My favorite KC album by a country mile, and wonderfully remastered as part of the 40th Anniversary series courtesy of Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree, as well as Robert Fripp himself.
I could give you fifteen billion reasons to own this record if you haven't gotten it already. Besides the fact it's one of my favorite albums of all time that is. Lets see...the fact its a rare poster child of sorts, representing the brilliance of post-infancy New Wave merged with unparalleled proggy. complexity and melodious intent would be one. Another one would be that every song is goddamn perfect, including but not limited to the jazzy swing of ballad 'Matte Kudasai' and tribal-led transcendence of 'The Sheltering Sky'.
Or....I dunno, you could just take my word for it and give it a fighting chance?
Blistering and demented even in it's quietest moments, This Heat's debut is a fundamentally different specie of record than it's infamously more accessible followup Deceit; they fume and smolder with strange, primitive ideas.
Put another way, the songs present here are worlds within themselves: 'Not Waving' is the ideal drone-jazz funeral dirge, or perhaps its merely the band's nod to Brian Eno and his work with No New York the previous year...but when you have such menacing, virulent industrialism at play on the groundbreaking 'The Fall Of Saigon' and an uncharacteristically amazing throwback to Can's classic percussive heyday on 'Twilight Furniture', the fact that this fantastic group debuted before 1980 seems almost like a fantasy. Amalgamating many of the best qualities of free jazz, fledgling post-punk, no wave and progressive rock into a compelling horror story before others had caught on is no small feat after all...
If there has ever been a musician that I would consider to be a boneified personal musical idol, it would probably be Bill Laswell. He's done it all, seen it all, and as a bass player is easily on par with the best that the funk, jazz and any musical world you can think of have to offer.
Before he would work with such established legends like Buckethead and Iggy Pop though, Laswell was part of many an interesting project as a young man growing up in the 70's and 80's, polishing his talents and eventually hooking up in New York city with a bunch of people who would go on to form a great little No-Wave band called Material, with 1981's Memory Serves being their debut shot at the big leagues that be.
But man, what a strange record this is, even considering the scene it was birthed from. It's nothing like the punk-jazz or distorted classically influenced noise rock of their Brian Eno-collected peers. Rather, Memory Serves is comparable to a freakish nightmare where Talking Heads and Magma have a little troll together after a night in the sack without birth control, an embittered progeny which subsequently grows up on a steady diet of Henry Cow and Parliament and decides to write sonatas for a living instead of going to medical school to to get his P.h.d in Psychiatry.
Amusingly enough, the funk influence is a force to be reckoned with: even such exercises in dissonance like 'Square Dance' and sludge kickin' 'Silent Land' can't fully suppress the primal groove which blazes through these songs like a leyline.
However, Memory Serves is at it's most enchanting when the rhythm of the heat manages to work in complete balance with whatever off-kilter arrangement is at play, such as the playfully agressive sax boppin' title track and New Order bounciness that seems to bleed through 'Conform To The Rhythm' from its opening contortions to a fine, percussive fadeout that hints at something beyond its runtime. Where might it have gone if given another minute? Or ten even?
For those will to take a leap into Bill Laswell's bone-crunchingly colossal discography, this might be a great place to begin one's voyage. For everyone else though, it's just a messy fun early 80's slice of experimentation to get lost in for an evening or two.
Regardless of what camp of listener you fall under, though, you'll most certainly find it quality.
