Hello,
Today's artist story started in 1976, when 16-year-old Lydia Anne Koch strutted into the brutal, drug-and-whore-ravaged, garbage-strewn, bankrupt hell that was New York City, befriended some scum-sucking punk dudes, and made the rounds in infamous fuck-fests with throngs of scenesters and musicians as a hanger-on at practice pads, shit-hole clubs, and art dives. She concluded "I would be humiliated if I found out that anything I did actually became a commercial success."..... ..............N'Joy
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After arriving in New York City at the age of 14, Lydia Lunch (born Lydia Koch) moved into a large communal household of artists and musicians in NYC, including Kitty Bruce, daughter of Lenny Bruce. Soon after she earned the surname "Lunch" by regularly stealing lunches for her (often starving) artist friends. After befriending the 'godfathers of punk' Suicide at Max's Kansas City, she founded the short-lived but influential No Wave band Teenage Jesus & the Jerks in 1976 with her artistic partner, No Wave punk-funk-jazz musician James Chance. Both appeared on the seminal No Wave compilation No New York. Lunch later appeared on two songs on Chance's album Off White (credited to James White and the Blacks; Lunch used the pseudonym "Stella Rico") in 1978.
She appeared in two films directed by the husband and wife film-making team of Scott B and Beth B; In the short film Black Box (1978) she played an unnamed torturer, and in the feature length, neo-noir thriller Vortex (1983) she played a private detective named "Angel Powers". During this time, she also appeared in a number of films by Vivienne Dick, including She Had her Gun All Ready (1978) and Beauty Becomes The Beast (1979), co starring with Pat Place. In the mid-'80s she formed her own recording and publishing company called "Widowspeak" on which she continues to release a slew of her own material from songs to spoken word.
Her attitude of confrontational nihilism expressed in both her sound and her often violent and/or sexually oriented subject matter. After leaving Teenage Jesus, Lunch first formed Beirut Slump, but departed after one single. Her solo debut, 1980's Queen of Siam, proved to be one of her most acclaimed efforts, as was her next band, the funk-inflected 8 Eyed Spy. However, that band broke up due to the death of bassist George Scott, and Lunch went back out on her own. After 1982's 13.13, which featured former members of the Weirdos, Lunch began a rash of collaborations. Such as J. G. Thirlwell, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Nick Cave, Marc Almond, Billy Ver Plank, Steven Severin, Robert Quine, Sadie Mae, Rowland S. Howard, Michael Gira, The Birthday Party, Einstürzende Neubauten, Sonic Youth, Die Haut, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Black Sun Productions and french band Sibyl Vane who put one of her spoken words into music..
After leaving the seminal New York no wave outfit Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, poet/actress/vocalist Lydia Lunch (b. Lydia Koch) embarked on a solo career marked by frequent collaborations and band changes, plus an attitude of confrontational nihilism expressed in both her sound and her often violent and/or sexually oriented subject matter. Upon leaving Teenage Jesus, Lunch first formed Beirut Slump, but departed after one single. Her solo debut, 1980's Queen of Siam, proved to be one of her most acclaimed efforts, as was her next band, the funk-inflected 8 Eyed Spy. However, that band broke up due to the death of bassist George Scott, and Lunch went back out on her own.
After 1982's 13.13, which featured former members of the Weirdos, Lunch began a rash of collaborations, working with the Birthday Party on the EP The Agony Is the Ecstasy, as well as Einstürzende Neubauten, Die Haut, Sort Sol, Swans' Michael Gira, and members of Sonic Youth. Lunch founded her own Widowspeak label in 1985, immediately delving into spoken word with the EP The Uncensored Lydia Lunch and reissuing much of her back catalog, including a two-CD retrospective, Hysterie, in 1986. Her next collaboration was the first of several with Jim "Foetus" Thirlwell, who remixed a shelved project with Birthday Party members from 1982-1983; it was issued as Honeymoon in Red in 1987. The two also released the Stinkfist EP under Thirlwell's Clint Ruin alias in 1989. That same year, Lunch teamed with Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon in Harry Crews, a one-off, all-female noise rock band, for the LP Naked in Garden Hills. Aside from an EP with ex-Birthday Party guitarist Rowland S. Howard in 1991, Shotgun Wedding, plus her acting career in underground films, Lunch concentrated on the spoken word arena into the '90s; a three-CD retrospective of this aspect of her career, Crimes Against Nature, was issued in 1993, and Lunch continued her activities throughout the decade.
