Pere Ubu - Chinese Radiation

Their story begins in the hyper-industrialized, polluted and unnatural Cleveland of 1975, where David Thomas -a music critic- and Peter Laughner - an intellectual guitarist- left the proto-punk band Rocket From the Tombs to form a new group: Pere Ubu, named after the pièce Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry, a masterpiece of experimental theater from the beginning of the century. These two are soon joined by Tom Herman, Scott Krauss, Allen Ravenstine and Tim Wright. After some disappointing appearances in front of Cleveland's careless audience, the band moves to New York having the opportunity to support Suicide in concert at Max's Kansas City. There Ubu record two singles of dadaist rock, music immersed in a desolate atmosphere overflowing with dissonances (30 Seconds Over Tokyo / Heart of Darkness at the end of '75 and Final Solution / Cloud 149 in 1976). The sound is even more acid in the subsequent 7": Street Waves / My Dark Ages and The Modern Dance / Heaven, both of 1976. The first shock come in 1977: Laughner leave the group in june to form Friction; shortly after Tony Maimone replaces Wright, who left to join Arto Lindsay's DNA. Thomas is now undisputed leader of Pere Ubu, and by the end of the year they record a first album, The Modern Dance, one of the masterpieces of the new wave throughout: the album delineates the apex of the process of contamination of the rock matter implemented by the band: free-form compositions, rhythmic variations, electronic noise, detuned guitars, clumsy voices, all to represent the alienation and the human neurosis arousing in urban and industrial environments. In 1978, during the European tour designed to promote The Modern Dance, Pere Ubu sign a contract with english label Chrysalis for which they record their second album, Dub Housing, even more desolate than the previous one: while The Modern Dance was some kind of a summary of Ubu psychosis till then, Dub Housing lives of some kind of astonished awareness, as a critical acceptance. Both albums are either archetype and unsurpassed peak of the New Wave scene. A year later, Pere Ubu are touring Europe again, supported by bands like The Soft Boys and Red Krayola the leader of which, Mayo Thompson, starts a friendly and professional relationship with the band. After having participated in full to Red Crayola's album Soldier-Talk (a superb anthology of free-form experimentations and psychedelic effects), Pere Ubu record New Picnic Time, kinda return to the initial impetus yet a more anarchic work than both previous albums. In 1981 Thompson officially joins the group in place of Herman and takes part in the recording of The Art of Walking, the more unapproachable and psychedelic work Pere Ubu ever made: experimenting on music seems now more important than telling stories. In 1982 the band, also thanks to the new drummer Anton Fier, unexpectedly changes direction again with Song of the Bailing Man, the more jazzy, peaceful and flowery album of Pere Ubu, as if all the worries all of a sudden have vanished.