Pure Ground - Going Under The Wire

The current state of American synth-punk is a gigantic question mark. These days, most underground freaks into synthesizers and drum machines fall for minimal wave (the soul of which is resolutely English/European – and that’s cool, but synth-punk it is not). Fortunately, exceptions do exist. Lurking deep inside Noah Anthony’s Profligate project (electro-industrial bleeding into 21st-century technoise) lurks a dark, spacey cool that without question would make Damon Edge proud. Then there’s Los Angeles’ Pure Ground (cofounded by Greh Holger of Hive Mind fame and Brotman & Short’s Jesse Short); these dudes might call the minimal-wave scene home, yet their jams bop/swing with rock ‘n’ roll vigor. This is especially true of the über catchy “Going Under the Wire” (which can be found on the duo’s self-titled cassette released last year on Holger’s Chondritic Sound imprint). Buzzing like a robotics lab, with Gothic vox that only grows more wrecked with each rotation of the ear-worm chorus (“UNDER THE WIRE!”), the tune totally flaunts the Devo/Pere Ubu chromosomes buried in its silicon-based DNA. Further exploration (i.e. bands not mentioned anywhere else in this piece): Smersh, Men’s Recovery Project, Nervous Gender, The Parasites Of The Western World, Sad Sack, Danse Asshole, Xex, Xerobot, Billy Synth And The Turn Ups, Skoal Kodiak, The Misfits (debut 7-inch only), Red Asphalt, The Jesus Lizard (first EP only), The Twinkeyz, Units, Primitive Calculators (Australians who rocked like us Yanks)