The groundbreaking debut album by Suicide will be re released as part of the Art of the Album series by Mute this July. A great deal has been written about this record, originally released in 1977 to virtually no critical acclaim but which has become one of the most influential collections of music ever. Fighting Boredom have been revisiting it and this is how we feel.
The first time I heard this was at my friends’ bedsit in Coventry, he’d found a copy of the record in a second hand shop and was gloating about it. We’d both read about this holiest of holy influential, sounds like nothing else, futuristic album in the music press for years. That’s not an exaggeration. In the old days, back when we were teenagers, a lot of records had gone out of press and the only way to hear them was to trawl second hand shops, classified ads in the music papers or tape a copy off a friend, usually a far cooler older friend. In the absence of any of these, you waited and imagined what things sounded like.
When he put it on, it sounded like something from another planet. I hadn’t heard much electronic music at that point, I was pretty much all guitar based in my tastes, but this was something else. It opened up stuff for me as it did for many others. If you haven’t heard this, then get on it, if you have, why would you not want it on shiny red vinyl.
It’s been reissued as part of Mute’s Art of the Album series. No extra tracks to distract from the original vision, remastered and blinking in the sunshine even behind the huge shades. It doesn’t need extras, this stands alone as a slice of dirty, sleazy, cracked neon lit New York danger. Steam, blood, sweat and sex fills this record. It’s perfect. A perfect throb as it lodges itself behind your aching temples and drops fully formed into your brain.
Everything that has been said about this album is true. Brilliant
