Tracy + The Plastics - Culture For Pigeon

There's a big, thick thru line from the Screamers to Tracy + the Plastics, who combined DIY music, filmmaking, and queer culture into a multimedia performance that the likes of the Whitney fawn over, but kids with mohawks sadly tend to overlook. I only saw this once, possibly during the tour in support of "Culture For Pigeon", the third and final full-length from Wynne Greenwood, and it kinda blew my mind, to the point where I still wonder what I saw that so many others overlooked.

I really just wanted to dance, you know? I was a young white cis male, finishing up college, in love, finally confident enough in myself to accept it was ok to like Madonna as much as I like Fugazi. And where a lot of the electroclash scene felt ultra posey to me, this was mutant dance, for a weirdo who was looking for something that felt as honest as Gang of Four. This was a start for me.

Discogs

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Infomatik - demo

The fun part about moving to the Seattle area is discovering those local bands that never really broke out regionally. I'm sure you can do the same thing regardless of where you move, but there's a rich vein to be tapped here, dating back to the area's jazz scene in the 40s. The craziest part is the secondary market on something you find at a Goodwill or at the Half Price Books warehouse sale. And much like Greg noted at MusicWhore.org, you have to judge these finds by their covers. That's how I came across a copy of Infomatik's 2004 demo.

To tell the truth, I honestly thought this had been misplaced in the CD section at St. Vinnie's. Infomatik had gutted a 5.25" floppy disc, replacing the magnetic disc with a CD-R. I thought it was a clever package; I'll almost always pick up cheap colored vinyl, die-cut covers, and weird CD trays. If the music doesn't pan out, c'est la vie.

Thankfully, these four tracks DO pan out. Sonically, these cats come from the wellspring of Joy Division, albeit with vocals A LOT more up front in the mix. They remind me a lot of Baltimore's Two If By Sea, a similarly-sounding contemporary who drew more from the Screamers than Interpol. It's a crying shame these guys had to release their own EP and LP; maybe it's just a fluke of the time when they were playing, but I feel like Infomatik could have toured behind a few limited run cassette releases. Regardless, it's a clever package containing four fun, danceable cuts.

TLDR: if you like your synthpunk dancey and spazzy, you'll definitely dig on this. I spent one dollar American on this bad boy.

Discogs

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