Alan Vega - New Raceion

It's the end of the month, and I'm clearing the decks with the record that's been living in my Mediafire files for the longest time. It's time to share Alan Vega's 1993 album, "New Raceion".

At the risk of seeming like a dick, I've run out of things to say about Vega's early 90s output. I'm glad it exists; it's not anything I listen to regularly (unlike the 1st Suicide record). Here you go; "enjoy" it.

Discogs

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Alan Vega - Power On To Zero Hour

The second of four Alan Vega reissues on Infinite Zero, this has, throughout time, become probably my favorite of his solo records. Those ideas that felt less developed on "Deuce Avenue" feel fully formed on "Power On To Zero Hour". It's him, Liz Lamere, and 10 songs worth of pre-Guiliani NYC ugly beauty, all gospel organs and soft hiss and dark songs.

It's a great record for a grey Monday.

Discogs

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Alan Vega - Deuce Avenue

It's possible that it took me a long time to explore Alan Vega because this was my first exposure to him.

"Deuce Avenue" is a weird record, a melange of slithering Suicide-style synths, Vega's free-form scatting, crooning, and beatboxing, and drumming and programming by his wife Liz Lamere. Shit, there's definitely time where Vega's channeling the Bomb Squad's beats. He hadn't made a full-length since "Just A Million Dreams" in 1985, a much more accessible record by any measure. This one came out on the French label Musidisc, his home for this and his following three LPs.

Infinite Zero would reissue it in 1995 to what I have to guess was an indifferent scene, alongside Vega's next record, 1991s "Power On To Zero Hour". I was non-plussed at the time; I'd been given an Infinite Zero sampler with "Jab Gee" and "Bad Scene" on it, and, BOY HOWDY, I almost always skipped over those tracks. I just didn't get it. Now, I can listen to this, and I can draw parallels to the Providence noise scene on the early aughts, to the J.G. Thirwell catalog, to all the iconoclastic shit that finds its way onto my iPhone. It clicks with me now in a way that just couldn't happen 26 years ago.

Fun fact: the Infinite Zero reissue wraps up with the only complete version of "Wacko Warrior" by Vega, previously only available in a truncated form on a 7" that came with Sniffin' Rock #12. So completists...have at it.

Discogs

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