Savage Republic - The Desert of the Soul

Farewell to the golden dreams and sounds of the West Coast: as the decade turns, California becomes a melting pot of nihilistic zombies, crushed by the end of seventies utopias and desperately scrambling for sonic outlets to vent their rage and desolation. The new beach(punk)-boys are children of the city outskirts, flowers of an urban malaise that poisons both lungs and minds. A generation adrift, having severed every tie with the naivety and hippie positivism of their older siblings. Los Angeles is its natural outpost. In the bowels of the City of Angels, in that fertile underground where, at the dawn of the '80s, multitudes of post-punk, hardcore, noise, metal and even gothic bands (see Christian Death) proliferate, four UCLA students also jostle for space: Mark Erskine, Philip Drucker, Jeff Long and Bruce Licher, the latter already a leader in pectore. What drives them isn't the usual urge to raise hell and smash everything, which animates much of the competition. Or perhaps, not only that. Alongside the religion of chaos, they embrace a tribal soul, a mysterious exoticism rooted in dark, ancestral rites.

They first call themselves Africa Corps, then Savage Republic, yet their sound carries something perversely metropolitan about it, perhaps due to those industrial guitar drones, those clangs like an infernal factory, which turn their ragas into a new version of the modern dance of Pere Ubu. A highly original mixture, though, and incredibly ahead of its time, considering it will go on to influence swarms of bands in the years to come, from Neurosis to Calexico, by way of the neo-kraut psych-rock of labels like Kranky and Constellation, and post-rockers like Godspeed You Black Emperor!, who will declare themselves big fans. Some (Barry Craig, aka A Produce) will rename it "Californian trance", others will have fun listing all its components: post-punk/ arabic/ surf/ soundtrack/ folk/ noise/ music.

The fact remains that, at the time, nobody sounded like this.

In 1982, in Los Angeles, Bruce Licher could already boast a decent résumé as a “non-musician,” having founded the industrial collective Neef and the experimental label Independent Project, through which he had produced his three earlier incarnations: Projekt 197, Bridge, Them Rhythm Ants. Joining Africa Corps alongside his three college companions now gave him the right opportunity to aim higher.

Having changed their name to avoid confusion with another, near-identical band (Afrika Korps) and to cut any ties with the pro-Nazi fads of the period, the new Savage Republic shut themselves in the studio to bring their debut to life.

The monumental Tragic Figures (1982) was born of a markedly percussive line-up, which besides Licher (guitar and bass) and Erskine (drums) included Philip “Jackson DelRey” Drucker (guitar), Jeff Long (bass) and Robert Loveless (keyboards and bass), though everyone, in some way, took turns hammering away at whatever came within reach, from oil drums to oil cans, from metal barrels to pipes. The firepower guaranteed by the double bass and the two “steady” percussionists is explosive, yet it never overwhelms the other ingredients of a sound that is almost entirely instrumental here, with a pronounced “cinematic” flavor: long noisy textures, granite-hard, monotone guitar drones, but also brief minimal chords that sketch out Middle Eastern melodicism, plus scattered vocalizations and assorted death-rattles that Ira Robbins would later dub “Halloween horror-movie screams.”

The oddball gait of “When All Else Fails?,” with its obsessive bass groove, mimics an industrial dance around the rubble of British dark-punk (Pil, Joy Division); “Attempted Coup” is a desert horror piece, marked out by drums and scarred by dry guitar riffs; “Ivory Coast” stages a neurotic beach-punk à la X; “Next To Nothing” stirs up the ever-present ghost of Siouxsie amid a wall of booming percussion. But “Exodus” is the real tour de force of this first half of the record: a nerve-wracking mantra built on a few spectral guitar phrases repeated endlessly in a murky, pagan-ritual atmosphere, with the rhythm section, as ever, relentless and devastating. Almost an esoteric update of kraut-rock (the drone is in fact lifted straight from Faust's “Krautrock”), smoked through with the industrial haze of Einsturzende Neubauten.

In the second half of the record, by contrast, it's the tribal, menacing post-punk of “Procession” and “Real Men” that reigns supreme, with the vocals turning into an agitated Lydon-esque rant, alongside the irresistible zombie march of “Flesh That Walks,” dragged along at a gallop by panzer-kraut cadences and alternately slowed to a spastic post-hardcore gait.

The record is further enriched by incisive experimental mini-lieder, from the noisily industrial “On The Prowl” to the livid, dissonant invective of “Kill The Fascists!”

The reissue also includes the singles released right after the original vinyl came out: “Film Noir,” a catatonic Joy Division-style dirge, along with its B-side “O Andonis” (based on a “banned” theme by Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis), an almost Morricone-esque western, desolate and pitch-black, steeped in Middle Eastern scents, plus “Tragic Figure,” another schizoid number awash in feedback, screams and catacomb cadences, accompanied by the brief tribal ceremony of “The Empty Quarter” and the live version of “Ivory Coast.”

