Alan Vega: Mutator | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- Emerging from the vast Vega Vault - the pioneer of synth & protopunk, Alan Vega posthumously unveils Mutator. It's a not-so-new album oozing forth gutter rock, apocalyptic proclamations & sinister swagger in equal, uneasy measure.

Vega - known as one of the cornerstones of post-punk, industrial and synth-pop proves his work transcends time & space with an album drenched & heavy in shoegazing atmospheres and darkwave menace, written at a time when hip-hop & alt rock were leading the charge. Despite being ripped out of it’s late '90’s context it was written in and unveiled in the very different world of 2021, Mutator feels more prophetic than out of place. While we can’t be too sure what -or who- exactly Vega was protesting though proclamations like “power to the innocents… destroy the interrogators… destroy the mutilators” during songs like Fist, Vega’s otherworldly, narcotic, music -both pious and sacreligious at the same time- has always had enigmatic appeal.

The album creaks open with a disorientating, echo laden call to a holy trinity of “Father, Daughter, Holy Ghost”, replete with Vega’s unmistakable yelps & howls before a sinister, swaggering synth beat takes over with Fist - a dark, '80’s track that feels as if it’s been surgically removed from a Giallo slasher. Two songs in and we’ve already got what Vega fans, or Jukebox Babies as I like to call them, have been hoping for with this project - protopunk perfection, dripping with glistening electronics, shimmering with synthetic iridescents, pulsing with distant drums - the sonic equivalent of peering deep into a inky black hole & having the whole world disorientatingly reflected back at you. The perversions, political injustices and threatening personas are all given form by Vega’s otherworldly whispers & shrieks.

In the 1950s, Vega studied fine art & physics - an obscure combination which is almost obvious within his visual art practice of industrial installations & light sculptures - as well as his pioneering work in machine altered music. From these early student experiments, though to the years spent redefining punk & paving the way for post-punk with Suicide, all the way up til his death in 2016, Vega was constantly creating, which led to an overwhelming amount of material remaining unfinished & unreleased. It is this cavern which came to be known as the aforementioned Vega Vault - a rich archive of material which will be explored, exhumed & released on Sacred Bones Records in the coming years.

It was within this vast vault that the Mutator sessions lay in wait, fermenting in their dark juices for twenty-five years till 2019 when Vega’s collaborator & partner Liz Lamere and close confidant Jared Artaud (of The Vacant Lots) began the long awaited production of an album never intended to see the light of day. The pair set to work mixing & producing the raw recordings from the Mutator sessions, bringing form to the visionary album which lurked within the murky, unmixed tapes.

At the time of Mutator's recording, that is 1995 to 1996, Vega was in an especially fertile creative epoch – releasing eleven full-length solo albums, numerous collaborations and Suicide records during the ‘80s, ’90s and ‘00s. Mutator was just one of these creations, a casualty of the unrelenting creative force, forgotten, perhaps misplaced or rendered obsolete in the sheer rush of output. Vega has inspired & informed not just individuals, but entire genres which have built their sounds & idiosyncrasies in his formidable shadow.

Lamere recalls this period as a time of rich experimentation: “Our primary purpose for going into the studio was to experiment with sound, not to ‘make records',” she explains. Twenty-five years later, she's back in the studio, only this time in reverse - conjuring records out of the sounds.

Mutator may be just the first tantalizing offering of what dark delights lie within the Vega Vault, Alan Vega will continue to define, inspire & inform the legion of synthpunk, post-everything legion of admirers.

- Dominique Furphy.
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