ALBUM REVIEW BY BRAD KOHLER! VECTOR COMMAND-SYSTEM 3 (Hozac Archival Records)Ex-members of Crime, Joey D'Kaye and Johnny Strike, laid down these dark synth wave tracks in '83 where they languished in limbo 'til now.
Fans of Robert Rental, Robin Crutchfield's Dark Day or like minded acts may want to investigate. There was a brief moment before this kind of sound reached the tipping point and swirled down the commode with the John Foxx and Fad Gadget's of the world and thankfully VECTOR COMMAND are on the right side of the "make it" line.
Side A contains the only two dogs on the album, "Invisible Men" and "Girls" which bring to mind the kind of club where you might find men wearing chaps who do not have horses tied to hitching posts outside.
Side two is uniformly strong, with a cool remake of Crime's only experimental tune "Emergency Music Ward". Several songs would have been perfect to have buzzing in my cranium the time I walked through the Fort Pitt tunnels at 3"00 AM clutching a forty ouncer right around the time this LP was being recorded.
A two man, predominately synth band consisting of people not named Martin Rev and Alan Vega have some awful big shoes to fill, but like the young towhead who slides his feet into daddy's loafers and clomps about a bit, you can line this one up on the playlist after the second Suicide LP and be in fine fettle.
Always great to see Brad Kohler back at BTC.
ReplyDeleteThe lines about chaps and the Fort Pitt tunnel
are BK at his best.