John Bender - 31A4 /I Don't Remember Now / I Don't Want To Talk About It...

Outside of German Shepherds (see below), John Bender most epitomizes the basement-dwelling outsider-bohemian aspect to synth-punk. In 2010, when attempting to track him down for a proposed profile, the scant few contacts I had all said the same thing: he ain’t talking to no music journalist. Self-imposed obscurity is definitely the name of the game for the mysterious Bender. In the early ’80s, he produced three slabs of vinyl, I Don’t Remember Now / I Don’t Want To Talk About It, Plaster Falling and Pop Surgery, all of which quickly sailed into the phantom zone (until that is music blogs such as Mutant Sounds retrieved them). Hailing from art-punk hotbed Ohio, Bender creates deliriously dub-drenched electronics that – in addition to boasting structural complexities that resist easy decoding at every turn – are intensely personal. He doesn’t necessarily “rawk,” but on a track like “65-2 Galacial” (“I hate the world, it’s dying and it’s ugly,” he croaks) the guy does manage to achieve a blurrily hiccupping, avant-rockabilly that falls somewhere between deconstructed Charlie Feathers and Pyrolator circa Ausland. Seriously far out stuf