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Boy Dirt Car, "Winter / F/i Split"
Lexicon Devil
With the homemade aesthetic as marketable as ever, and luminaries of the cassette noise underground priming for the next JANEmagazine feature, it's a surprise the 80's industro-punker annals havenot yet been thoroughly stormed for reissue. Digitizing the past can befun and will sometimes produce a posthumous legend, but all too oftenthe process does nothing more than make undeserving, even undesiringheroes of the old, and uninspired imitators of the young. At presentit's hard for me to listen to a Wolf Eyes record without hearing aco-worker rattle on about the glory days of SPK, and my enjoying SPKgets complicated by a guard against someone else's glamorization. Mysalvation comes with reissues that can show me "new" things, like alost inspiration or the missing link in the evolution of a style, butwith an added suspension of recognition. In other words, the best musicmust allow me to lose myself, must first lead me astray, or wipe theslate clean, before revealing its true character. Luckily, this BoyDirt Car reissue, containing the group's best full length and theirside to a split with fellow Milwaukians F/i, is forged of such raresteel. Wintershows me a time when bands playing indulgent static dirges or whistlingthrough vocal effects formed just another dark corner of the localhardcore scene, a time when anyone could plug in a broken keyboard,start mumbling about the highway at night, and become genius for a day.Formed from a couple members of Die Kreuzen and some like-minded,Branca-inspired youths, Boy Dirt Car was fertile ground for a marriageof punk and industrial philosophies, coming to climax in '86-'87 withthese two releases. The unfortunately-named band took its blueprintfrom the slowed-down doom punk of bands like Flipper, shattering it toinclude the open spaces and electrified edges of early Neubauten. Oneof the most striking qualities of the music is how little the grouprelies on anything more than guitars to construct their elaboratetapestries of noise. Songs like "Forms Forced Surrender" and the brutaltitle track show evidence of either several moments of collectivebrilliance, or several dozen painstaking overdubs. Elsewhere, tracksrange from the Null-ian meltdown of "Invisible Man" to the opening"Smear," a delicate wound of crisp delay, amp buzz, and metallicpercussion. While the homemade vibe exists throughout, it neverencourages a preoccupation with process, instead reinforcing a sense ofyouthful exuberance in the music. Listening to Winter, thisexuberance and a kind of punk-ist abandon are hard to ignore, makingthe few moments of lyrical cheese, bad poetry, and guitar wank easy toswallow. As with any great punk band, clich? and indulgences soonbecome part of Boy Dirt Car's rather addictive appeal, and ultimatelythese humorous missteps help to form more of an accessible foundationfor the group's frequent excursions into righteous, blistering noise.
With the homemade aesthetic as marketable as ever, and luminaries of the cassette noise underground priming for the next JANEmagazine feature, it's a surprise the 80's industro-punker annals havenot yet been thoroughly stormed for reissue. Digitizing the past can befun and will sometimes produce a posthumous legend, but all too oftenthe process does nothing more than make undeserving, even undesiringheroes of the old, and uninspired imitators of the young. At presentit's hard for me to listen to a Wolf Eyes record without hearing aco-worker rattle on about the glory days of SPK, and my enjoying SPKgets complicated by a guard against someone else's glamorization. Mysalvation comes with reissues that can show me "new" things, like alost inspiration or the missing link in the evolution of a style, butwith an added suspension of recognition. In other words, the best musicmust allow me to lose myself, must first lead me astray, or wipe theslate clean, before revealing its true character. Luckily, this BoyDirt Car reissue, containing the group's best full length and theirside to a split with fellow Milwaukians F/i, is forged of such raresteel. Wintershows me a time when bands playing indulgent static dirges or whistlingthrough vocal effects formed just another dark corner of the localhardcore scene, a time when anyone could plug in a broken keyboard,start mumbling about the highway at night, and become genius for a day.Formed from a couple members of Die Kreuzen and some like-minded,Branca-inspired youths, Boy Dirt Car was fertile ground for a marriageof punk and industrial philosophies, coming to climax in '86-'87 withthese two releases. The unfortunately-named band took its blueprintfrom the slowed-down doom punk of bands like Flipper, shattering it toinclude the open spaces and electrified edges of early Neubauten. Oneof the most striking qualities of the music is how little the grouprelies on anything more than guitars to construct their elaboratetapestries of noise. Songs like "Forms Forced Surrender" and the brutaltitle track show evidence of either several moments of collectivebrilliance, or several dozen painstaking overdubs. Elsewhere, tracksrange from the Null-ian meltdown of "Invisible Man" to the opening"Smear," a delicate wound of crisp delay, amp buzz, and metallicpercussion. While the homemade vibe exists throughout, it neverencourages a preoccupation with process, instead reinforcing a sense ofyouthful exuberance in the music. Listening to Winter, thisexuberance and a kind of punk-ist abandon are hard to ignore, makingthe few moments of lyrical cheese, bad poetry, and guitar wank easy toswallow. As with any great punk band, clich? and indulgences soonbecome part of Boy Dirt Car's rather addictive appeal, and ultimatelythese humorous missteps help to form more of an accessible foundationfor the group's frequent excursions into righteous, blistering noise.