During the first decade of the 2000s, she switched primarily between spoken word and music -- though she continued to publish her writing and, occasionally, acted -- evidently as inspired and active as she was during the first years of her career. Though a confusing number of anthologies and reissues were released during this time, Lunch continued to produce a large volume of new material, highlighted by The Devil's Racetrack (2000), Memory and Madness (co-credited to Gallon Drunk's Terry Edwards, 2003), Willing Victim (2005), and Touch My Evil (with Anubian Lights, 2006).
In 2007, Lunch and Omar-Rodriguez Lopez collaborated on a self-titled mini-album, physically issued by the Netherlands' Willie Anderson Recordings imprint and digitally released by the guitarist's label. It was followed by the limited-edition issue of Amnesia by Contemporanea in 2009. She also recorded Big Sexy Noise in a trio with Gallon Drunk's James Johnston and Ian White that year; it was released by Cherry Red and followed by a European and Australian tour. Twist of Fate, a live collaboration with sound artist Philippe Petit from a concert in Berlin, was released in 2010 and also featured a film of the show. Lunch continued to perform at museums and theaters internationally as well as taking photographs, which have been exhibited globally.
The year 2013 proved to be prolific for Lunch. Her live band offering Retro Virus (her backing trio included guitarist Weasel Walter, drummer Bob Bert, and bassist Algis Kyzis) was issued by Interbang, and followed by a double album with Petit entitled Taste Our Voodoo and an experimental trio set entitled Medusa's Bed with Zahra Mani and Mia Zabelka. In November, Lunch performed a new work, Dust & Shadows, in collaboration with videographer Elise Passavant as part of the Louisville Museum's 21st century exhibition Aftermath: Witnessing War, Countenancing Compassion.
In June of 2014, Lunch and guitarist Cypress Grove delivered a set of gothic Americana love songs called A Fistful of Desert Blues. The pair reteamed for a split album with doomy European folk outfit Spiritual Front on the album Twin Horses, which was released in early 2015. Lunch released two albums in 2016. My Lover the Killer was a collaboration with French musician Marc Hurtado, released by the Spanish indie label Munster Records, and Brutal Measures, a live-in-the-studio effort with Lunch accompanied by Weasel Walter on drums and electronics; it was released via Lunch's own Widowspeak label. In 2017, she paired again with Grove for the eclectic covers album Under the Covers.
Lydia has been living in Barelona this last decade stating "My health has never been better after living in Barcelona for eight years. The food is not poisoned, the water is not poisoned, the air is not poisoned, there is no stress. So, I'm in perfect health."
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Lydia Lunch's career since deep-sixing Teenage Jesus and the Jerks has been an unpredictable path governed by boredom, sarcasm, romance, perversity and whatever musicians or collaborators are convenient at the time. Queen of Siam proves, at the very least, that she can do more than just scream, although her version of the Classics IV hit, "Spooky," shows she ain't exactly Beverly Sills, either, Her laconic slur of a voice has never sounded sexier, and her off-key rendition of "Spooky" is so lazily erotic that it nearly sucks the life out of you. A putrid classic of style and substance. Half of the album consists of muted, somber variations on her Teenage Jesus fear-and-suffering dirges, but the real surprises are songs like "Lady Scarface," in which the big band arrangements (by Flintstones- theme composer Billy Ver Planck) turn Lunch's wry asides into a Billie Holiday nightmare.
Lydia Lunch - Queen of Siam (flac 180mb)
01 Mechanical Flattery 2:46
02 Gloomy Sunday 2:57
03 Tied And Twist 2:55
04 Spooky 2:40
05 Los Banditos 3:10
06 Atomic Bongos 2:17
07 Lady Scarface 3:12
08 A Cruise To The Moon 3:54
09 Carnival Fat Man 2:11
10 Knives In The Drain 4:00
11 Blood Of Tin 1:09
(ogg mb)
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Another chunk of Atavistic's long-overdue retrospective of Lydia Lunch's highly influential early work, 8 Eyed Spy collects the entire recorded output of Lunch's second band. A far more overtly "musical" group than Teenage Jesus & the Jerks (which also featured Lunch and Jim Sclavunos, who switched from bass to drums for the new band), 8 Eyed Spy were no less confrontational. A modicum of actual talent and a newfound appreciation for musical forms that predate 1977 inform 8 Eyed Spy's slightly less chaotic music, making this compilation sort of the downtown post-punk equivalent to Trout Mask Replica. Indeed, the album kicks off with a peculiarly effective deconstruction of Captain Beefheart's early single "Diddy Wah Diddy," joining tracks by the Strangeloves and Creedence Clearwater Revival alongside the powerful originals led by Lunch's harsh but urgent vocals and Pat Irwin's honk-blat-phwee saxophone. The live half of the album suffers from the same kind of beyond-lo-fi sound issues as Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, but this is in all other ways a tremendous step up. Unfortunately, 8 Eyed Spy broke up after barely a year when bassist George Scott died, and they were never able to fulfill the promise of these early recordings.
