January 25, 2012
#12: Void - Sessions 1981-83 Since this is a collection of 30 year old material, some people might consider it a reissue. However, almost none of this material has been previously released (at least, not officially), and anyway, getting too hung up on how to categorize records is a sign of a joyless existence. So what the hell—this collection of 30 year old recordings by short-lived Washington DC hardcore band Void is my #12 album of 2011. Void’s only previous release, a split LP with DC’s Faith that came out in 1983, is probably not on the same notoriety level as classics of the American hardcore genre like Black Flag’s Damaged or Minor Threat’s Out Of Step. However, within the underground hardcore scene, it’s been one of the most influential releases of the past three decades. The 12 songs Void managed to cram onto their side of that vinyl LP were, on a fundamental level, the same sort of fast hardcore that a lot of other bands in their city, including Minor Threat, Faith, and Government Issue, were playing at the time. But Void’s version of the style was an outlier; between John Wieffenbach’s maniacal screaming, guitarist Bubba Dupree’s experimentation with bent strings and feedback, and the extremely loose but somehow always on-beat playing of bassist Chris Stover and drummer Sean Finnegan, Void produced a shambling Frankenstein-monster version of hardcore. Their songs were still about typical adolescent concerns like repressive authority figures and stultifying suburban neighborhoods, but the way they performed them added a frisson of terror to the experience of listening to them. Void broke up not long after the release of the split LP, but there were rumors of other sessions that had been recorded but not released, and as powerful as Void’s sole release had been, if those other recordings were out there, people wanted to hear them. I’m not sure why this was the year that Dischord Records decided to finally open their vaults (in addition to this LP, they also produced archival Faith and Government Issue releases this year), but I’m one of many who are glad it happened. This Void LP contains two full recording sessions—the 20-song demo recorded in early 1982 at Hit And Run Studios, and a 10-song session recorded in November of that year at Inner Ear Studios—plus two outtakes from the Faith split LP and two live tracks. The first 20 songs are interesting for a few different reasons; for one thing, these are the only recorded versions of 10 of them, so getting 10 new Void songs after three decades is pretty awesome. Of course, they’re not up to the quality of the material on the Faith split, a fact made more obvious by the early versions of songs from the Faith split like “War Hero” and “Organized Sports.” “Time To Die” in particular sounds extremely different from the version recorded a year later for that split LP—the later version’s intro/bridge riff, probably the most easily recognizable part of the song, is missing entirely from this version, and the verse and chorus riffs are played in a slower, clunkier fashion. Still, it’s interesting to hear, simply because of the light it sheds on Void’s creative process, and the growing pains they went through in order to become the band that everyone heard on the Faith split. The three versions of “Dehumanized” here are even more instructive. The second version of “Dehumanized,” from the November 1982 session, was released along with “Authority” and “My Rules” on the 1982 Dischord compilation Flex Your Head (making those three songs the only ones here to have been previously released—unless you count the Condensed Flesh bootleg, which contained the other seven songs from that session). When my friends and I first heard Flex Your Head as teenagers, we tried and tried to understand what Bubba Dupree was doing on guitar during the verses of “Dehumanized.” Wild theories were floated, such as that he’d forgotten what he was supposed to play, or even that he was developmentally disabled. But Dupree, if anything, was one of the more proficient musicians on the DC scene in that area—he just had a mischievous streak, and liked to push the limits of the song form by wringing chaotic noise out of his guitar. The original recording of “Dehumanized” predates his decision to do so on that song, though, and the verses have a really simple guitar riff that pauses for a three-beat rest at the end of each line.  By the time of the Flex Your Head version, recorded seven months later, Dupree had clearly tired of waiting silently through those three beats. Instead, he fills them with feedback and the sound of his strings being tortured—but always comes back to that simple two-chord riff that grounded the verses on the original version—or at least to something resembling it. The final version of “Dehumanized,” an outtake from the spring 1983 session for the Faith split, is the most chaotic of all. The verses are a pure noise onslaught, with the responsibility of maintaining riff structure given entirely over to Stover’s bass. Dupree plays the choruses straight, but spends the verses playing bizarre, unstructured solos which nonetheless have more than a hint of Jimmy Page in them—though over a fast hardcore song, they sound less like prog-metal and more like sheer craziness. For those who come to this archival Void release looking for a second helping of the chaotic terror-core they found on their split LP with Faith, it’s the second side of this album that really delivers. The 10-song November 1982 Inner Ear session pairs the Flex Your Head comp tracks with alternate versions of three songs from the Faith split—at least one of which, “War Hero,” is a significant improvement over the released version—and four otherwise-unheard songs. Then comes the 1983 version of “Dehumanized,” another excellent outtake called “Get Out Of My Way,” and two live songs from the end of a 1983 set. One, “Explode,” is announced as their final song, and after an ominous bass intro, it does as the title promises for 30 seconds or so, before falling apart into a bunch of Dupree feedback. The band leaves the stage, at which point Void’s fans prove that they could be just as frightening as Void themselves. An audience member grabs the microphone and screams, “If this goddamn band doesn’t play ‘My Rules’ right now, I will fucking kill ‘em!” The crowd roars as he continues to scream death threats for another 30 seconds or so, by which time Void has returned to the stage. The set—and the album—ends with a drawn-out version of “My Rules,” on which the final chorus is repeated so many times that the tape cuts off rather than capturing the end of the song. Sessions 1981-83 isn’t quite on the level of Void’s split with Faith. Unlike that record, Sessions depicts a band that is at least recognizably human, who make mistakes and record less-than-perfect versions of songs. Having said that, I must admit that a significant portion of the time when I listen to this album, I don’t even play the Hit And Run demo, instead skipping right to the Flex Your Head tracks. From there on, this album is pretty much flawless, a perfect companion to Void’s side of the Faith split. It’s fitting, in a way; after all, even on the Faith/Void split, Void only produced one side of a perfect album. And as with the Faith material on the other side of that album, the other side of Sessions 1981-83 is still really good. I don’t think there’s much more I could have demanded from this album.