Tragic Figures is one of the great hidden masterpieces of the Eighties, fittingly immortalized by a highly distinctive cover, the fruit of Licher's collaboration with an old-fashioned print shop. The original vinyl edition featured Arabic-language text and hand-numbering of every copy done by Licher himself.

Savage Republic won themselves a devoted niche following under that great black sun of Los Angeles celebrated that same year by X. But within the band, the first frictions were starting to show. So Philip Drucker and Robert Loveless left, going on to form 17 Pygmies. And for three years, all was silent in the Savage Republic.

Licher and Erskine tried again in 1985, shedding part of their industrial arsenal and veering toward an ethnic, atmospheric psychedelia that proved no less fascinating. Ethan Port came in on percussion, Greg Grunke on guitar, and Thom Fuhrmann, a powerful bassist deeply influenced by the sound of Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen, Wire and Barry Adamson (Magazine).

This renewed line-up turned out the EP Trudge, which delved further into the band's trance-like side. It comprises five tracks, some of which alternate between linear performances that unfold repetitively over a bass line, joined by guitar, drums and occasional vocal interjections. If melody and variety are sacrificed, the same cannot be said of the evocative power and sensory impact of these instrumentals, now narcotic, now sinister and unsettling.

The best tracks, however, are the ones that unfold freely, as if following a narrative thread: for instance “Siege,” which, true to its title, sounds martial and extremely violent, with the guitar never so epic and the percussion first simulating a charge, then metallic clangs; then “Trek,” a multifaceted, menacing suite building in crescendo, inspired — by Licher's own admission — by Pink Floyd's “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun.”

A few months later, with the new album Ceremonial (1985), Savage Republic abandoned entirely the violence of the vocals and percussion and the noise-making, throwing the doors wide open to an evocative, landscape-painting instrumental rock that shines through inventiveness, melody and richly textured arrangements. The change affects above all the guitar sound, which grows rounder, while still leaving intact the repetitive style that had marked the band's earliest work; but it is a repetitiveness that is not morbid but hypnotic and grandiloquent, born of the rising-and-falling scales typical of surf music. To hear proof of this, one need only listen to the majestic overture of “Andalusia,” which unfurls over a good five minutes, as if dragged along by long guitar solos and Morricone-esque trumpets. The decorative use of cymbals, the circular groove of the bass and the slow climbing scales paint a scene of such beauty that it inspires both awe and reverence, hurling the listener before the majesty of a boundless mountain landscape.

The absolute masterpiece is “Walking Backwards,” a long, uphill chase of guitars repeating an elementary riff without allowing themselves a single moment to breathe. An atmospheric interlude slips slyly into the track's structure, but the tension stays so high that it's barely perceived, to the point where the ear simply lets itself be carried along by the track's continuum, until it suddenly closes with the opening riff. Touches of keyboard inlay the solemn, splendid architecture of “1,000 Days,” lending a Gothic flavor to an epic, grandiose piece of rare poignancy. This is instrumental music that never abandons rock's structural and atmospheric core, sounding almost always physical and imposing; the exception is the North African folk curtain-raiser of “Mediterranea.” “Dionysius” is as close to British new wave as this album ever gets, with its square, repetitive riffs in the vein of Wire; yet the cymbal hits and the sun-drenched breaks of the chorus carry the Californians into territory unexplored by any English band.

The second peak is the title track, a post-punk number bristling with guitar jabs, built on particularly muscular funk bass lines. The quiet, spiritual incipit, played with guitar harmonics and chiming tones, sinks into an opiate-like inner peace, broken by the abrupt attack of the song's body.

Ceremonial is one of the best instrumental rock albums ever made, a possible soundtrack for an exodus through uninhabited lands, and above all a record that opens up countless new paths, absorbing the languages of post-punk, soundtrack music and world music without losing for a single moment the cohesion and personality that Licher had, in such a short time, already given his project. The cinematic flow of some of the tracks also recalls, in hindsight, the long "sediment-built" progressions that would become typical of post-rock — one more reason to rediscover this cult album.

In 1987 came Live Trek (1985-1986), which captures live the band's earliest, more broadly industrial-leaning repertoire.

A year later, Jamahiriya Democratique et Populaire — recorded without Erskine and Loveless, but with the returning Drucker and Bradley Laner of Steaming Coils — takes stock of the situation, condensing into a handful of songs every side of Licher's band: the imaginative, percussive rhythms, the Middle Eastern spices, the melody, the near-industrial noisiness, the love of soundtracks, without neglecting the project's new wave roots. This time the songs really are songs, with vocal parts that are less aggressive but still kept low in the mix, leaving nearly all the space to the rhythmic architecture.

