Chrome / Read Only Memory (12″ Vinyl EP + Bonus Tracks)

Description

12″ Vinyl EP / Reissue

Clear Vinyl – Comes with printed inner sleeve

Sticker on front reads: “Chrome’s Read Only Memory EP Plus Rare Bonus Tracks Recorded Live In Italy 1981!”

1979-US

Format: 12″ Vinyl EP

#Ref: CLP1310

Release date: 2014

Release notes

A very special reissue of the rare 1979 EP by pioneering art rockers Chrome, released with fully restored artwork and 4 bonus live tracks recorded in July of 1981!

Although the final year of the seventies found Chrome still discharging audio refuse centre stage while letting it just expire and hang there as exploding, dripping and screaming mental detritus in pursuit of analogous sonic expressions, it wouldn’t be long before the far end of the tunnel into the eighties found them sonically changed forever. Where once static‑y nocturnal emissions and nightmare grooves were recalled as cut-and-paste-in-the-garage sonic attacks, they became more linear and organised as Chrome’s visionary leader, Damon Edge, gradually began to redirect his vocals into something approximating crooning which was at odds with his previous mouthy replies to his fears and dreams spat out like some amphetamine zombie/pygmy/cannibal Mick Jagger scouring a contaminated landscape perforated with photocopied cut-out eyeballs poking out of every skyscraper, escalator and monitor… Underneath song titles and lyrics scrawled in Edge’s dyslectic Grecian handwriting.

Just prior to this transformation, Chrome was already down to the trio of Damon Edge (French for ‘damaged’; vocals, keyboards, found sounds) Helios Creed (Ancient Greek god of Psychedelickinesis; guitar, bass) and John L. Cyborg (Android Krautrocker; data memory). In-between their “Half Machine Lip Moves” and “Red Exposure” albums, they squeezed out the super-extended-play EP, “Read Only Memory.” Bearing little resemblance to either album it flanked, it was a one-off instrumental portal between the home-recorded-ness of the former and the air-locked grooves of the latter. While far more collaged and stripped down an event than even side two of “Half Machine Lip Moves” and more organically spaced-out than “Red Exposure,” “Read Only Memory” might be Chrome’s most unmanageable sonic discharge, ever. Despite (or because of) this, this collection of cutaways radiate a push/pull meditational charm through the power of its crazily distracted qualities, with foreshadowing, repetition and severe edits casting the proceedings into a supremely disorienting kaleidoscope. It’s even more degraded than the second side of their previous “Half Machine Lip Moves” LP, where the layers of electronic interrupti, pre-recorded paranoia and sonic flyaways were merged into actual ‘songs.’ But within the funhouse-mirrored confines of “Read Only Memory” there was no such decorum as the whole thing was set several steps beyond into alien territories of riotous interstellar pulses, abandoned synthetic treatments, shards of broken guitar FX and collages of Edge’s tape-recorded nighttime obsessions. It’s damaged, distorted and disembodied beyond belief as the wormholes in the sonic fabric just keep opening up and closing down without warning while a persistent backing (and backwards) rhythm track just keeps nudging throughout at inconsiderate intervals.

Credited on the front sleeve sticker as “Original Soundtrack From Read Only Memory,” these wayward tracks may very well have been planned as exactly that. Possibly even as accompanying music for further videos Chrome were producing at the time with Target Video that featured Edge and Helios as California droogs donning matching black derbies, suit jackets, codpieces and waders stalking empty underground stations of the San Francisco Bay Area Transit system. (Julian Cope’s Head heritage, Book Of Seth)

Tracklisting