While a number of recent recordings have spotlighted the way in which contemporary electronic musicians effortlessly move between “serious” and “rock” impulses – and the contemporariness of that work certainly needs no validating – sometimes it is worth another look at the architects. Following in the path of Krautrock explorers on the other side of the pond as well as “protopunk” peers in Detroit and New York, electronic artist and composer Martin Rev formed Suicide with vocalist Alan Vega in 1970, though it wasn’t until 1977 that they waxed their first LP of confrontational, absurdist, and gloom-laden NYC proto-punk. Three years later, Rev and Vega released their respective solo debuts, with Rev’s both reflecting and expanding on ideas formulated over a decade of work in Suicide. Released by the Lust/Unlust imprint Infidelity (which also unleashed on the world the Mars self-titled EP and recordings by Dark Day, Z’EV and Robert Quine), Martin Rev contains six varied and almost entirely instrumental soli. Reissued on CD by ROIR a decade ago, it is now seeing its first vinyl reissue, remastered from the original tapes by Superior Viaduct (Noh Mercy, 100 Flowers, Henry Flynt) and with new liner notes courtesy Alan Licht.
The set starts with a sunny, almost bubblegum ode to his wife, “Mari” (a percussionist, the late Mari Reverby also performed in an early Suicide incarnation). Rev’s lyrical declaration of love is hazy and ecstatic psych-pop with a gritty bass line, an incisive yet ambling opener reminiscent of the Silver Apples’ most attractive work. In any “side one track one” canon, this tune should hold an estimable place. The influence of Suicide creeps into the following piece, the obsessive “Baby oh Baby,” which is the only vocal track, and while it is crashing and diffuse the piece evinces a strangely gooey optimism. “Temptation” opens the second side and blends the layered washes and pulsing landscape of Cluster and pre-disco Kraftwerk with accents and rhythmic drive pulled from Afro-Latin music, including the electronic palimpsests of a guiro – one would imagine that Latin rhythmic choruses were as prevalent in Rev’s 1970s New York listening as the gritty art-rock of his peers. Crashing and overdriven, the following “Jomo” is an intense about-face into the territory of IV-era Faust, and its fluttering overlays retain a motorik groove. The closing “Asia” holds shape with a terse piano-drum machine beat against massed organs and electronic ricochets. Cut in an era when 12” EPs were the norm, Martin Rev is lengthier than most Lust/Unlust releases at a solid thirty minutes, but the ideas and compositions are certainly good enough to warrant more. And despite that economy – or maybe because of it – Rev’s solo debut is also full of stunningly beautiful passages. One of 2013’s strongest reissues, it shouldn’t be overlooked in any study of punk-era electronics or the Madagascan array of art that permeated Koch-era New York.