Contortions

I only live on the surface

I don’t think people are very pretty inside

and my idea of fun

isn't having a son

or being whipped on the back of my thighs

I prefer the ridiculous to the sublime

("I Don't Want To Be Happy", James Chance)

That James Chance was one of the greatest showmen of punk-funk, that much is certain. Despite his early free-jazz-rooted influences (Albert Ayler), the New York saxophonist soon set about crafting an innovative portrayal of the cultural decadence experienced, above all, by young Americans in the late Seventies: funk-driven rhythms caged by ingenious jazz improvisations narrate a New York gripped by panic, thoroughly erudite and profoundly self-destructive. It's precisely here that Chance, together with his Contortions, seizes the moment to challenge the conformity of new wave, its alluring fashions and the vital energy it conveys.

The Contortions' stance — much like that of fellow travelers Liquid Idiot, Circle X, Lizzy Mercier Descloux and Glenn Branca — amounts to a rejection of this system. No wave clothes itself in abstraction, experimentation, atonality and disinhibition, casting an extremely critical eye on Western society: from confronting the turmoil of everyday life to the total alienation of the individual, passing through the yearning for mutual connection all the way to self-destruction. James Chance grasps this in 1978, the year we find him rubbing shoulders with Mars, Teenage Jesus and The Jerks and Dna on the iconic compilation produced by the genius of Brian Eno, "No New York".

"Buy" (ZE Records, 1979), the New York group's debut album, tones down the brutalist aggression found on the compilation's tracks, adopting instead a decidedly more mature and intellectual style. The bizarre cover, featuring Terence Sellers branded with Anya Phillips' freak-chic costume, already says a great deal about this no wave masterpiece and its aesthetic.

The hallucinogenic funk of “Design To Kill” introduces the listener to Chance's deranged songwriting. The track's quasi-noir atmosphere, enriched by Pat Place's disorienting slide guitar, lends the composition an intriguing tone, putting it on par with a Kandinsky painting.

The band's quintessential hit, “I Don't Want To Be Happy”, shows off through Don Christensen's bouncing drums, Jody Harris's acidic guitar, David Hofstra's earnest bass and the frontman's jagged keyboards: the track's shape-shifting ambiguity, a mirror image of an illogical happiness, walks hand in hand with lyrics that are nihilistic and hold little hope for contemporary man, doomed to suffer for eternity within the urban walls he finds himself in.

The dance-punk manifesto “Contort Yourself” writhes wildly over Chance's outrageous sax solos. Dance elevates itself into something unreachable; the voices have won. The fractured, irrational rhythms, halfway between the wildest jazz-rock and the flashiest art punk, capture both the band's soul and the sheer eccentricity of a movement.

The avant-jazz of “Bedroom Athlete”, once again built around a free sax, closes the album on its most chaotic and manic note, sarcastically casting some doubt on the idea of stopping points.

But who cares about happy endings. Ladies and gentlemen, this is madness in its purest form: consume it in the most excessive quantities!

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03/05/2026