Note: fixed the link to include the entire comp. Thanks to Friend for leaving the comment.
GSL made it a decade and a half, starting out in Boulder in 1993 and wrapping things up in Los Angeles in 2007, with a stop-over in San Diego. During that time, they released no less than a half dozen records that I still find irreplaceable. Early releases from the Locust, the V.S.S., and Get Hustle built a track record that would soon include the Mars Volta, !!!, and the Rapture. This was the sound of late 90s hardcore growing up. And I'm not talking about the youth crew...these were the weirdos from your town who were booking Born Against and Heroin and Huggy Bear in their basements, then going off to college towns where they'd get into Christian Death or Albert Ayler or Karen Dalton. They'd meld it all together, making sounds that'd turn off every macho shithead and turn on their friends and younger siblings.
This sampler came at the midway point of Gold Standard Laboratories' lifespan. GSL would put out the first !!! full length, a Mohinder discography, a collaborative 7" between xBxRx, Miss Pussycat, and Quintron, the Locust's remix 12", and the first post-At The Drive-In release from Cedric and Omar as De Facto in 2001. The last of those would lead to the Mars Volta, who ultimately reached the sort of popularity that honestly blew everyone's I knew's minds. These were deeply different, viewed with some level of distrust, and thus were deeply, honestly, punker than anything else running at the same time. 25 years on, this still feels pretty transgressive, and makes me wonder why the hell we thought anyone was selling out.
1 comment:
Hi, this sampler seems pretty good, unfortunately there is only one song in the download... Just so you know.
Nice blog!
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