Hungry Eye Records

In “Post Punk 1978-1984”, Simon Reynolds doesn't hesitate to devote a substantial chapter to the thriving San Francisco scene, which over the span of five years managed to produce some of the most important punk bands, punk-wave actions, and industrial/noise outfits.

Any names? Well, they're pretty well known by now, but just for the newcomers it's worth mentioning Factrix, Chrome, Negative Trend, Flipper, Sleepers, Minimal Man, Tuxedomoon, setting aside, of course, that obscure post-situationist(?) freak entity called Residents, which defies any attempt at classification. The British critic speaks of noir cabaret and theatre of cruelty, highlighting the iconoclastic streak as well as the multimedia nature of those situations, which found fertile ground for experimentation in the Bay Area, thanks to a favourable (counter)cultural humus that was, among other things, a legacy of the San Francisco Renaissance and the post-acid-test visions of the Beat Generation. Labels such as Ralph and Subterranean proved crucial in channelling that enormous creative potential, which might otherwise have gone unexpressed, given that independent labels were not yet so widespread.

Browsing around www.subterranean.org, whose homepage bears the rather sad “last updated June 25th 2002”, you can come across an interesting period interview with Steve Tupper, co-founder of Subterranean, in which he explains the motives and goals behind the whole endeavour: “…I would very much like to last and survive long enough to generate some interest in alternative forms of music and help generate new cultural ideas through this music”.

What happened? Simply put: the scene began to dissolve as early as the start of the Eighties, undermined by a shifting political climate and by the inability of its own protagonists to manage their talent in an economically viable way.

What's left of that era? Some excellent records, a few sadly departed figures, and an overall vision that, while traceable in a handful of later experiences, seems to have found a worthy revival in recent years in Hungry Eye Records. Granted, it's a stretch to draw connections between different situations that arose in not entirely comparable contexts. In short, there's a risk of falling into the classic post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Still, it seems to us that Hungry Eye Records represents a kind of imaginative continuity, almost a continuity of values even before one of style, with the experiences mentioned above. Yet another underground moment, shaping a new aesthetic, one geared toward a creative reinterpretation of those idioms, elsewhere merely reproduced by rote.

“Hungry Eye Records rejects the reification of the past, but recognizes that music is a dynamic narrative that interpolates interpretations of the past, present, and future. Hungry Eye’s concern is not to document a specific style of music, and present it as a static representation of a place and time. Rather, it is to support progressive currents in music made under noteworthy circumstances”.

Take a look at www.hungryeyerecords.com, and you'll realise just how genuine the citationism behind the operation is, and the web of references at play in the chosen colours, as well as in the logo, an eyeball that not-so-subtly evokes the Residents/Cryptic Corporation iconography.

Operating between New York and Montreal, the folks behind the label are still keen to stress that the operation has a strongly trans-regional character, and indeed some of the records in the catalogue come from bands not strictly connected to the humus of the Bay Area.

And again: "Hungry Eye Records is dedicated to the notion that commercially released media can serve the following two functions; to document a set of events or circumstances, or to express perspectives or ideas much in the same way as a manifesto. Hungry Eye has these two functions in mind when releasing music". Not an ideological rejection of the commercial side of things, but a vision that instead places the emphasis on the in/formative dimension that a record, or any other release, ought to possess, all with the aim of influencing the musical culture of the day: "In these ways, Hungry Eye Records aspires to contribute to and influence the musical culture of today". Does that ring a bell? Exactly, the aforementioned statement by Steve Tupper — and the circle would seem to close...

Scrolling through the Hungry Eye Records catalogue, it doesn't take long to spot a name or two, one in particular, that has also had good press on our side of the pond. That would be the Weegs, a remarkable San Francisco outfit responsible for a couple of genuinely interesting records, who, through a carnival of unlikely costumes and contrarian statements, come across as champions of an unmistakably freak aesthetic.

In just a few words the band sums itself up perfectly, spelling out its attitude with no reservations and plenty of self-deprecating humour: "THE WEEGS are 2 guys and 2 girls making music since the year of 2001. A Space Odyssey… not really, but an odyssey nonetheless. Many people have asked us what exactly a weeg is. Well from our collected data – weegs are: a rugby team, a transracial-adopting family, part of alien-wrestling mythology, a method of performing cunnilingus, and a creature one might find in one's pants. In other words we are hard-hitting-cross-genre-bizarro-acting-sexy-tarantesque-motherfuckers from San Francisco/Oakland. Oh and some times we have gorillas and hula-hoopers come to our shows". "The Lowest Form of Music", the phrase coined for L.A.F.M., sounds more fitting than ever...

The Weegs play a pitch-black post-punk not far removed from what bands of the calibre of Nervous Gender, Minimal Man and Sleepers were doing almost three decades earlier, and indeed the band openly acknowledge that influence. What makes the Weegs so distinctive is that same oddball attitude, Ween/Devo-branded, mentioned earlier; and it's disorienting to see such a strongly mocking mood emerge from a thicket of sounds that reek of a post-apocalyptic, back-to-the-stone-age industrial era.