#12: Void - Sessions 1981-83

Since this is a collection of 30 year old material, some people might consider it a reissue. However, almost none of this material has been previously released (at least, not officially), and anyway, getting too hung up on how to categorize records is a sign of a joyless existence. So what the hell—this collection of 30 year old recordings by short-lived Washington DC hardcore band Void is my #12 album of 2011.

Void’s only previous release, a split LP with DC’s Faith that came out in 1983, is probably not on the same notoriety level as classics of the American hardcore genre like Black Flag’s Damaged or Minor Threat’s Out Of Step. However, within the underground hardcore scene, it’s been one of the most influential releases of the past three decades. The 12 songs Void managed to cram onto their side of that vinyl LP were, on a fundamental level, the same sort of fast hardcore that a lot of other bands in their city, including Minor Threat, Faith, and Government Issue, were playing at the time. But Void’s version of the style was an outlier; between John Wieffenbach’s maniacal screaming, guitarist Bubba Dupree’s experimentation with bent strings and feedback, and the extremely loose but somehow always on-beat playing of bassist Chris Stover and drummer Sean Finnegan, Void produced a shambling Frankenstein-monster version of hardcore. Their songs were still about typical adolescent concerns like repressive authority figures and stultifying suburban neighborhoods, but the way they performed them added a frisson of terror to the experience of listening to them.

Void broke up not long after the release of the split LP, but there were rumors of other sessions that had been recorded but not released, and as powerful as Void’s sole release had been, if those other recordings were out there, people wanted to hear them. I’m not sure why this was the year that Dischord Records decided to finally open their vaults (in addition to this LP, they also produced archival Faith and Government Issue releases this year), but I’m one of many who are glad it happened. This Void LP contains two full recording sessions—the 20-song demo recorded in early 1982 at Hit And Run Studios, and a 10-song session recorded in November of that year at Inner Ear Studios—plus two outtakes from the Faith split LP and two live tracks.

