1990: "Tricky Disco", Tricky Disco

Tricky Disco is one of scores of pseudonyms used by spousal duo Lee Newman and Michael Wells (Greater Than One [industrial] and Church of Extacy [techno] are probably the two best known). "Tricky Disco" and its follow up, "House Fly", both landed on Warp Records before Newman and Wells got side tracked on lord knows what other projects... some of which we'll no doubt stumble upon by happenstance as this blog gets further into the 90s.

1990: "Aftermath", Nightmares on Wax

One of the clubbier tracks to drop on Warp in the early days was this follow up to Nightmares on Wax's 1989 hit, "Dextrous". "Aftermath" is too minimal and subdued to qualify as rave, but it did boast a formulaic house vocal refrain, which is a lot more of a nod to mainstream club culture than the label could be counted on for once the likes of Aphex Twin and Autechre started popping up.

Nightmares on Wax released an album in 1991 before falling off the face of the earth for a few years, finally returning in 1995 to re-establish themselves as a pivotal act in the trip hop scene.

[ed. note: ignore the "1991" in the YT vid title; I've verified through several sources that the original "Aftermath" single was released in 1990, though the track's appearance on the 1991 N.o.W. album A Word of Science: The First and Final Chapter may have resulted in the confusion.

Also, I'm beginning to think that Jarvis Cocker must have been Warp's house visual guy at the time.]

1990: "Testone", Sweet Exorcist

Another early Warp Records signing was Sweet Exorcist, a side project of Richard H. Kirk (Cabaret Voltaire). Kirk must have been funneling a large part of his talent into these side projects, because around this same time Cabaret Voltaire were just kicking off their acid house phase in truly anemic style; they'd rebound and establish legit credentials in the genre with 1992's Plasticity but, suffice to say, there will be no WKMR coverage of their 1990 elevator house opus Groovy, Laidback and Nasty.

By the way, the following clip was directed by Pulp's Jarvis Cocker. They must have met in a bar or something...

1990: "LFO", LFO

Though they would eventually become synonymous with the IDM genre, Warp Records started life in 1989 releasing rave-based club bangers with a slightly more cerebral edge, as noted on "LFO" by the eponymous Leeds duo of the same name. Comprised of Mark Bell and Gez Varley, LFO would go on to even greater fame as remix artists, with Bell also making a name for himself as one of the more sought after producers in the late 90s, when numerous pop and alternative acts got the techno bug and sought veteran DJs and engineers in the genre to assist them in "crossing over".

1990: "Fun to Be Had", Nitzer Ebb

Coming off like a cross between the hip hop-informed Meat Beat Manifesto and the new wave-steeped A Split Second, "Fun to Be Had" either sounds like a groundbreaking classic or an aggro version of "Wham Rap", depending on one's post-millennial sensibilities. My own affections fall somewhere between those two extremes, but if anything these last few posts should show the widening gulf between many of the "old guard" and the new in the EBM / industrial overlap.

By 1990, many of the groups formed in the mid-80s found themselves floundering between heightened exposure of their musical niche and the skeletal, minimalist songwriting that had won them favor in the 80s but had since fallen out of style; not all, certainly, and many would rebound later with bigger budgets and forward thinking producers, but in the meantime there were plenty of stilted throwbacks like "Fun to Be Had": endearing yet fossilized, stagnant yet timeless, classic yet decidedly not...

1990: "The Parallax View", A Split Second

EBM - Electronic Body Music - was largely pioneered in the early-to-mid 80s by Belgian duo Front 242 as a new wave-inspired, dance-friendly take on the increasingly mechanistic beats of industrial music. Considered by most a subgenre of industrial, it also afforded a good deal of crossover potential with the burgeoning techno movement at the end of the 80s.

A Split Second were a little long in the tooth to be learning new tricks from acid house - unlike younger upstarts Meat Beat Manifesto, for instance - so "The Parallax View" sounds like it could have just as easily come out in 1984 as 1990, when it first appeared on the Kiss of Fury album... and yet ASS' 1986 debut single, Flesh, is often cited as the first New Beat record, a short lived micro-genre that directly inspired acid house and whose most famous artist, Praga Khan, would go on to be a key figure in early rave with his industrial-tinged Lords of Acid sect.

There were some solid remixes of "The Parallax View", but since the 12" single didn't come out until 1991 I'll stick with the 1990 album version for chronology's sake.

1990: "Psyche-Out (Version 1)", Meat Beat Manifesto

Forging a career out of identity crisis, the fact that UK native Jack Dangers has gotten away with straddling the boundaries of industrial, techno, dub, hip hop and just about any other dance related genre you could dream up - never entirely committing to any specific genre convention - for over two decades is a testament to the man's creativity and engineering skills.

