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Ike Yard, "1980-82 Collected"
As labels large and small continue to mine the dormant backcatalogs of forgotten post punk artists, hoping to cash in on the continuing dance punk fad, it hardly fazes me that Ike Yard, a group name-checked in Simon Reynolds' latest book, would get this type of revisionist treatment.If influence, real or perceived, is any indicator of success, financial or otherwise, this millennium has been somewhat good to Ike Yard, or at least founding member Stuart Argabright. Back when electroclash was clumsily mining just about everything wrong with '80s music, DJ Hell's Gigolo imprint dusted off Argabright's underground hit, "The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight," first released on Arthur Baker's Streetwise label, adding a few additional remixes for the Williamsburg massive. This phenomenon of excessive backwards-referencing by current hip artists continued as the focus shifted toward what we now know as dance punk, "pioneered" for lack of a better word by artists who borrow liberally from the work of groups like Wire, Gang Of Four, P.I.L., and Joy Division. Nothing earns an artist more indie cred than citing a band hardly anybody has ever heard of as an influence. Acute, a sublabel of Carpark Records, has been active in this aforementioned revisionism for a few years now, with releases by Metal Urbain / Metal Boys and the arguably more worthy Glenn Branca under its belt. Proving that Les Temps Modernes does not exclusively own the market for Factory Records reissues, Acute's latest is a collection of Ike Yard's body of work, comprising its sole album, an EP, and a number of unreleased tracks.
Beyond the hype, however, Ike Yard comes off like a second rate Suicide, which in and of itself isn't really much of an insult. The material smacks of the gloom and doom of the act's Factory and Les Discques du Crepscule labelmates, though there's little to latch onto during most of these songs. Opener "Night And Day" could have easily come from the old Warsaw demo tapes. "Loss" starts off strong with a murky arpeggiated line, though its unstructured low-register vocals and half organic / half programmed rhythms don't grab ahold of the listener. The group's use of scrap metal percussion gives it some added credibility, as evidenced on "Motiv" and "Cherish," the latter's overall dissonance producing satisfactory results. The high point of this collection is Ike Yard's perhaps best-known track, the atmospheric "NCR," driven by bassy pulses and inscrutible vocals built around a grainy proto-electro beat. Music geeks may already have some familiarity with this one, having been remixed by the now defunct Funkstörung some years back for their 'Vice Versa' album.
Accompanied by an entirely unnecessary booklet packed with masturbatory essays, archival photos, and flyers, this just does not pass the sniff test. While Ike Yard was a decent band, retroactively giving it undeserved and inflated importance is unfair and dishonest. Naturally, every label has the right to get behind artists it believes in, but at what point is a critical line crossed? When is a reissue the resurrection of underappreciated musical genius and when it is crass opportunism? I don't know for certain, but in the current climate I have good reason to be suspicious.
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