The album's title hints at its central theme: Jamahiriya is the Libyan Arab People's Republic, i.e. the regime of Colonel Gaddafi; the music on the record is indeed born from the union of the exotic spirituality associated with Middle Eastern countries and the percussive, pompous nature of military music. The tracks evoke the unbearable heat of North Africa and the Middle East and the endless open spaces of the desert, but above all they conjure the decadence of ancient empires now forgotten, crumbling away under the sun.

The opening track, "So It Is Written", winds along following the bass's variations, as if absorbing cannon blasts, while the guitar stays in the background embroidering ethnic melodies. "Spice Fields", epic and martial, features a two-voice vocal, while the track proceeds in fits and starts thanks to one of the most imaginative drum rhythms in their whole repertoire, an illegitimate offspring of the repetitive, circular patterns of Jaki Liebezeit.

Up to this point the band offers nothing new compared to its past: it's the middle section that holds the most substantial surprises — first the murderous post-punk of "Viva la Rock'n'Roll", then "Tabula Rasa", an instrumental built on ticking sounds and indistinct noises in the distance, where nothing seems to happen even as the tension soars. The album's masterpiece is "Il Papa Sympatico", a lysergic ballad shot through with triumphant guitar melodies; from here on the tracks grow ever bolder, moving from a western-movie soundtrack ("Pios Den Mila Yia Ti Lambri") to a frenzied shamanic ritual ("Mujahadeen"), closing with an industrial/dub instrumental just a step away from danceable (the title track).

The miracle Savage Republic pulled off with Jamhiriya was putting together a string of memorable, more easily digestible tracks without giving up their avant-garde streak. A perfect calling card, then, for anyone approaching their music for the first time, but above all a testament to what this band was at its very best.

The quintet, now without Port, then headed to Greece, where in just three days, in a studio in Thessaloniki, they produced the material destined to see the light on the new album, released in 1988.

Recorded with a far more polished production, Customs (the title referring to Greek customs, which confiscated the band's entire equipment over bureaucratic issues) marks the swan song of the first phase of the Savage Republic, paradoxically returning to its origins, to that tribal rage that once again sets fire to this collection of desert soundtracks and post-hardcore-era assaults.

In particular, the Arabic and Greek influences grow richer, with greater use of traditional and ethnic instruments. This gives rise to otherworldly world-music pièces (the Middle Eastern hallucination of the splendid "Sono Cairo", the Mediterranean spices of "Song For Adonis", the Arabic-tinged trance of "The Birds Of Pork") alongside new, highly percussive noisy raids, like the metallic "Sucker Punch" and the striking "tribute" of "Rapeman's First Ep", which transfigures the sonic terrorism of Steve Albini into a dreamlike, "alien" key, in an orgy of clangor, screams and feedback. Finally, in the "death valley" of "Archetype" krautrock debris and lysergic fog in the style of early Pink Floyd converge, sealing the band's founding mission: a reckless, avant-garde operation to update psychedelia and krautrock for the age of post-punk, industrial music and noise-rock.

Customs is a fitting epitaph, one that seems to close off any future prospects for the band. All the more so since its members go on to prove their worth elsewhere: Erskine ends up behind the drums in Skinner Box in Arizona; Fuhrmann founds Autumnfair with Val Haller (ex-Flying Lizard); Ethan Port plays with Scot Jenerik in the multimedia act F-Space; Brad Laner joins Medicine and Electric Company. Finally, Licher celebrates a decade of multimedia activity with an exhibition in Los Angeles, continuing his successful career as a graphic designer (he will even receive a Grammy nomination for the artwork of the first Camper Van Beethoven LP) and as a record producer for Independent Project, before starting the second chapter of his career, which will see him front and center in Scenic alongside James Brenner (ex-Shiva Burlesque) and Brock Wirtz, with the support of the trusty Robert Loveless.

Perhaps also thanks to the endorsement of "fans" like Neurosis and Godspeed You Black Emperor!, as well as the wider Neurot crowd, who hail them as "guiding spirits" (though the list of bands indebted to their "trance" sound would be endless), Savage Republic make a surprise return in 2007, without Bruce Licher, but with a handful of new songs making up the EP Siam, released once again under Neurot's banner. Twenty minutes that let fragments of their golden-era sound resurface, without however fully reawakening its power. What remains are the psychedelic echoes of evocative pieces like "Marshall Tito" and "Monsoon", the ancestral epic of the languid title track, the apocalyptic, PiL-style anguish of "1938" (with Fuhrmann's obsessed screams: "Waiting for the bomb"), plus a dutiful cover of "Heads Will Roll" by Echo and The Bunnymen. The absence of guru Licher inevitably weighs on the record, though his unmistakable stamp still marks the artwork, the fruit of his tireless Independent Project Press.