8 Eyed Spy - 8 Eyed Spy (flac 244mb)
01 Diddy Wah Diddy 2:19
02 Lazy In Love 2:28
03 Love Split 2:10
04 Dead You B Side Me 3:40
05 Swamp 0:57
06 Run Through The Jungle 5:26
07 Motor Oil Shanty 4:30
08 You Twist I Shout 2:31
09 Looking For Someone 2:40
10 Lightning's Girl 3:07
11 Innocence 1:25
12 Boy Meets Girl 1:58
13 2 Square 2:36
14 I Want Candy 2:05
15 Ran Away Dark 1:51
8 Eyed Spy - 8 Eyed Spy (ogg 93mb)
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The muse of Sonic Youth and Richard Kern, Lydia Lunch is an awesome performer, sometimes gloomy and provocative. One could almost remember her through her collaborations with those last two ones or with other bands like Birthday Party and Einstürzende Neubauten. But her story evolved differently, and it became more flamboyant, asserting her image as a New Wave icon for the new generations, who have been able to re-discover her through the project Big Sexy Noise in which the rage and the success had an impact on the indie rock scene in 2009. A poetess and a rock writer already honored and known for her « spoken word », half way between the punk, Burroughs, Artaud and other scanned incantations, Mrs Lunch considers 13 13 as true material coming from her New York escape when she got the promise of an endless summer, which in fact turned out to be also disturbing. The souvenir of crimes and bloody rituals were becoming more radical in the Californian coasts during the glamor revival in 1980. Let's mention the heirs of Manson's family and the West Coast tendency of American Pshyco... « Welcome to Hollywood honey, where anything is possible. »That was the dark side of the American dream, a cliché with its over the hill actors and satanic hippies; it was real life observations. Therefore, she was affected with the eyes of a lucid iconoclast who delivered this album during the peak of Reagan's era.
This album came out in 1982. It condenses the singer and the piano player's style, an opus lead by a rock voice and an icy lyricism and baroc out of place. The ambivalence of rage and romanticism combined anticipates the works of the two next decades, from The Cure to Hole and a certain Courtney Love and of course Siouxie Sioux. Steven Severin and Murray Mitchell respectively, bass player and roadie in The Banshees appeared on stage whith her, while on tour in 1981. It was just before her second album signed under her name and after Queen of Siam where you could already notice her skilful sensitivity. A delight elates from this album through tragic and epic atmospheres, torn between eroticism and themes linked with social pornography from nowadays. After producing mythic figures from the 80's like James Chance her old accomplice from Teenage Jesus And The Jerks (discovered by Brian Eno) and Alan Vega for the album Sniper co-signed with Marc Hurtado, where the great priestress gives her voice for the title: « Prison Sacrifice », Le Son du Maquis is honored today to have been entrusted by this mission: so to speak, offering the first real reissue of her post-punk master pieces in 1982. It has been done for 13 13, often considered as her best albuml. A project produced under the eyes of the sensible artist, who wanted to stay faithful to the initial soul of this remarquable artistic work of rock culture from those cold years.
Lydia Lunch - 13-13 (flac 237mb)
01 Stares To Nowhere 4:17
02 3x3 6:04
03 This Side Of Nowhere 4:20
04 Snakepit Breakdown 4:50
05 Dance Of The Dead Children 2:20
06 Suicide Ocean 6:00
07 Lock Your Door 5:27
08 Afraid Of Your Company 7:09
Lydia Lunch - 13-13 (ogg 91mb)
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These six tracks still bear much of her trademark abrasiveness with her aggressive, caterwauling vocal style
Those in-your-face vocals return on In Limbo, something of a return to the nearly atonal cacophony of Lunch's earliest work, but with greater delicacy and subtlety thanks largely to collaborator Thurston Moore's skill at varied and intriguing sonic moods. Parts of "Friday Afternoon" are almost pretty, something that could never be said of Lunch's previous work.
