Culturcide, Year One

A full generation after the first release of Culturcide’s Year One, I have the unfortunate ability of hindsight, with all my exposure to synth-powered sound, glam rock, garage rebellion, what-have-you. I can only put an album in the path of that train. If I could just turn back the clock…turn it back to when Culturcide was entering cult-phenomenon status, even in that age.

Ronald Reagan was tackling the USSR, building a nuclear arsenal, keeping peace in the world alongside Margaret Thatcher. (How did we make it out of that show?) On the other hand, I get to enjoy a re-mastered disc, and it instantly gets renewed life. The first track of the album — and one of their most well-known — “Consider Museums,” was issued in 1980, before the band started performing live, leading to the LP Year One in 1982. A bunch of punk poetry, just sort of flung together.

The stuff they did, with cassette recorders and sampling, would be perfected by other artists; they performed with it. Tape loops amplified through a PA? Beck later did the same thing. Every sound on this album is a prelude — the crude electronic percussion and hazy blips strolling drunkenly across the record. Everything is indicative of a state of culture everyone would later drool about. It’s a subterranean sound, not precise.

Year One may sound impotent by today’s standards, but maybe it’s the jewelry followed by imitations? Give this disc a listen to counterbalance whatever else you’ve got in your collection.