Liquid Liquid - Tribal Abstraction

Among the many groups to emerge from New York's post-punk scene, Liquid Liquid were one of its best-kept secrets.

They enjoyed fame in their day, but the memory of their records faded, surviving mainly as the preserve of DJs, among them James Lavelle and James Murphy, who played an important role in the band's rediscovery. Beyond the hype they enjoyed especially back then on dancefloors, and more recently in the punk-funk revival, the handful of songs the group actually recorded contains a genuinely interesting sonic exploration.

Formed in 1978 from the meeting of percussionist Scott Hartley and multi-instrumentalist bassist Richard McGuire under the name Liquid Idiot, they found their definitive lineup in 1980 with the addition of singer Salvatore Principato and a second percussionist, Dennis Young.

The group changed its name and made a name for itself on the city's underground scene opening for Talking Heads, Suicide and ESG, but it was only thanks to their friendship with Glenn Branca that they managed to record for 99 Records, an up-and-coming New York label that also counted Branca himself, ESG, and Y Pants among its roster.

The self-titled album Liquid Liquid came out in early 1981 and is defined by a relentless, obsessive sound that would remain the band's trademark.

The total absence of guitars and the distinctly African musical structures give the songs a rhythm-first quality, accompanied by Principato's almost plaintive vocals. It feels like listening to a soundtrack for Jean Michel Basquiat's paintings, a depiction of the urban jungle that New York was, and still is.

In "Bell Head" one can make out samba rhythms, and abstract dub structures run through every track, right up to "Rubbermiro", with its wealth of timbral variety born of Jon Hassell's Fourth World philosophy. But if we're to pin down more precise reference points, perhaps it's something poised between Fela Kuti and 23 Skidoo.

Successive Reflex came out in the winter of the same year and continues the discourse with the opening "Lock Groove", a lengthy rhythmic tour de force split into two parts. The shift toward a more conventional, more clearly defined sound can be heard in "Push" and "Zero Leg", two tracks that could easily belong to A Certain Ratio, revealing the funk soul at the heart of their music. Yet once again the record closes with an evocative instrumental digression of marimba, congas and clarinet (played by Elliott Sharp), which anticipates the post-rock of Tortoise.

Perhaps unexpectedly, the third and final EP veers toward a more defined song form.

Optimo, released in 1983, is strongly influenced by the nascent hip-hop scene, and more than ever the group sacrifices itself at the altar of rhythm, to the point that each member, alongside their main instrument, also plays a percussion instrument. It's easy to imagine Optimo or Cavern — whose bassline was lifted by Grandmaster Flash for his landmark track "White Lines" — as the backdrop to the exploits of the Furious Five or the Sugarhill Gang. Then there's "Out", a brilliant pairing of marimba with a bassline worthy of Gang Of Four, and finally "Scraper", a track on whose ideas Ui built an entire career.

But it's also a swan song. Liquid Liquid's story ends here, perhaps out of an awareness that this formula — expressed up to that point only on 12-inch singles — probably wouldn't have sustained the length of a full album.

Thus began their slide into obscurity, until their sudden rediscovery thanks to Mo'Wax's reissue, on a single CD, of their entire output, plus a few tracks released in live versions. But the effect would prove short-lived: they'd have to wait for the explosion of LCD Soundsystem to return to the spotlight once more, this time with a live reunion as well.

What remains, in any case, is music that, by stripping down funk and new wave and rendering them minimal, almost abstract, returns to an ancestral, fierce, tribal dimension.

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