The following full-length, 1938, came out a few months later, folding the mini-CD's material together with new, previously unreleased tracks born from the new line-up: Thom Fuhrmann, Ethan Port, Greg Grunke, Val Haller and Alan Waddington (also active with popstar Gwen Stefani). The result is a dark record, almost a concept album about totalitarian regimes (1938 being the year Time named Hitler its "Man of the Year") and the world's genocides. Once again, percussion and its typical tribal soundscapes dominate, steeped in anguished, desolate atmospheres.

The seventeen free-form minutes of the torrential jam "Caravan" sum up every trick in their repertoire: primordial drums, the dark rumble of the bass and the guitars' slashing strokes paving the way, then the Middle Eastern drone of Julia Zuker's violin, which seizes the imagination, while the percussion builds in intensity into a terrifying, otherworldly trance. Like Can transplanted into a Marrakech souk.

Despite this talkative tour de force, much of the album is instead focused on short tracks, sometimes purely instrumental (the spastic frenzy of "Anemone", the freeform sketch of "White Ginger", the metallic clangour of "Breslau"), while the brutal dark-punk of "Torpedo" offers one of the few vocal episodes. Jarring, on the other hand, is the farewell of "Peking", an anguished bolero stretched to breaking point on the strings of Tara Tavi's Yang Qin (a kind of Chinese dulcimer) until the final explosion.

Not without its flaws, with a few decidedly weak and transitional moments, 1938 nonetheless manages to revive the class of an unyielding band, still capable of putting countless younger followers to shame.

In 2008 Savage Republic also took part in the tribute CD to the Pornography by the Cure, released on the French fanzine Fear Drop, contributing a superb cover of "Hanging Garden".

The lesson of the sultans of "Californian trance" is still tremendously relevant and always resurfaces, visionary and pulsing, in their unmissable live performances, where Fuhrmann, his face carved with wrinkles and his demonic grin, has by now taken on the role of charismatic frontman, and where, amid drums, cans and Repsol barrels, the Los Angeles ensemble confirms itself as one of the most relentless "hammers" in the history of rock.

The concert on 30 January 2010 at the Spanish Tanned Tin festival may, however, have marked the definitive epilogue of their long saga: Fuhrmann in fact announced that the band is to be considered disbanded, and that it could only reform if Bruce Licher were to return.

In 2012, however, came the surprise comeback. Having shed every gothic trace after the excellent 7" "Sword Fighter-Taranto!" (released by the Italian label A Silent Place), they returned with Varvakios, turning their gaze to the Hellenic Republic, brought to its knees by the harsh backlash of the economic crisis and an easy target for the ruthless manoeuvres of speculators, who amused themselves betting on its impending financial collapse. Ethan Port and co. landed in Athens on 13 February 2012, the day after the parliamentary vote on the memorandum, greeted by the aftermath of the clashes that had taken place in the streets leading to Syntagma Square. The album was conceived, recorded and mixed over the following three days.

The intro of "Sparta" is built from voices and sounds captured in Athens' great open-air market, named precisely Βαρβάκειος (Varvakios); when Port's powerful bass and familiar guitar make their entrance, a slow, carnal tribal dance begins, marked out by percussion and Thom Fuhrmann's cavernous voice. Next comes the pulsing stoner sound of "Hippodrome", which opens onto the exalted violin of Blaine L. Reininger (the album's guest star) and the frantic, Balkan-flavoured world music interlude of the title track.

With "Pigadi" they venture into avant-garde territory: a flow of guitar distortions and reverberating drumskins that sit somewhere between the achievement of a truce and the ominous announcement of a new reprisal. The field recordings that open "Kara", among the most interesting and successful tracks on the album, dissolve into an echo of a hybrid new wave, contaminated as it is by the primitive fervour that characterises Alan Waddington's percussive touch.

"Poros" is a fresh dive into the waters of world music veering towards ethno-folk, once again led by Reininger's bow, this time steeped in a melancholy that spreads into the desert-like "For Eva". "Anatolia" is the last leap into the swirling art-rock atmospheres, clearly rooted in punk, that have made Savage Republic an unrivalled musical colossus.

Although it does give in somewhat to a predictable mannerism, Varvakios is nonetheless the result of an idea conceived and delivered in an extremely tight timeframe, but above all one deeply felt by every member of the band, even though its historical weight rests essentially on the figures of Port and Fuhrmann.

Contributions by Davide Tucci ("Varvakios")

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