Martin Rev

ROIR is proud to release Martin Rev’s self-titled solo debut album, originally released in 1979 on Charles Ball’s Lust/Unlust label, now with 5 bonus tracks (3 unreleased & exclusive). Rev is best known for his confrontational work with Alan Vega as Suicide; considered one of the most influential bands of the last 30 years. This record, somewhere between the harsh sound of Rev’s early work with Suicide and his more melodic, solo material ("See Me Ridin’"), is concrete evidence of how influential Rev’s dirty American-motorik music really was. All songs written & performed by Martin Rev. All compositions produced by Charles Ball & Martin Rev. Tracks 1-6 originally appeared on vinyl (Lust/Unlust Records 1980). Liner Notes by Steve Barker (The Wire UK).

In 1980, shortly after Suicide’s second full-length, Martin Rev released his first solo album. Uninhibited by the trappings of a collaborator, Rev was freed to explore his most experimental and pop leanings with dirty synths, dark melodies, and dreamlike textures, and produced a masterpiece of modern alienation that captures a uniquely New York landscape.

On Martin Rev's 1996 solo album, See Me Ridin', the co-founder of the legendary electro-rock band Suicide steps out on his own, and offers 16 tracks of minimalist bubblegum power pop. But don't worry longtime Suicide fans, drum machines, Rev's trademark synthesizers, and his half-sung/spoken vocals are the basis for each song, while Suicide's hypnotizing repetition is used to great effect as well.

Forgive me, I think I’m suffering from that same old reviewer’s sickness of expecting an older musician to produce work of an identical boilerplate to his former band’s glory days. When I think of Suicide, I think eerie, pulsing synths courtesy of mad scientist Martin Rev, and the droning, monotonous mutterings of his comrade Mr. Alan Vega. And while it’s difficult to listen to Suicide’s self-titled masterpiece of a debut in 2010 and not think of all the bands they’ve clearly influenced (Raveonettes, I’m all but glaring in your direction), it’s still fairly easy to see how the innovation and pure audacity of the music may have shocked folks in 1977. Suicide was a perfect fit for the blossoming ‘downtown’ scene of late seventies New York, and an obvious root system for the enigmatic tree of No Wave to soon blossom.

Rev initially explored free jazz and similarly free forms of musical expression before discovering the magnetic attraction of electronic production and instrumentation, enabling him to create music in a wholly independent and autonomous environment. Using the most rudimentary equipment, he grafted the roots of rock’n’roll into the process of combining effects and devices to generate electrified sounds, the likes of which had never been heard before. This music would map out the way forward not only for Suicide, but also for a fascinating solo career.

The original album was recorded in sessions about a decade apart; tracks one and seven were recorded in 1990 at Czarist Productions and produced by Martin Rev, with tracks two to six, eight and nine recorded in 1980 at Power Station Studios and produced by Ric Ocasek.

Martin Rev's 50's-like melodic minimal duplex epics in Strangeworld wouldn't sound out-of-place in a David Lynch film. Whether it's the boiling beats of Splinters or the surfer groove on Trouble there are fascinating gems here. The drum machine on Chalky sounds like is it increasingly being drowned as the track progresses.

Martin Rev was one half of bizarro-world greats Suicide. Clouds of Glory, his second solo album, consists of endlessly repeated melodic mantras, shrill sustained tones, and chaotic SFX, all (I believe) courtesy of synthesizer(s). It's like someone took an unreleased Suicide record, removed the vocal tracks, and replaced them with synth oscillations, chirps, drones, and explosions.

Noted activist, theologian, author, documentary filmmaker, and musician, Reverend Osagyefo Sekou was born in St. Louis, Missouri and raised in the rural Arkansas Delta. Rev. Sekou's music is an unique combination of North Mississippi Hill Country Music, Arkansas Delta Blues, Memphis Soul and Pentecostal steel guitar. In May 2017, he released "In Times Like These” produced the six-time Grammy nominated North Mississippi Allstars. AFROPUNK heralded the ”deep bone-marrow-level conviction” of his first album, “The Revolution Has Come”. The single, “We Comin'”–was named the new anthem for the modern Civil Rights movement by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. A consummate entertainer, Paste Studio celebrated his barn-burning performance saying: "Rev. Sekou delivers the spiritual performance we need now."

Jephtha (HWV 70) is an oratorio (1751) by George Frideric Handel with an English language libretto by the Rev. Thomas Morell, based on the story of Jephtha in Judges (Chapter 11) and Jephthes, sive Votum (Jeptha, or the Vow) (1554) by George Buchanan. Whilst writing Jephtha, Handel was increasingly troubled by his gradual loss of sight, and this proved to be his last oratorio. In the autograph score, at the end of the chorus "How dark, O Lord, are thy decrees" he wrote "Reached here on 13 February 1751, unable to go on owing to weakening of the sight of my left eye."