Afterimage ‎– "Anthology" (Trance Port Tapes ‎– trance 6) 1984

Doomy pop music is a rarity in the USA,except in the stagey and laughable world of metal; swamped by the ugly tide of faux optimism that every american seems to be force fed from conception to the moment they realise that its all bullshit,and you have to be connected to the Bush family to be president. Luckily they have a source of misery imported from their former colonial masters in Great Britain,who do a peerless line in moaning woe and self-pity to help counter balance the sickening "Have a nice day" fakery . No place is faker than L.A.,and remarkably there were people who understood the colloquial aural watercolours of smog ridden post-industrial Manchester of Joy Division in sunny california! Even their name is a song by dreary Northerners, Section 25, but Afterimage were some kind of rare UK post punk tribute band in the heart of Tinseltown?.......how could this be?
Remember,that the US version of UK Punk happened in California,despite the sunshine and the promise of success on every billboard. It all came from a different place to the UK. Instead of the despondency ,hopelessness, and poverty, these kids were confronted with unattainable lifestyles in a vacuous metropolis made for the uber klass.While they were stuck in forgotten blue collar ghetto's,taunted by the propaganda of the American nightmare. A very different kind of Isolation to the one Joy Division experienced,but essentially still coming from the outside. Mixed in with the claustrophobic paranoia of PiL and some whinging moaning of the Cure, and you have a very strange californian group to say the least.
Needless to say, they were met with hostility from the moronic LA club scene,which basically just wanted to "Rock out Maaan",and were not arty enough for the Los Angeles Free Music Society, so inevitably died a death before this Anthology of their few releases came out on the trendy Trance port Tapes in 1984. Twenty years later they could have been Interpol! Wrong time, wrong place, wrong haircuts!

Tracklist:

A1	The Long Walk
A2	Strange Confession
A3	On The Verge
A4	Faces To Hide
A5	Idol (Instru.)
A6	Surf Generator
A7	No Dreams
B1	Soundtrack
B2	The Long Walk
B3	Idol
B4	Breaking Point
B5	Afterimage
B6	Faces To Hide
B7	American Tragedy

DOWNLOAD some american doom pop from twenty years before Interpol HERE!(including booklet)