Martin Rev
★★★★
Mar tin Rev
BUREAU B. CD/DL/LP
1980 solo LP debut from Suicide’s analogue synth minimalist.
1980 was a busy year for Martin Rev. Firstly came the Ric Ocasekproduced second Suicide LP, an arsenic-cookie of urban synth-pop venom baked in modern-day New York sleaze. By contrast, Rev’s first solo album proper sounded like the ruined future, a dissonant distress signal from some impoverished space-age dystopia. It begins optimistically, with the chiming shopping-mall Kraftwerk of Mari, but then things turn disquieting with sinister vocal entreaty Baby O Baby and the discordant chimes of proto-techno loop Nineteen 86. The mood – paranoid, sci-fi, relentless – intensifies with Temptation, eight minutes of simplistic steel-comb melodies buried under electronic squall and the remorseless industrial drone assault of Jomo. It’s a sound that should alienate, yet by album closer, Asia, with its heavy analogue pulse, echoing metallic glissandos and warped piano reverb, the mood feels more hypnotic than intimidating. You accept Rev’s apocalypse. Nay, you welcome it.