99% was the third Meat Beat Manifesto album in two years, and the second of 1990 (though that same year's Armed Audio Warfare consisted of archival recordings intended for the group's first album in 1988). "Psyche-Out (Version 1)" is a remix of a 99% album cut via 12" single, and though fairly minimal - it was 1990, after all - one can cut through the acid house tropes and pick apart a number of contemporary influences: the emphasis on original vocals, which were not prominent at all (aside from samples) in the acid house / rave movement but did have a lot in common with industrial dance groups like My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult and KMFDM, or even the New Beat stylings of Lords of Acid; skeletal bass lines in an early Depeche Mode vein; a fairly sedate, almost swinging tempo, 100x removed from the frantic BPM wars of the techno genre, which was more in line with late 80s hip hop or even early 80s synth pop... the list goes on, as does the beat.

1990: "Spasmolytic", Skinny Puppy

Rightfully heralded as one of the elite, most influential (electro-) industrial bands of the 80s, Skinny Puppy had long since planted their flag by the dawn of the 90s, establishing themselves as a difficult cult act with no hint of grooming themselves for mainstream success. Too Dark Park turned out to be every bit as murky and inaccessible as their previous records, but it was hard to deny by this point that their songwriting skills had improved immensely since the early minimalism of "The Choke" and "Deep Down Trauma Hounds".

Skinny Puppy - helmed by Nivek Ogre {a.k.a. ohGr) and cEvin Key - extended their agitprop aesthetic into their stage show as well, screening confrontational footage consisting of Iraq war footage and Budd Dwyer's on air suicide amongst other discomforting visuals. The music video for "Spasmolytic" was directed by obscure exploitation auteur Jim Van Bebber, who at that point was known almost solely for the hysterically violent 1988 gang war film Deadbeat at Dawn. Van Bebber and Skinny Puppy... an inspired pairing.

1990: "Memories Remain", Obituary

Hailing from the same South Florida backwater swamp as influences and label mates Death, Obituary nicked a lot from Death early on: John Tardy's guttural vocals a near dead ringer for Chuck Schuldiner's distinctive howl, the musical focus on an atmosphere of dread as much as uptempo brutality also a hallmark of Death circa 1990, etc. But at this point Cannibal Corpse and the Florida bands were all the death metal that most Americans had heard, and Obituary more than made up in quality what they lacked in originality. Over the long haul, though, the lack of brutality on top of an unwillingness to progress would eventually find the band falling out of step with the cutting edge of death metal, leading to a prolonged break up beginning in the late 90s.

1990: "Lunatic of God's Creation", Deicide

Another early entry in the Florida death metal canon, Deicide was a fan favorite right out of the gate, both for their uncompromising brutality as well as frontman Glen Benton's revival of hardcore Satanism in the metal genre, a theme which had long since fallen out of favor in late 80s thrash (Slayer's South of Heaven being one of the last high profile metal albums to feature unapologetic pro-Satan tropes, which in 1988 had already begun to make the album sound dated).

Deicide, according to a Blabbermouth news item (which I won't bother to link to since the item itself doesn't cite a direct source), is allegedly listed by Nielsen SoundScan as the second biggest selling death metal album of all time; in fact, it may very well be the genre's top seller, as its release predated the SoundScan era, whereas the official #1 - Morbid Angel's 1993 album Covenant - did not... so we can expect that Covenant's sales figures are pretty well accounted for, whereas a pretty significant chunk of early sales for Deicide are not.

At any rate the album is a veritable "greatest hits" of death metal classics, with nearly all of its songs remaining fan faves today. Hell, this album was so popular at the time that Roadrunner would release the original demos of these tracks three years later as Amon, Feasting the Beast. I could have chosen just about any of these cuts as representative of the Deicide ethos, but opening track "Lunatic of God's Creation" says it all about as well as anything else could.

1990: "A Skull Full of Maggots", Cannibal Corpse

One of the first bands to take the baton from the vastly influential Death album Scream Bloody Gore and run with it, Cannibal Corpse formed in 1988 in the barren frigidity of Buffalo, NY... the polar opposite of the swampy biosphere Death's members were culling for inspiration. Cannibal Corpse, led by frontman Chris Barnes, would take the gory lyrics of Death to new extremes, making that disgusting imagery their stock in trade. Aside from later replacing Barnes with George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher, CC have for the most part continued mining the same gore-laden brutality with little variation in the two decades since, making them one of the premier torchbearers for old school death metal.

Eaten Back to Life was the band's debut, and though it was considered an instant classic at the time, it's been handed down in history as one of the lesser Corpse albums. Even as early as 2000, when the group's first live album was released, "A Skull Full of Maggots" was the only song off of Eaten Back to Life that still regularly made its way into the set list.

1990: "Defensive Personalities", Death

Back from a long hiatus, the holidays have wrung all the wholesome, life affirming essence out of me. What better way to get back into the swing of things, then, than with a series of entries on the burgeoning death metal movement at the turn of the 90s?

