Larry Wendt ‎– "Sound Poems For An Era Of Reduced Expectations" (Underwhich Editions ‎– Underwhich Audiographic Series – No. 5) 1979

You know what? I could listen to stuff like this all day long.Its got it all, abstract repetitive tape loops, disintegrating ambience, glitching 1970's computers,urban field recordings, lo-fi sound processing, drones, concréte poetry, a bloke with a beard sitting in room fiddling around with cassettes,a good pessimistic title, and tape hiss.Who needs instruments, in fact bin the instruments off,if I hear another guitar line, or 'phat' synth bass notes, I'll go as nuts as Larry Wendt obviously is.
The use of the adjective 'Sound-Poems' for this is rather tenuous, stretching the poetry part to an extreme.It has far more in common with Musique Concréte and old skool Industrial than Hugo Ball or even Jaap Blonk.Its basically the music I grew up with after glam and punk had burnt out and left me with UK DIY.There were legions of kids who would churn out tapes like this every week in 1979/80, mainly the wide ranging influence of Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire rather than Larry Wendt, or even Hugo Ball.....although there is certainly a thread of distinct Dada influence by proxy that worked its way down from world war one era Germany into the bedrooms of Britains Youth......not that they were aware of this at all;but there were clearly many references in the works of The Instant Automatons and their various offshoots, like the Alien Brains, 391,and ,of course,Merz,which was a thinly veiled reference to Kurt Schwitters if ever there was one?
I'm figuring that the Dada influence on the North American continent was from a more intellectual angle,rather than fashion driven, as is mostly always the case in the UK,which exists as a mass consciousness as opposed to the individualism that US/Canadian culture is based on....its the vast distances involved in these north American countries that kills universal consciousness dead.
This is no longer the case however, as before the Internet the only way of meeting strangers from the other side of the continent was by snail mail,or telephone calls.Like communicating with an alien race,a conversation was impossible outside of your own town or star system,and that's where it stayed. In the UK anything good or bad, would invariably spread to the whole country within a month,generally stopping at the English Channel,and importing itself into the United States.The classic example being how American kids discovered UK Punk before they had even heard of the New York proto-punk groups from their own country.
Larry Wendt would not have heard of the UK Industrial Bands,but he was doing something very similar in Isolation.Naturally he wouldn't have stood a chance in Britain because he didn't 'look good'.You can't have one without the other 'inna inglan',as our jamaican sub-state would say,just like Americans would have never heard Reggae without it passing by 'Inglan' for the thumbs up first. Weird innit?
Welcome to a world of expanded expectations which expanded so much that it has destroyed entirely the thrill of the new.


Tracklist:

A1 Actaeon
A2 Zoo
A3 Gasoline
B1 Bugs, Crashes, And The Trash-80
B2 My Computer's First Words
B3 Rooster Music
B4 Next Door

Link removed at the request of the Artist.....buy it HERE if you're from a family of great expectations