Lydia Lunch - In Limbo (EP) (flac 167mb)
01 I Wish...I Wish 5:24
02 Friday Afternoon 4:11
03 1000 Lies 4:49
04 Some Boys 4:49
05 Still Burning 6:02
06 What Did You Do 6:12
(ogg mb)
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Lydia Lunch collaborated with a wide variety of musicians on Honeymoon in Red, including Clint Ruin (later known as Jim Foetus), Roland S. Howard and the Birthday Party. The result isn't that much different from the standard Lunch album, but it has a stronger collection of songs than her average album, and the Birthday Party captures the sound of urban life imploding, which is the sound Lunch is always striving to achieve. It is vividly rendered and has a cinematic quality to it. Lunch's draggy, bad-hangover vocals are, of course, instantly recognisable and her influence over the project is considerable, dealing as it does in literary, noiresque stories of love gone wrong, murder on lonely roads, and so and so forth, territories which Lunch has explored extensively in the course of her career, probably more successfully than any of her peers with the exception of Nick Cave.
Musically, it is heady stuff and reaches a level of intensity that is almost overwhelming in parts. Lunch takes no prisoners when she works up a full head of steam. Think of 'Death Valley '69', Sonic Youth's collab with Lunch on their Bad Moon Rising album or parts of Lunch's other collab with Rowland S. Howard, Shotgun Wedding. Neither of those equals the overall impact of Honeymoon in Red though. With the combined talents of these artists at play, you can expect some impressive results, and HIR doesn't disappoint. Artistically the highlight is the epic Three Kings which at 7.26 secs allows the band to stretch out and really display their chops.
Lydia Lunch - Honeymoon In Red (flac 229mb)
01 Come Fall 4:54
02 So Your Heart 2:20
03 Dead River 2:40
04 Three Kings 7:26
05 Done Dun 4:28
06 Still Burning 5:32
07 Fields Of Fire 3:54
08 Dead In The Head 5:57
09 Some Velvet Morning 4:24
Lydia Lunch - Honeymoon In Red (ogg 90 mb)
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Released on her self-owned label, Hysterie is a one-decade retrospective of Lydia Lunch's diverse musical career. The set is split into four distinct segments, the first covering the influential "aural terror" band Teenage Jesus & the Jerks. The second recapitulates the relatively obscure Beirut Slump, in which Lunch played guitar but did not sing. The best material is taken from her work with the chaotic no wave group 8 Eyed Spy, while the collection ends with samples from Lunch's side projects with collaborators Rowland Howard, Sort Sol and Die Haut.
Lydia Lunch - Hysterie (flac 447mb)
01 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Red Alert 0:21
02 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Orphans 2:24
03 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - The Closet 3:47
04 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Burning Rubber 1:38
05 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - I Woke Up Dreaming 3:02
06 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Freud In Flop 0:42
07 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Baby Doll 1:32
08 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Race Mixing 1:01
09 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Crown Of Thorns 0:42
10 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Red Alert 0:24
11 Beirut Slump - Try Me 1:58
12 Beirut Slump - Staircase 2:38
13 Beirut Slump - I Am The Lord Jesus 0:53
14 Beirut Slump - Case #14 2:25
15 Beirut Slump - See Pretty 2:44
16 Beirut Slump - G-I Blue 0:56
17 Beirut Slump - Tornado Warnings 1:16
18 Beirut Slump - Sidewalk 2:54
19 8 Eyed Spy - Swamp 0:51
20 8 Eyed Spy - Run Thru The Jungle 5:29
21 8 Eyed Spy - Motor Oil Shanty 2:30
22 8 Eyed Spy - Love Split With Blood 2:04
23 8 Eyed Spy - Ran Away Dark 1:51
24 8 Eyed Spy - Diddy Wah Diddy 2:18
25 8 Eyed Spy - Lazy In Love 2:53
26 8 Eyed Spy - Dead Me You Beside 3:40
27 Lydia Lunch & Rowland S. Howard - I Fell In Love With A Ghost 6:59
28 Lydia Lunch & Sort Sol - As She Weeps 5:31
29 Lydia Lunch & Die Haut - Der Karibische Western 7:57
Lydia Lunch - Hysterie (ogg 176mb)
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Today's artist story started in 1976, when 16-year-old Lydia Anne Koch strutted into the brutal, drug-and-whore-ravaged, garbage-strewn, bankrupt hell that was New York City, befriended some scum-sucking punk dudes, and made the rounds in infamous fuck-fests with throngs of scenesters and musicians as a hanger-on at practice pads, shit-hole clubs, and art dives. She concluded "I would be humiliated if I found out that anything I did actually became a commercial success."..... ..............N'Joy
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After arriving in New York City at the age of 14, Lydia Lunch (born Lydia Koch) moved into a large communal household of artists and musicians in NYC, including Kitty Bruce, daughter of Lenny Bruce. Soon after she earned the surname "Lunch" by regularly stealing lunches for her (often starving) artist friends. After befriending the 'godfathers of punk' Suicide at Max's Kansas City, she founded the short-lived but influential No Wave band Teenage Jesus & the Jerks in 1976 with her artistic partner, No Wave punk-funk-jazz musician James Chance. Both appeared on the seminal No Wave compilation No New York. Lunch later appeared on two songs on Chance's album Off White (credited to James White and the Blacks; Lunch used the pseudonym "Stella Rico") in 1978.