Probably seems kind of lame/obvious starting off with the actual band Death, but unsurprisingly the Chuck Schuldiner-led ensemble was one of the seminal acts in creating the death metal template as an extreme spin off of thrash. The genre itself was inadvertently christened in 1985 by Bay Area band Possessed, on a song by the same name off of their Seven Churches album, but at the time Possessed were seen less as a pioneering new influence and more of a traditional, sloppy thrash group a la contemporary Celtic Frost and early Venom. Like many pioneers, Possessed would have to wait until their field was a little more crowded before fans retroactively began to realize that they were on to something new, instead of just peddling a particularly virulent strain of thrash.

Death was the band that served notice that a new form of metal was here to stay. 1987's Scream Bloody Gore set the bar immediately for those who wished to consider themselves on the cutting edge of extremity, the stomach churning lyrics, guttural vocals and darker, more sinister riffs establishing a prototype for all death metal bands to come (a fact not lost on burgeoning thrash bands in Florida, which would become geographically to death metal as the Bay Area was to thrash).

By 1990, however, Schuldiner was on album number three, and had already lightened up the pace somewhat in favor of more technical musicianship. Spiritual Healing largely retreated back toward thrash, save for the guttural vocals - Schuldiner could sing no other way - and wasn't particularly well received at the time. In hindsight, it's an essential stepping stone in the evolution that would lead to the band's late period masterpieces Symbolic and The Sound of Perserverance. Schuldiner himself would eventually downplay his role in the rise of death metal, proclaiming "I don’t think I should take credit for this death metal stuff. I’m just a guy from a band, and I think Death is a metal band".

Nonetheless, though he would never again write an album with the visceral brutality of Scream Bloody Gore, Schuldiner retained sufficient respect and a large enough fanbase that Spiritual Healing and - in particular - later efforts would make him an influential figure in the technical death metal movement, which would peak in popularity in the mid-to-late 90s.

1990: "Staring at the Sun", Ultra Vivid Scene

Sounding for all the world like a British band too dedicated to the melodic hook to fully embrace shoegaze, Ultra Vivid Scene were actually an American band whose singer sported a slight, faux-English accent peeking gently through the gauzy vocals. Their rise coincided with the genesis and early gestation of shoegaze, but aside from a tangential affinity for the breezier aspects of dream pop, Ultra Vivid Scene pretty much made their own way.

None too coincidentally given their sound, UVS broke through in the UK first with their self titled debut in 1989, notching several chart hits there and focusing their touring almost exclusively overseas. When Joy 1967-1990 - an obvious allusion to their penchant for classic Britpop melodies - emerged in 1990, the trend reversed, with no further hits forthcoming in the UK, but literally every single from that point on placing (at least modestly) in the US Modern Rock chart.

Apparently that wasn't enough. After a final album two years later, Ultra Vivid Scene disbanded, singer / guitarist Kurt Ralske going on to do production work for several years before eventually becoming a well respected visual artist. The rest of the band... who knows?

1990: "Let Love Speak Up Itself", The Beautiful South

When the Housemartins broke up in 1988, Paul Heaton and Dave Hemingway quickly regrouped as the soulful alternative quintet the Beautiful South. Picking up more or less where the Housemartins left off, but ratcheting up the R&B / 60s pop influences, both Heaton and Hemingway would share vocal duties with a revolving door procession of female vocalists. As is typical of most bands that are distinctly English, the Beautiful South didn't make much noise in the US, but back home they were a reasonably successful top 40 group.

1990's Choke LP gave the group their first - and so far only - #1 hit in the UK with "A Little Time". My own American ears prefers "Let Love Speak Up Itself", which was the final single released off the album and fared a less significant #51 even in Great Britain, but that just goes to show how much tastes can change from one side of the pond to the other.

1990: "Don Henley Must Die", Mojo Nixon

Surprisingly this live rendition is the only version of "Don Henley Must Die" that Youtube currently boasts, and the recording quality is juuuuuuuuuuuust good enough that I'm willing to settle for it rather than slapping together my own out of static images and beer-fueled motivation.

Mojo Nixon, along with partner Skid Roper, managed to milk his brand of college humor and redneck roots rock for a number of entertaining albums starting in the mid-80s, but by 1990's Roper-less Otis things had largely taken a turn for the stale and obligatory. "Don Henley Must Die" is one of the few cuts from that album worth hearing, frankly, but it's also one of Mojo Nixon's most beloved so it's worth salvaging.

Legend has it that Mojo was playing the Hole in the Wall across from the University of Texas one night when Don Henley unexpectedly emerged from the crowd and joined Nixon on stage for a rousing version of Henley's namesake ditty. No word, however, on whether Debbie Gibson ever actually spawned Nixon's illegitimate mutant seed. That one I'm treating as a rumor.

