Band Apart – Band Apart

Crammed Discs

Band Apart were a short-lived US/French duo that blossomed at a time that put them in the eye of the New York No-Wave storm. Vocalist Jayne Bliss was a poet who had been performing with various members of the US avant-garde such as Bill Laswell and Don Cherry. On being introduced to Marseille-based musician M Mader, they judiciously decided to set off on their own sonic adventures that would tie what they were hearing around downtown at the time with a European lilt, all framing Jayne’s personal poetry.

Through the assistance of Hector Zazou, Band Apart ended up becoming an early signing to Crammed Discs and releasing two records for them. Crammed have chosen this opportunity to remaster and compile most of their twelve tracks onto one LP, and it is a fantastic example of a classic of its time gone missing in action. The original line-up of the band was based in Marseille and their first gig was supporting James Chance, which must have partly helped their relocation, and they then hooked up with the Noise NY studio and laid down the first four tracks that became their EP.

Opener “Jaguar” sounds like it is based on a mutant take of “Don’t Fear The Reaper”, but with depth-charge sounds and Jayne’s mysterious half-spoken vocal ducking and diving, weaving a spell around the guitar. As the basic electronic beat keeps control, you are drawn into Jayne’s world, listening hard for meaning in the murk. “Jaguar”, “monkeys”, “toute suite“, these words leak into our consciousness, and Jayne sounds hugely invested in putting the message across.

https://vimeo.com/330454553

The slow moving, leaden “Strainer” shows another side as it lumbers along, speckled with shards of harsh sound. There is an odd post-punk tension and a disguised brutality that sits at odds with the cool, removed vocals. The sound is somehow ancient and modern, with the more upbeat “Eve Ryonne” juggling the swirling guitar with background synth effects that lend an interesting and not unpleasing texture. The final track that would have appeared on the EP, “Le Mont Des Olives”, is a perfect amalgam of Bruce Springsteen and Suicide; you have the American guitar chords evoking pure wide-open space, mixed with churning electronics that head it in a more futurist direction and somehow predates the shimmering sound of shoegaze by about ten years. Kevin Shields must have heard this somewhere!

By the time they recorded the album Marseille, two years had passed and their sound had moved on a little. There is a European electronic vibe to “Marseille” that tips a hat to Kraftwerk, but there is something melancholy in the minor chord progression, and with it being sung in French, its touch of whistling and music hall piano is the closest it comes to moving the sound back over the Atlantic. The proper post-punk bass, cowbell and hysteric delivery of “Ham Sandwich” would have put them as prime candidates for a space on 4AD, but there was much more to their progression.

The pseudo-romance of “Lover”, with its dreamy sax and Cramps-y drums, hides a real love song, both vocalists delivering heartfelt and genuine feelings. There is something euphoric and uplifting about the way “O My Beautiful Song” is constructed around a drowned delivery full of wonder, with a touch of something like marimba adding a further dimension. The final track on the record sounds like something that Stump would have recorded, with its erratic vocal delivery and disjointed slide guitar trills. The slow rhythm is augmented by train whistles and woodblock percussion, and is a little gem.

There are two downloadable tracks that also came from the album; the rockabilly groove of “Clean Sound” and the final ‘Dare Devil Lover” that plots a whole other direction in which the band could have travelled if the two of them had not gone their separate ways and started new lives apart. What they leave behind though is a twelve-track legacy that is worthy of any record collection, showing that their brief but fruitful union left songs that a lot of other ’80s bands would have killed for.

-Mr Olivetti-