She appeared in two films directed by the husband and wife film-making team of Scott B and Beth B; In the short film Black Box (1978) she played an unnamed torturer, and in the feature length, neo-noir thriller Vortex (1983) she played a private detective named "Angel Powers". During this time, she also appeared in a number of films by Vivienne Dick, including She Had her Gun All Ready (1978) and Beauty Becomes The Beast (1979), co starring with Pat Place. In the mid-'80s she formed her own recording and publishing company called "Widowspeak" on which she continues to release a slew of her own material from songs to spoken word.
Her attitude of confrontational nihilism expressed in both her sound and her often violent and/or sexually oriented subject matter. After leaving Teenage Jesus, Lunch first formed Beirut Slump, but departed after one single. Her solo debut, 1980's Queen of Siam, proved to be one of her most acclaimed efforts, as was her next band, the funk-inflected 8 Eyed Spy. However, that band broke up due to the death of bassist George Scott, and Lunch went back out on her own. After 1982's 13.13, which featured former members of the Weirdos, Lunch began a rash of collaborations. Such as J. G. Thirlwell, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Nick Cave, Marc Almond, Billy Ver Plank, Steven Severin, Robert Quine, Sadie Mae, Rowland S. Howard, Michael Gira, The Birthday Party, Einstürzende Neubauten, Sonic Youth, Die Haut, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Black Sun Productions and french band Sibyl Vane who put one of her spoken words into music..
After leaving the seminal New York no wave outfit Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, poet/actress/vocalist Lydia Lunch (b. Lydia Koch) embarked on a solo career marked by frequent collaborations and band changes, plus an attitude of confrontational nihilism expressed in both her sound and her often violent and/or sexually oriented subject matter. Upon leaving Teenage Jesus, Lunch first formed Beirut Slump, but departed after one single. Her solo debut, 1980's Queen of Siam, proved to be one of her most acclaimed efforts, as was her next band, the funk-inflected 8 Eyed Spy. However, that band broke up due to the death of bassist George Scott, and Lunch went back out on her own.
After 1982's 13.13, which featured former members of the Weirdos, Lunch began a rash of collaborations, working with the Birthday Party on the EP The Agony Is the Ecstasy, as well as Einstürzende Neubauten, Die Haut, Sort Sol, Swans' Michael Gira, and members of Sonic Youth. Lunch founded her own Widowspeak label in 1985, immediately delving into spoken word with the EP The Uncensored Lydia Lunch and reissuing much of her back catalog, including a two-CD retrospective, Hysterie, in 1986. Her next collaboration was the first of several with Jim "Foetus" Thirlwell, who remixed a shelved project with Birthday Party members from 1982-1983; it was issued as Honeymoon in Red in 1987. The two also released the Stinkfist EP under Thirlwell's Clint Ruin alias in 1989. That same year, Lunch teamed with Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon in Harry Crews, a one-off, all-female noise rock band, for the LP Naked in Garden Hills. Aside from an EP with ex-Birthday Party guitarist Rowland S. Howard in 1991, Shotgun Wedding, plus her acting career in underground films, Lunch concentrated on the spoken word arena into the '90s; a three-CD retrospective of this aspect of her career, Crimes Against Nature, was issued in 1993, and Lunch continued her activities throughout the decade.
