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Nervous Gender

Music From Hell (2LP)

Label: Dark Entries

Format: 2LP

Genre: Electronic

In stock

€30.00
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Nervous Gender’s legendary synthpunk LP Music From Hell burbles up from infernal depths to resurface on Dark Entries! Confrontational, unhinged, and unabashedly queer, Music from Hell is an unholy grail for fans of the strangest underbellies of post-punk, minimal synth, and early industrial music, and is presented here newly remastered and on expanded double LP. Nervous Gender (de)formed in LA in 1978 at the hands of Phranc, Gerardo Velaquez, Edward Stapleton, and Michael Ochoa. Phranc, the androgynous embodiment of the band’s name, left in 1980. Following her departure, a wide cast of LA freaks would find themselves drawn into the band’s orbit, including Alice Bag of the Bags, Paul Roessler of the Screamers, the Germs’ Don Bolles, and an 8-year old drummer named Sven Pfeiffer. In 1980, Nervous Gender appeared on the seminal Live at Target compilation alongside Factrix, uns, and Flipper. With the band’s notoriety cemented, Music from Hell followed in 1981 on Subterranean Records (as no LA label would touch this material). Side A, dubbed “Martyr Complex”, presents a more punk-forward sound with live drum salvos and slabs of aggressive synth. These twitchy, unsettling shockers ooze with the kind of snotty misanthropy that will endear them to fans of the Screamers or Crass. Side B, known as “Beelzebub Youth”, is a live performance the band labeled "an electronic bruto-canto dissertation on the banality of spiritual transcendence." Mutant melodies cede way to synthesized clangs, whirs, bleeps, manipulated tapes, and howls of despair. In addition to all the material from the original LP, we’re treated to a full disc of the band’s demos, the material from the Live at Target compilation, and early live recordings.

 Included are unrecognizable covers of Carly Simon and Lou Reed, and the Sex Pistols that are so despairingly skewed they fall into the void. This reissue of Music From Hell includes a 36 page lyric booklet, foldout poster, and gatefold sleeve with photos, flyers, and news-clippings designed by Eloise Leigh. Tackling taboo issues like sexual kinks, mental illness, drug use, and childhood molestation, Music From Hell is still surprising – even shocking - over 40 years after the album’s release. Nervous Gender stand as one of the most genuinely anti-establishment outfits in underground music, a colossal fuck you to social norms from religious strictures to gender essentialism.

Details
Cat. number: DE 295
Year: 2023
Notes:
Tracks B1 to B5 performed live in Traetion Gallerie May 30 1981. The entire contents of this album were recorded on a Toshiba RT-8200a portable cassette recorder and a Sankyo STD-1700 cassette deck. Our most outrageous thanks to Mr Mike Fox for his fidelity recouperation tactics. This album was recorded and mixed in a span of 36 hours (mistakes and all). Spine gives the catalog number as SUB 21; labels give it as SUB 666 The band's web site points out that Beelzebub Youth is often mistakenly identified as a separate band, but was really only the name of the tracks on the second side Includes three inserts: red and black on white lyric insert with technical details, black on grey card advertising a lyric supplement to the LP, and double-sided black on white Subterranean Records catalog 2,515 pressed. Tracks A2 and A5 are mislabeled. A2 is "Alien Point Of View" and A5 is "Nothing To Hide"