I never knew sci-fi punk existed until the whirling UFOs and explosions began shrouding Androids Of Mu’s Blood Robots in effects shrapnel (kind of like how I didn’t know aliens existed until they probed my virgin bottom; sorry mom), but there it is, and it’s nice to know it existed, even if many of you didn’t know then and don’t know now. Rectify that; it’s the only way to make those demons go away.
The instrumentation is extremely crude, even for punk in its infancy. Bess, the bass player who’s supposed to serve as a rudder for this slow-rumbling punk pontoon boat, fumbles around like it’s an audition for The Shaggs, while the guitar players, Corrina and Deborah Thomas, follow suit. Drummer Cozmic might have garnered a little experience before joining this band, and even throws in a fill or two, but Keith Moon is still rolling over in his grave. What we have here essentially is the essence of the artform: Sloppy music played by sloppy people for other sloppy people. Yet it’s not that simple.
What to make of those cosmic WHOOOSHES that enter the fray every so often, in particular on the remarkably wobbly “Pretty Nun” and album-opener “Atomic X”? It’s interesting to note that, despite amateurish musicianship, Androids Of Mu represented anything but your typical, furiously simple punk act. They sang about “Bored Housewifes” (in the soon-to-be era of fuckin’ Family Ties no less) and girls that might be boys, which is encouraging in itself, but when you couple those lyrics with the spiky interactions of the players and the aforementioned layers of effects, what you emerge with is a punk reissue packed with more intrigue than most.
You, the punk punters, used to have to pay at least $40 for the original issue of Blood Robots (Fuck Off Records) from 1980; enter 2013 and you can get it from Water Wing Records for a song (and like $15 or so). Sounds like progress to me.