The first 20 songs are interesting for a few different reasons; for one thing, these are the only recorded versions of 10 of them, so getting 10 new Void songs after three decades is pretty awesome. Of course, they’re not up to the quality of the material on the Faith split, a fact made more obvious by the early versions of songs from the Faith split like “War Hero” and “Organized Sports.” “Time To Die” in particular sounds extremely different from the version recorded a year later for that split LP—the later version’s intro/bridge riff, probably the most easily recognizable part of the song, is missing entirely from this version, and the verse and chorus riffs are played in a slower, clunkier fashion. Still, it’s interesting to hear, simply because of the light it sheds on Void’s creative process, and the growing pains they went through in order to become the band that everyone heard on the Faith split.

The three versions of “Dehumanized” here are even more instructive. The second version of “Dehumanized,” from the November 1982 session, was released along with “Authority” and “My Rules” on the 1982 Dischord compilation Flex Your Head (making those three songs the only ones here to have been previously released—unless you count the Condensed Flesh bootleg, which contained the other seven songs from that session). When my friends and I first heard Flex Your Head as teenagers, we tried and tried to understand what Bubba Dupree was doing on guitar during the verses of “Dehumanized.” Wild theories were floated, such as that he’d forgotten what he was supposed to play, or even that he was developmentally disabled. But Dupree, if anything, was one of the more proficient musicians on the DC scene in that area—he just had a mischievous streak, and liked to push the limits of the song form by wringing chaotic noise out of his guitar. The original recording of “Dehumanized” predates his decision to do so on that song, though, and the verses have a really simple guitar riff that pauses for a three-beat rest at the end of each line. 

By the time of the Flex Your Head version, recorded seven months later, Dupree had clearly tired of waiting silently through those three beats. Instead, he fills them with feedback and the sound of his strings being tortured—but always comes back to that simple two-chord riff that grounded the verses on the original version—or at least to something resembling it. The final version of “Dehumanized,” an outtake from the spring 1983 session for the Faith split, is the most chaotic of all. The verses are a pure noise onslaught, with the responsibility of maintaining riff structure given entirely over to Stover’s bass. Dupree plays the choruses straight, but spends the verses playing bizarre, unstructured solos which nonetheless have more than a hint of Jimmy Page in them—though over a fast hardcore song, they sound less like prog-metal and more like sheer craziness.

For those who come to this archival Void release looking for a second helping of the chaotic terror-core they found on their split LP with Faith, it’s the second side of this album that really delivers. The 10-song November 1982 Inner Ear session pairs the Flex Your Head comp tracks with alternate versions of three songs from the Faith split—at least one of which, “War Hero,” is a significant improvement over the released version—and four otherwise-unheard songs. Then comes the 1983 version of “Dehumanized,” another excellent outtake called “Get Out Of My Way,” and two live songs from the end of a 1983 set. One, “Explode,” is announced as their final song, and after an ominous bass intro, it does as the title promises for 30 seconds or so, before falling apart into a bunch of Dupree feedback. The band leaves the stage, at which point Void’s fans prove that they could be just as frightening as Void themselves. An audience member grabs the microphone and screams, “If this goddamn band doesn’t play ‘My Rules’ right now, I will fucking kill ‘em!” The crowd roars as he continues to scream death threats for another 30 seconds or so, by which time Void has returned to the stage. The set—and the album—ends with a drawn-out version of “My Rules,” on which the final chorus is repeated so many times that the tape cuts off rather than capturing the end of the song.

Sessions 1981-83 isn’t quite on the level of Void’s split with Faith. Unlike that record, Sessions depicts a band that is at least recognizably human, who make mistakes and record less-than-perfect versions of songs. Having said that, I must admit that a significant portion of the time when I listen to this album, I don’t even play the Hit And Run demo, instead skipping right to the Flex Your Head tracks. From there on, this album is pretty much flawless, a perfect companion to Void’s side of the Faith split. It’s fitting, in a way; after all, even on the Faith/Void split, Void only produced one side of a perfect album. And as with the Faith material on the other side of that album, the other side of Sessions 1981-83 is still really good. I don’t think there’s much more I could have demanded from this album.

11:48pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Z-FUayFNyYt7
(Notes: 3)
  
Filed under: Top 20 of 2011 
  1. andrewtsks posted this