1990: "Obscurity Knocks", The Trash Can Sinatras

The Trash Can Sinatras hailed from Scotland and, having been together for a solid three years by the time 1990 rolled around, were understandably a bit more mired in jangly new wave while most of their British peers were off exploring folksier idioms, or indulging in the trendy Madchester / acid house crossover that was all the rage at the time. Their penchant for sing-song pop melodies ties them closely to their hometown Postcard Records sound - a label that only turned out around a dozen singles at the turn of the 80s but were very influential - but the Sinatras have a much more accessible, mainstream sound than their Postcard brethren. Their hooks are not necessarily over-the-top infectious, but the articulate, poetic lyrics need repeat listens to sink in anyway. Except for breaking up during most of the late 90s the Trash Can Sinatras have been an ongoing concern since Cake, their debut album, came out shortly on the heels of the "Obscurity Knocks" single in 1990.

[NOTE: you'll see it spelled both Trash Can Sinatras and Trashcan Sinatras; on the Cake sleeve it bears the grammar that I've given here, but albums released in the 2000s have the truncated version. Because the band themselves currently prefer two words over three, many fans refer to even the older material as Trashcan Sinatras]

1990: "Celebrate", An Emotional Fish

Contemporaries of A House, An Emotional Fish also hailed from Dublin but followed neither in the path of U2 - throughout the 80s a prevailing influence on Irish alternative rock - nor the burgeoning neo-folk strains of indie rock other of their countrymen were dabbling in. Listening to "Celebrate", in fact, one hears an almost stubborn adherence to the tropes of 80s English new wave. The critics raved, nonetheless, as the songwriting was compelling in spite of all lack of trendiness, but the public had heard enough by this point, and An Emotional Fish would take another three years to pump out a follow up album (to much less acclaim this time) before packing it in after their third effort in 1994 (that third album being such an afterthought it wasn't released in the US until 1996).

1990: "The Patron Saint of Mediocrity", A House

With a number of modern folk-based indie rock bands from the UK making waves - ie. Frightened Rabbit, The Frames - it's worth revisiting A House, a Dublin band that, starting in the late 80s, willfully eschewed the ringing chords of countrymen U2 in favor of a trad "return to zero"... not trad in the sense of the Pogues, necessarily, but rather a defiantly nationalist mix of rock and folk music a la the type that provided the springboard for the singer-songwriter movement in 60s America, except in the vein of traditional British folk idioms rather than the protest songs of Woody Guthrie or the bluesier roots music of Leadbelly. Never charting during their lifespan (even in the UK), A House have nonetheless become somewhat of a cult classic over the years - particularly in their homeland - though no reunions have been forthcoming since their 1997 breakup, and frontman Dave Couse has released only three solo albums over the years, almost universally to indifference from all but the most hardcore A House fans.

1990: "My Little Problem", The Replacements

I already had to break out the Windows Movie Maker on account of not being able to find a single Youtube video of the Silos, so I figured I'd kill two birds and get around to that homebrewed Replacements video like I earlier promised. It's still astounding to me that "My Little Problem" hasn't been handed down as one of the six or eight best Paul Westerberg songs ever, but considering it heralds from the hands down worst of the non-punk Replacements records perhaps it's no surprise (ie. Sorry Ma Forgot to Take Out the Trash is worse but that's like comparing Meat Puppets to Huevos).

Originally intended as Westerberg's solo debut, All Shook Down has a smattering of the Replacements here and there functioning as session musicians, but rarely in the same place. "My Little Problem" was buried toward the end of the track sequencing but, again, I don't see how anyone can listen to the full album and not cherry pick this song as its brightest moment. A duet with Concrete Blonde's Johnette Napolitano, whose fierce singing makes the likes of Chrissie Hynde and Joan Jett both look like shoegazers by comparison, "Problem" rides a clean, driving riff hearkening back to mid-80s LA (no, not hair band LA, LA LA). A fitting end to the Replacements legacy, even if the rest of the album did its best to sandbag that effort.

SPOTLIGHT: Decline of Hair Metal pre-"Nevermind"

There's a common narrative that has long since spilled over from academic / journalist circles into public discourse: in 1991, hair metal bands like Poison, Motley Crue, Winger, etc still ruled over the kingdom of pop music, their reign unchallenged and seemingly bulletproof until Nirvana came along in September of that year and banished the hairspray and Spandex brigade to the hinterlands, never to be heard from again.

Well, I'm not here to argue the idea that Nevermind changed the popular music landscape - that it certainly did - but there is a decided bit of myth making to the other end of the argument that it's high time was exposed, that being the idea that hair metal was still in a sanguine state at the time. On the contrary, as we'll see below, hair metal peaked around 1987-88 and by two years later was already a shadow of its former self.