With all the attention it has retrospectively garnered, it's easy to forget that No Wave was like a solar eclipse: brief, disorienting, and remarkable. Consider that less than half of the scene’s seminal groups (DNA, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, The Contortions, Theoretical Girls, Dark Day, 8-eyed Spy) lasted longer than five years, leaving behind scant discographies and wayward, hazy memories of their very existences. Mars, perhaps the most seminal of these bands, was no different, committing to tape just 11 songs in three years. Their performances were equally abbreviated, numbering around 30 shows from 1977-78, with sets often running 20 minutes. But despite the overwhelming sense of fleeting, Mars and No Wave were able to confront, confound, and challenge music and art in ways that may never again be replicated.
While it was the groups themselves who unintentionally conceived and defined No Wave, it was Brian Eno who offered it to the world. His production of the now legendary 1978 compilation, No New York, which included four tracks from Mars, gave exposure to the otherwise obscure New York City-based art form. This year’s career-encompassing Mars LP assembles those tracks, the 5-song Mars EP, and the band’s first and only single. Now available using a separate, forgotten master (the original, used for the identically tracked 78, was damaged in a flood) Mars LP extracts new sounds and frequencies that add depth to nearly every track. These nuances, while subtle, were crucial to the Mars sound experience that was meticulously assembled using equal parts urge and ingenuity.
As with most No Wave bands, the members of Mars arrived having little-to-no musical background. What the band's first recorded moment (“3E," one of the only tracks on Mars LP to bear any sort of traditional song structure) lacks in musical dynamics is offered back in teeth-gnashing rowdiness. “11,000 Volts,” its B-side, is a better predictor of Mars' later work, with its lazy beat and China Burg’s trance-like mumble both unsuccessfully roused by quick scrapes at the guitar. “Helen Fordsdale,” which was inspired by insect sounds, is a driving, odd-rock diatribe strongly reminiscent of songs that Sonic Youth would write and that Damo Suzuki-era Can did write. “Hair Waves” is a discordant piece of noise that takes the listener within the body, if not the soul, of a guitar.
Perhaps the best example of Mars’ manipulation and relationship with sound, "Hair Wave" is layered with frequencies and tempos that pop and echo with tones channeling in and out. Surprisingly, Mars LP offers a diverse range of such sonic explorations. Sumner Crane and China Burg’s guitars are chiefly responsible for warping sound – chugging, shimmering, aggregating into static. The lyrics, replete and simple, are uttered with undead nonchalance. Nancy Arlen’s drumming, swirled into the guitar mix, provides texture and urgency. Most unfaltering and readily discernible is Mark Cunningham’s bass, pacing each track with single, resounding notes.
With this decade’s passing of both Crane and Arlen, it’s particularly poignant to hear these recordings. They, like the provoking music that they created, ended too soon.