Bourbonese Qualk were so elusive even labeling them with the shape-shifting ‘industrial’ tag seems a mistake. Yet that’s what history has done, so despite the post-punk overtones, avant garde flashes, experimental synth buzzes, awkward quasi-funk, cold/darkwave accents and noisy nuisance, BQ’s spot in the Dewey Decimal system of modern music is secure. That shouldn’t discourage you from delving into 1983-1987 because the material therein has had an outsized influence on that which followed. Modern underground darlings German Army (covered last column) wet their beaks in the Qualk trough, as did older acts like Disco Inferno, Atari Teenage Riot and the electronic musicians of the late ’90s in general. And yet that still only covers a small swath of what Bourbonese Qualk accomplished from 1983-1987 (just imagine trying to compile their entire output; that’s the stuff of insanity). And what are we supposed to do with coy instrumental “There is No Night,” floating in a koi pond of pan flutes? Or “God With Us,” a modern-sounding collision of samples, clumsy half-rhythms and disturbing tones (reminiscent of Houston’s Indian Jewelry in advance)? Don’t even get me started on “Blood Orange Bargain Day”; just know that if you’re ever in the cockpit of an airplane in your dreams, you have a song to wake up to. Does the preceding sound like the work of a strictly adherent ‘industrial’ act? I didn’t think so; drop the labels, folks.
More about: Bourbonese Qualk
