“Is that goo or tears coming from your eyes?” Is that noise or music coming from my speakers? This incredible overview of Smegma’s early work is a bounty of strange sounds, haunting atmospheres and some of the weirdest music put on tape. Across 6 LPs and a DVD, Smegma’s formative years spill out like maggots from a freshly disturbed corpse. Yet each of the maggots grows and becomes one of a plethora of magnificent, bizarre chimeras. This is gloriously wild stuff.
The first LP collects their Glamour Girl 1941 album and the Pigface Chant and Flashcards 7” singles. To say that these recordings were revolutionary does not even come close, even today they have lost none of their impact despite so many artists like Nurse With Wound, Merzbow and Wolf Eyes building on different aspects of their work. Glamour Girl 1941 begins with the jazzy “Deference,” Smegma sounding like a particularly unwieldy artist on the Impulse Records roster. Based on this first piece, it is impossible to tell what would come but from “1980 A.R.” onwards, the tone for the rest Smegma’s career is set. The rest of Glamour Girl 1941 introduces the outsider vocals, the warped found sounds, the free noise and the unhinged temperament which has prevented them from ever becoming close to being accepted by the mainstream.
Throughout this stunning album (which takes up most of the first LP) they develop an approach to free improvisation which sounds a world away from what Derek Bailey and pals were up to around the same time on the other side of the Atlantic. Equally, their contemporaries outside the Los Angeles Free Music Society scene like Frank Zappa and The Residents were all charting completely different areas in the realm of oddity. Smegma’s music is all about unnatural collisions and sometimes these collisions explode like two atoms in a reactor. In fact there must be radiation involved somewhere as only that can explain their mutant sounds.
The second LP includes the album Pigs for Leper and a bunch of oddities from other sonic depositories. Compared to the first LP in this set, this is more of a mish-mash of solo material than traditional Smegma compositions (whatever “traditional” might mean), wilder improvisations rub shoulders with music that could almost be described as beautiful such as Ju Suk Reet Meate’s rumbling “Mr. Potatohead’s Flotation Ex” (before it goes all Texas Chainsaw Massacre that is). However, the centre of gravity around which the Pigs for Leper album, and by extension the rest of this LP, hangs is “Bubs Medley.” A ferocious collage of some of the most inhospitable sounds and riotous vocals captured on vinyl, “Bubs Medley” is the sort of music that will lose friends at parties but gain a friend-for-life with that weird guy in the greasy jacket who keeps touching himself inappropriately and spits when he speaks.
Smegma’s musical range is cast wholly into the light on the double live cassette Spontaneous Sound which is collected here on the third, fourth and half of the fifth LPs in the box. They spread their wings by beginning with a truly hilarious set of drug fuelled country songs before launching into some ferocious jams that sound like The Velvet Underground if Mo Tucker played all the instruments; “Get Away” pounds with the same urgency as some of The Velvet Underground’s finest live jams. Elsewhere, “I Used to be a Rock’n Roll Star” sees Smegma take a not very funny joke, push it to the point of extreme annoyance and then go even further to make something genuinely and absurdly great out of it.
The remainder of the LPs collect compilation appearances from Smegma from the appropriate time period. Having all these obscure recordings all collected into one place is a blessing. Granted that some of the pieces are not as stellar as the previously discussed material but there are diamonds in the rough. “Grass Glob Ball War” and “Dancing Hairpiece” in particular standing out as being fantastic examples of Smegma in full swing, both pieces showing decidedly different sides to their chaotic improvisation. I would wager that what I am discounting now as being less than exciting pieces may prove to be far better than I give them credit for. They may only be dim in comparison to the rest of I Am Artist because of the fatigue of listening to so much Smegma in one week; I imagine I will find a lot more in these rarities in the coming weeks that my tired ears are missing now.
Finally, also included is a DVD which features their 1983 VHS First Ten Years along with a couple of short bonus videos. The video footage is definitely not essential and much of it looks quite dated now, cheesy early '80s computer visuals and crude video effects not helping in any way. The music, however, comes across as the vibrant and exciting noise that it was. Yet for so many years their music has existed for me as an abstract document and seeing Smegma perform is a demystifying experience; none of them are ogres or aliens but normal looking Americans, albeit badly dressed. The shorter films, “NWAW 1978” and “Clockwork Joe’s 1980,” stand up better compared to the main feature but again. The whirlwoodwind that is “Clockwork Joe’s” above all justifies the inclusion of this DVD but unfortunately is all too brief.
Like last year’s Nurse With Wound Flawed Existence box set, Vinyl On Demand have packed loads of music onto the LPs, many of the records going up to around 30 minutes a side. However, as with Flawed Existence the LPs sound great despite the amount of music packed onto them. The vinyl is thick, pressed to the highest standards and the box itself is as attractive and as sturdy as everything else from this great label. “Hopefully it won’t sound like anything you’ve heard before.” (It doesn’t.)
This box set is currently vinyl only, so unfortunately there are no sound samples at this point in time, apologies!
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