Suicide [First Album]

Performer: Suicide
Distributor: Caroline Distribution

Notes: Suicide: Martin Rev, Allen Vega. Suicide: Alan Vega (vocals); Martin Rev (synthesizer). Includes a bonus disc of live recordings. Suicide: Alan Vega (vocals); Martin Rev (keyboards). Seven years after the duo's inception, Suicide's debut album finally sneaked out in 1977 on the coat tails of the nascent New York punk scene. If its aim had been to confuse, startle, or repulse, SUICIDE succeeded in spades. By the same token, if a part-time sculptor and avant-garde jazz musician form a two-chord synthesizer duo and call it Suicide, commercial considerations are presumably low on their list of priorities. SUICIDE was a record destined to have future journalists reaching for words like "seminal". Synth duos start here. SUICIDE's bleak, one-act plays of violence and sexual deviance, and that lo-fi monotone punctuated by sleazy groans and horrifying screams, still induce nervous tension despite the passing years. To hear Alan Vega, an Elvis caricature out of time, crooning "Girl" is unsettling enough. When he acts out the desperation of "Frankie Teardrop" over the strictly controlled minimalism of Martin Rev's grinding keyboard and time-bomb rhythm, you're guaranteed a listening experience quite unlike any other. There is "difficult music," there is "difficult but rewarding music" and then there is Suicide. Rev's distinctive synthesizer squelch came via a broken Farfisa organ that the duo could not afford to repair. The key to their self-titled debut lies in the film noir communion of Vega's Manhattan blues growl with Vega's dissonant, repetitive, minimalist keyboard stabs. "Ghost Rider" and "Rocket U.S.A." are, to the American underground at least, two of the most influential and enduring songs ever written. The urban paranoia/psychosis of "Frankie Teardrop," meanwhile, is still mesmerizing, 20 years after the album's release. And, yes, still difficult to listen to. Both of Suicide's first two proper records are technically untitled, and FIRST ALBUM (also sometimes called the "Red Star Album" after the cover symbol) was barely heard at the time of its initial 1977 release. Suicide were easily the most underground of the major artists of the New York punk scene, but as the decades pass, this record's influence on electronic rock and rock minimalism is obvious. The connection to the synth-pop and industrial music that came immediately after is obvious, but listening anew to FIRST ALBUM, it's not a stretch to wonder if later bands such as the White Stripes weren't familiar with bluesy, obviously retro songs like "Frankie Teardrop" and "Ghost Rider." Reading this album's press clippings does not adequately prepare one for the unearthly quality of Alan Vega's whispery, echoing voice or for the noisy, primitive electronics. However, FIRST ALBUM's raw, primitive quality is a huge part of its charm. The 2000 CD reissue features bonus tracks, including a more modern remix of the oddly beautiful "Cheree," and a second disc of live '77 performances.

Spin (8/98, p.139) - 10 (out of 10) - "...SUICIDE itself is beyond classica, a spare, claustrophobic collection that bottled big-city paranoia like nothing before or since. In spite of many attempts, no one has ever come close to replicating its monolithic vibe....Suicide didn't gesture at the surrounding darkness so much as point us toward the light..." Q (7/01, p.90) - Included in Q's "50 Heaviest Albums of All Time" - "...Musically representing an utterly debased humanity - knackered keyboards and a cheapo drum machine. The sound was Kraftwerk go rockabilly in hell..." Q (5/02 SE, p.142) - Included in Q's "100 Best Punk Albums". The Wire (3/98, p.58) - "...attests to their terrifying immediacy....The dominant tone is dark, dripping off-white, run through with thin veins of lurid color....This is the kind of raw power that makes your hair stand on end. This kind of music is what electricity is for." The Wire (3/98, p.58) - "...attests to their terrifying immediacy....The dominant tone is dark, dripping off-white, run through with thin veins of lurid color....This is the kind of raw power that makes your hair stand on end. This kind of music is what electricity is for." Mojo (Publisher) (3/03, p.76) - Ranked #36 in Mojo's "Top 50 Punk Albums" - "...A primitive synth and a swooning, screaming rockabilly voice spun tales of darkness..."

As Suicide, New York City's Alan Vega and Martin Rev created a type of music unlike anything else going on around them in the punk era. Combining Vega's punk/futurist Presleyisms with the electronic squeaks and squawks of Rev's keyboards and rhythm machines, Suicide created a sinister yet strangely joyous noise that inspired everyone from the Cars to the 21st century Electroclash movement. Though they'll forever be identified as part of the downtown NY no wave scene of the 1970s and early 1980s, they've periodically reunited in the decades since.

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