During the first decade of the 2000s, she switched primarily between spoken word and music -- though she continued to publish her writing and, occasionally, acted -- evidently as inspired and active as she was during the first years of her career. Though a confusing number of anthologies and reissues were released during this time, Lunch continued to produce a large volume of new material, highlighted by The Devil's Racetrack (2000), Memory and Madness (co-credited to Gallon Drunk's Terry Edwards, 2003), Willing Victim (2005), and Touch My Evil (with Anubian Lights, 2006).
In 2007, Lunch and Omar-Rodriguez Lopez collaborated on a self-titled mini-album, physically issued by the Netherlands' Willie Anderson Recordings imprint and digitally released by the guitarist's label. It was followed by the limited-edition issue of Amnesia by Contemporanea in 2009. She also recorded Big Sexy Noise in a trio with Gallon Drunk's James Johnston and Ian White that year; it was released by Cherry Red and followed by a European and Australian tour. Twist of Fate, a live collaboration with sound artist Philippe Petit from a concert in Berlin, was released in 2010 and also featured a film of the show. Lunch continued to perform at museums and theaters internationally as well as taking photographs, which have been exhibited globally.
The year 2013 proved to be prolific for Lunch. Her live band offering Retro Virus (her backing trio included guitarist Weasel Walter, drummer Bob Bert, and bassist Algis Kyzis) was issued by Interbang, and followed by a double album with Petit entitled Taste Our Voodoo and an experimental trio set entitled Medusa's Bed with Zahra Mani and Mia Zabelka. In November, Lunch performed a new work, Dust & Shadows, in collaboration with videographer Elise Passavant as part of the Louisville Museum's 21st century exhibition Aftermath: Witnessing War, Countenancing Compassion.
In June of 2014, Lunch and guitarist Cypress Grove delivered a set of gothic Americana love songs called A Fistful of Desert Blues. The pair reteamed for a split album with doomy European folk outfit Spiritual Front on the album Twin Horses, which was released in early 2015. Lunch released two albums in 2016. My Lover the Killer was a collaboration with French musician Marc Hurtado, released by the Spanish indie label Munster Records, and Brutal Measures, a live-in-the-studio effort with Lunch accompanied by Weasel Walter on drums and electronics; it was released via Lunch's own Widowspeak label. In 2017, she paired again with Grove for the eclectic covers album Under the Covers.
Lydia has been living in Barelona this last decade stating "My health has never been better after living in Barcelona for eight years. The food is not poisoned, the water is not poisoned, the air is not poisoned, there is no stress. So, I'm in perfect health."
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Lydia Lunch's career since deep-sixing Teenage Jesus and the Jerks has been an unpredictable path governed by boredom, sarcasm, romance, perversity and whatever musicians or collaborators are convenient at the time. Queen of Siam proves, at the very least, that she can do more than just scream, although her version of the Classics IV hit, "Spooky," shows she ain't exactly Beverly Sills, either, Her laconic slur of a voice has never sounded sexier, and her off-key rendition of "Spooky" is so lazily erotic that it nearly sucks the life out of you. A putrid classic of style and substance. Half of the album consists of muted, somber variations on her Teenage Jesus fear-and-suffering dirges, but the real surprises are songs like "Lady Scarface," in which the big band arrangements (by Flintstones- theme composer Billy Ver Planck) turn Lunch's wry asides into a Billie Holiday nightmare.
Lydia Lunch - Queen of Siam (flac 180mb)
01 Mechanical Flattery 2:46
02 Gloomy Sunday 2:57
03 Tied And Twist 2:55
04 Spooky 2:40
05 Los Banditos 3:10
06 Atomic Bongos 2:17
07 Lady Scarface 3:12
08 A Cruise To The Moon 3:54
09 Carnival Fat Man 2:11
10 Knives In The Drain 4:00
11 Blood Of Tin 1:09
(ogg mb)
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Another chunk of Atavistic's long-overdue retrospective of Lydia Lunch's highly influential early work, 8 Eyed Spy collects the entire recorded output of Lunch's second band. A far more overtly "musical" group than Teenage Jesus & the Jerks (which also featured Lunch and Jim Sclavunos, who switched from bass to drums for the new band), 8 Eyed Spy were no less confrontational. A modicum of actual talent and a newfound appreciation for musical forms that predate 1977 inform 8 Eyed Spy's slightly less chaotic music, making this compilation sort of the downtown post-punk equivalent to Trout Mask Replica. Indeed, the album kicks off with a peculiarly effective deconstruction of Captain Beefheart's early single "Diddy Wah Diddy," joining tracks by the Strangeloves and Creedence Clearwater Revival alongside the powerful originals led by Lunch's harsh but urgent vocals and Pat Irwin's honk-blat-phwee saxophone. The live half of the album suffers from the same kind of beyond-lo-fi sound issues as Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, but this is in all other ways a tremendous step up. Unfortunately, 8 Eyed Spy broke up after barely a year when bassist George Scott died, and they were never able to fulfill the promise of these early recordings.
