There have been plenty of times in working on this series when I've found myself writing about an album or band about which I really should know more than I do, and I usually either skirt around or self-deprecatingly flaunt my ignorance, depending on my mood. But then there are the bands or albums that I'm pretty sure I never would have come across if I hadn't pulled them off the KEXP shelves, and those are always fun.I had certainly never heard of the New Zealand band Skeptics (or The Skeptics, depending on where you look), or their album Skeptics III (or maybe just III?), but based on the reviews here and what little I've found about them online, I'm very glad to have found this album and am looking forward to listening to it. It seems one of the things the band is best known for (or known for at all), is a shockingly brutal music video they made for a song from this album called "AFFCO" (named after a New Zealand meat processing company). I just watched a few seconds of it with the sound off, which was long enough to know that I should have been doing it the other way around. The video features brutal footage of lambs being slaughtered, and was banned (perhaps still is banned?) in New Zealand. Of course in 1989 there was no youtube, and either because of the ban or the sheer distance between New Zealand and Seattle, our KCMU friends seem not to have heard a peep about it. Which, whatever you think of the band's motivations for creating said video, might have improved their experience of listening to the album.
"Grunge industrial rock overlaid w/sampling. Gripping.""They get an A+ for the song title on the end of side I. ["La Motta"?] TENTATIVE yet driving. Weird shifts & surprises in every tune. H?"
"This is great! 'Rain' moves. Other stuff can be hard to classify. Look forward to playing it again hostess."
"I'm not sick of this yet... it still seems awesome every time! 6/1/89"
"From New Zealand"
"Thrillsville"
"Pop with industrial accents industrial pop. Wow - very original music! I need to listen to more of this."
"Fills my my bell peppers with fresh mozzarella - then I empty my socks - mmmmm"
"This is way cool! How come everything we get from New Zealand is a couple years old?"
"Because Homestead was kind enough to mail these to us - Better late than never..."
"This is so damn cool. And that means to PLAY!!"
"Right on!"
"Really great stuff."
Matt Johnson's The The is yet another band (or musical project, if you prefer, since it seems to have been Johnson and whatever troupe of brilliant musicians he could round up when it came time to make a record) that I never listened to in their heyday/my youth, and I can't quite figure out why. Ma…
I was so excited about going to see Television next week at the Moore that I had this whole plan to do a post around their two first albums and had it all ready to go before I realized that I'd covered the KCMU DJs' gushing response to their classic debut, Marquee Moon a few years ago. But that's a…
