 1978-82. New York Noise is the story of the intersection between experimental dance music and art in downtown New York. This ground-breaking release gave rise to a series of three albums featuring the likes of Snatch, Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, Sonic Youth, Ut, Jim Jarmusch and many more downtown figures as well as a deluxe photography book that featured everyone from David Byrne to Madonna (now out-of-print). This new 2015 edition features classic New York post-punk, punk funk and no wave tracks from Arthur Russell/Dinosaur L, James White and the Contortions, The Theoretical Girls, Mars, Konk, Material, Bush Tetras, Lizzy Mecrier Descloux as well as new tracks by Alan Vega (Suicide), Chain Gang and Implog.
T**I
Re-booted - Out With The Funky, In With The Spikey.
this is an updated version of the collection first issued in 2003, and has been improved by the re-fit. the tracks on the original that were deemed too straightforwardly funky have been sacrificed for replacements that are more indicative to the time, place and theme for which the collection was gathered. so, as much as i enjoy defunkt, it's perfectly understandable why they were expelled from this compilation. this scene was born out of new york punk, after the initial bubble had burst and appetites developed for, well, development. things spiralled off in many different directions, creating many different scenes and cultures, including this, which, to put simply was the punkification of funk (a movement championed in the u.k. by the likes of the pop group, gang of four and a certain ratio). the new york result produced music that couldn't have come from any other time and place, and for the most part soul jazz have nailed it.starts like a train, and save dinosaur l's jazz-funk interlude, continues apace for the first 10 tracks. included in this onslaught are the contortions' brilliant 'contort yourself', the chain gang's 'son of sam' and 'too many creeps' by bush tetras. all excellent, and bringing us to the least fitting in theme, but perversely, my favourite track on show, alan vega's epic 'bye bye bayou' (from his storming 'alan vega' record). on second thoughts, where else are you going to put alan vega? this is followed by the spikey '3e' from mars, and it's after this that things start to tail off a little, with a fairly ordinary piece from konk, of a percussive nature, the kind of thing a.c.r. did much better. from then till the end things are 'fine', without having the same impact as the first two thirds, although taken up a notch by the bush tetras insisting that 'you can't be funky', in a style not a million miles from talking heads/b-52's. impLOG finish off the collection with a suitably funky 'breakfast'.this is very close to being a 'belter', but just falls short, even despite the re-boot, a couple of pedestrian tracks preventing it being so, but looking at the percentages, it's still an important document of a time and place that can never be duplicated.
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