8 Eyed Spy - 8 Eyed Spy (flac 244mb)
01 Diddy Wah Diddy 2:19
02 Lazy In Love 2:28
03 Love Split 2:10
04 Dead You B Side Me 3:40
05 Swamp 0:57
06 Run Through The Jungle 5:26
07 Motor Oil Shanty 4:30
08 You Twist I Shout 2:31
09 Looking For Someone 2:40
10 Lightning's Girl 3:07
11 Innocence 1:25
12 Boy Meets Girl 1:58
13 2 Square 2:36
14 I Want Candy 2:05
15 Ran Away Dark 1:51
8 Eyed Spy - 8 Eyed Spy (ogg 93mb)
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The muse of Sonic Youth and Richard Kern, Lydia Lunch is an awesome performer, sometimes gloomy and provocative. One could almost remember her through her collaborations with those last two ones or with other bands like Birthday Party and Einstürzende Neubauten. But her story evolved differently, and it became more flamboyant, asserting her image as a New Wave icon for the new generations, who have been able to re-discover her through the project Big Sexy Noise in which the rage and the success had an impact on the indie rock scene in 2009. A poetess and a rock writer already honored and known for her « spoken word », half way between the punk, Burroughs, Artaud and other scanned incantations, Mrs Lunch considers 13 13 as true material coming from her New York escape when she got the promise of an endless summer, which in fact turned out to be also disturbing. The souvenir of crimes and bloody rituals were becoming more radical in the Californian coasts during the glamor revival in 1980. Let's mention the heirs of Manson's family and the West Coast tendency of American Pshyco... « Welcome to Hollywood honey, where anything is possible. »That was the dark side of the American dream, a cliché with its over the hill actors and satanic hippies; it was real life observations. Therefore, she was affected with the eyes of a lucid iconoclast who delivered this album during the peak of Reagan's era.
This album came out in 1982. It condenses the singer and the piano player's style, an opus lead by a rock voice and an icy lyricism and baroc out of place. The ambivalence of rage and romanticism combined anticipates the works of the two next decades, from The Cure to Hole and a certain Courtney Love and of course Siouxie Sioux. Steven Severin and Murray Mitchell respectively, bass player and roadie in The Banshees appeared on stage whith her, while on tour in 1981. It was just before her second album signed under her name and after Queen of Siam where you could already notice her skilful sensitivity. A delight elates from this album through tragic and epic atmospheres, torn between eroticism and themes linked with social pornography from nowadays. After producing mythic figures from the 80's like James Chance her old accomplice from Teenage Jesus And The Jerks (discovered by Brian Eno) and Alan Vega for the album Sniper co-signed with Marc Hurtado, where the great priestress gives her voice for the title: « Prison Sacrifice », Le Son du Maquis is honored today to have been entrusted by this mission: so to speak, offering the first real reissue of her post-punk master pieces in 1982. It has been done for 13 13, often considered as her best albuml. A project produced under the eyes of the sensible artist, who wanted to stay faithful to the initial soul of this remarquable artistic work of rock culture from those cold years.
Lydia Lunch - 13-13 (flac 237mb)
01 Stares To Nowhere 4:17
02 3x3 6:04
03 This Side Of Nowhere 4:20
04 Snakepit Breakdown 4:50
05 Dance Of The Dead Children 2:20
06 Suicide Ocean 6:00
07 Lock Your Door 5:27
08 Afraid Of Your Company 7:09
Lydia Lunch - 13-13 (ogg 91mb)
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These six tracks still bear much of her trademark abrasiveness with her aggressive, caterwauling vocal style
Those in-your-face vocals return on In Limbo, something of a return to the nearly atonal cacophony of Lunch's earliest work, but with greater delicacy and subtlety thanks largely to collaborator Thurston Moore's skill at varied and intriguing sonic moods. Parts of "Friday Afternoon" are almost pretty, something that could never be said of Lunch's previous work.
