Martin Rev – Martin Rev

Bureau B

As a fan of Suicide’s tainted pop aesthetic, it’s not surprising that I’m loving the compelling sizzle here. That sleazy love muscle dissonantly dancing in all that analogue compression on Martin Rev‘s first solo release from the 1980s, now beautifully resurrected by those bastions of contemporary culture, Bureau B.

Mostly instrumental, the insistent itch of each track is pulled from a clever mash-up of just two or three textures. Deliriously simple ingredients instinctively inserted and layered up until the kinetic potential of those lassoing repeats work their magic.

Minimal means for maximum effect is the lesson we learn here, firstly hooking straight into the prettier end of Rev’s sonic spectrum. The melodically winged “Mari” beams in lovely mutating repeats and shuffling rhythm. A sprightly-footed love letter to the rose-tinted reverie of attraction replete with splashy puddle percussives and accenting succulents.

The dirty street hustle that is “Baby O Baby” darkens this bubble-gummed innocence, lustfully stalked by Martin’s soft vocal purr. A solo rarity that comes across like a nicotine-stained Elvis full of fleshy intentions, backed by the champagned zap’n’zither of arcade machines. Letting the sample genie out of the bottle, “Nineteen 86” melds a driven Suicide-like thump and power-tooled whirl to the spliced and sifted toll of church bells that lip-curl the saturation in bubbling blisters.

A liberating rawness that feeds directly into the centrifugally spun brilliance of “Temptation”. An album eye-opener that gets me cranking the volume up to fill the room with its shapeshifting washy transits, viciously underpinned by pulsing stretchy repeats and super-cute toy-like xylophonics that breeze on over. At a time when most keyboards sounded twee and weedy, Mr Rev’s had a meaty maximus glisten that still (forty years later) bleeds a curious satisfaction.

A hungry diversity that moves straight into the damaged and radiated rodeo ride of “Jomo” strung to a droning two fingered see-saw that corrals the sparking energy within, its industrialised fervour bringing to mind Martin’s follow-up album Clouds Of Glory, which is seriously worth tracking down if (like me) you love to join up those all-important musical dots.

Dots that terminate here on the tightening gnaw of “Asia” A simple piano chord repeat and fire-working zither invaded by a wavering rhythm, beset by glassy glints that seem to catch the musician’s fractured reflection in glitzy pours.

Six tracks that are nothing short of inspiring.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-