Lydia Lunch - In Limbo (EP) (flac 167mb)
01 I Wish...I Wish 5:24
02 Friday Afternoon 4:11
03 1000 Lies 4:49
04 Some Boys 4:49
05 Still Burning 6:02
06 What Did You Do 6:12
(ogg mb)
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Lydia Lunch collaborated with a wide variety of musicians on Honeymoon in Red, including Clint Ruin (later known as Jim Foetus), Roland S. Howard and the Birthday Party. The result isn't that much different from the standard Lunch album, but it has a stronger collection of songs than her average album, and the Birthday Party captures the sound of urban life imploding, which is the sound Lunch is always striving to achieve. It is vividly rendered and has a cinematic quality to it. Lunch's draggy, bad-hangover vocals are, of course, instantly recognisable and her influence over the project is considerable, dealing as it does in literary, noiresque stories of love gone wrong, murder on lonely roads, and so and so forth, territories which Lunch has explored extensively in the course of her career, probably more successfully than any of her peers with the exception of Nick Cave.
Musically, it is heady stuff and reaches a level of intensity that is almost overwhelming in parts. Lunch takes no prisoners when she works up a full head of steam. Think of 'Death Valley '69', Sonic Youth's collab with Lunch on their Bad Moon Rising album or parts of Lunch's other collab with Rowland S. Howard, Shotgun Wedding. Neither of those equals the overall impact of Honeymoon in Red though. With the combined talents of these artists at play, you can expect some impressive results, and HIR doesn't disappoint. Artistically the highlight is the epic Three Kings which at 7.26 secs allows the band to stretch out and really display their chops.
Lydia Lunch - Honeymoon In Red (flac 229mb)
01 Come Fall 4:54
02 So Your Heart 2:20
03 Dead River 2:40
04 Three Kings 7:26
05 Done Dun 4:28
06 Still Burning 5:32
07 Fields Of Fire 3:54
08 Dead In The Head 5:57
09 Some Velvet Morning 4:24
Lydia Lunch - Honeymoon In Red (ogg 90 mb)
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Released on her self-owned label, Hysterie is a one-decade retrospective of Lydia Lunch's diverse musical career. The set is split into four distinct segments, the first covering the influential "aural terror" band Teenage Jesus & the Jerks. The second recapitulates the relatively obscure Beirut Slump, in which Lunch played guitar but did not sing. The best material is taken from her work with the chaotic no wave group 8 Eyed Spy, while the collection ends with samples from Lunch's side projects with collaborators Rowland Howard, Sort Sol and Die Haut.
Lydia Lunch - Hysterie (flac 447mb)
01 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Red Alert 0:21
02 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Orphans 2:24
03 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - The Closet 3:47
04 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Burning Rubber 1:38
05 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - I Woke Up Dreaming 3:02
06 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Freud In Flop 0:42
07 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Baby Doll 1:32
08 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Race Mixing 1:01
09 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Crown Of Thorns 0:42
10 Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Red Alert 0:24
11 Beirut Slump - Try Me 1:58
12 Beirut Slump - Staircase 2:38
13 Beirut Slump - I Am The Lord Jesus 0:53
14 Beirut Slump - Case #14 2:25
15 Beirut Slump - See Pretty 2:44
16 Beirut Slump - G-I Blue 0:56
17 Beirut Slump - Tornado Warnings 1:16
18 Beirut Slump - Sidewalk 2:54
19 8 Eyed Spy - Swamp 0:51
20 8 Eyed Spy - Run Thru The Jungle 5:29
21 8 Eyed Spy - Motor Oil Shanty 2:30
22 8 Eyed Spy - Love Split With Blood 2:04
23 8 Eyed Spy - Ran Away Dark 1:51
24 8 Eyed Spy - Diddy Wah Diddy 2:18
25 8 Eyed Spy - Lazy In Love 2:53
26 8 Eyed Spy - Dead Me You Beside 3:40
27 Lydia Lunch & Rowland S. Howard - I Fell In Love With A Ghost 6:59
28 Lydia Lunch & Sort Sol - As She Weeps 5:31
29 Lydia Lunch & Die Haut - Der Karibische Western 7:57
Lydia Lunch - Hysterie (ogg 176mb)
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many thanks
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