"Meat The Weegs", from 2005 (try to guess the reference…), leans heavily on razor-sharp guitar slashes, delivering a dark, dissonant, at times almost acidic sound. The tracks stand out for their sharpness, even if the structure sometimes feels convoluted, perhaps deliberately unwilling to unfold or become more complex. Attack, verse, punk-funk stop-and-go, murky keyboards. Never gruesomely expressionistic, though, and off it goes without needing to resort to production tricks that might "risk" boosting its commercial appeal.

In 2006 Hungry Eye Records put out "The Millions Sounds Of Black", the San Francisco band's second release, which fully confirms the promise of the debut. While sticking to the same direction, the album shows a more layered sound, bolstered by a bit of analogue electronics "borrowed" from Minimal Man's "Safari". Setting aside the no less convincing "The Million Sounds", a sort of antediluvian ambient piece that drags on for three quarters of an hour amid buzzes, spectral notes and distorted implosions, the remaining 8 tracks show a well-defined poppy mechanics, certainly useful for the overall accessibility of the record.

Only passing through Hungry Eye Records for the split with Vanishing (the dark band fronted by singer and saxophonist Jesse Evans, who broke through in 2004 with "Still Lifes Are Failing") and for the vinyl reissue of the Ep "Random Hymns", originally released on Gold Standard Labs, are the Phantom Limbs. Voted best band in the city by the San Francisco Weekly in 2003, even though they originally hailed from Los Angeles and were later based in Oakland, the Phantom Limbs called it quits in 2005, leaving behind a legacy of two albums, one Ep, and four 7"s.

Worth singling out in particular are "Applied Ignorance" from 2001 and "Displacement" from 2003, both on Alternative Tentacles. While they can certainly be grouped together in terms of stylistic affinity, the Phantom Limbs' music is noticeably more linear, especially compared to the Weegs' demented, jagged edges. What stands out above all are the keyboards, following batcave conventions, with driving rhythms and a touch of glam expressionism that blends well with the overall dark shape of the sound. It's no coincidence that the reference bands, at least according to critics, are Screamers and Christian Death.

"Random Hymn", the Phantom Limbs' final act before splitting up, turns out to be steeped in an almost unbearable despair. Hopeless (…) embodies a sort of embittered Rozz Williams, while the rest of the band matches his moves with a fairly harrowing sound. The opening track "Topanga Canyon Torture" perfectly exemplifies the California band's traits; if you find it unpleasant, there's a good chance you won't be able to stomach the rest either.

Despite having a strongly distinctive sound, the Phantom Limbs (like the Weegs) go beyond mere genre pigeonholing, since they embody a style that, while referencing very specific canons, manages to stay varied, partly thanks to certain devices borrowed from late-80s/early-90s American indie rock. Above all, they deserve credit for not indulging in sterile poses drawn from tacky proto-goth iconography, which would have undermined, at the very least, their imagery. The matter is closed anyway, since the band no longer exists today.

This brings us to the Sixteens, who likewise put out a couple of LPs, on This Starcraft and Cochon Records, and on Hungry Eye Records with the Ep "Fendi", whose cover — genuinely striking — is said to be the work of Genesis P. Orridge. What do the Sixteens sound like? By now you'll have gathered we're in death-rock territory and thereabouts, and the San Francisco duo made up of Kristen Louise and Veuve Pauli is no exception. In this case we're dealing with music that's properly genre-bound, leaning towards synthwave shores. Don't, however, picture blatantly dancefloor-ready compositions. The sonic elements, on the contrary, coil around each other in a tangle of morphine-drenched electro buzz that, thanks to a steady but never frantic beat, proves damn hypnotic.

"Fendi", following the already remarkable "Casio" (2003), delivers four little gems of hallucinated cyberpunk cabaret, and it doesn't seem far-fetched to bring up, especially for "Cell Schedule", the expressionist flair of Malaria. The Sixteens too are keen to claim illustrious ancestry, deliberately name-dropping Factrix in the Ep's final track which, indeed, flaunts that deconstructionist wave streak so typical of the outfit led by Cole Palmer and Bond Bergland.

The Sixteens then followed up with "Into The Goldwave Of Future Non Rip-off", without, however, causing much of a stir.

Sailing on the same wavelength are New York's Skabs, represented by the 2003 album "Aged To Perfection", described as "Vaudevillian deathrock with a carnivalesque new wave sound". We'd advise you not to waste too much time on it, since, quite honestly, we found them to be nothing more than mediocre. The tracks on "Aged To Perfection" rely on danceable rhythms, poorly served by sloppy songwriting, and by a synth that, glaringly front and centre, makes the sound annoyingly monotonous. They didn't grab our attention much, despite the seedy Siouxsie and the Banshees-from-the-gutter-meets-Suicide vibe that should have worked decidedly in their favour.

Setting aside the 12″ from Witnesses, which offers too little to judge, and the Saros record “Five Pointed Tongue”, too derivative to mean much, we find much more of interest in Black Ice, the project of Stevenson Sedgwick (Factory Of Angst, The Phantom Limbs), Skot B. (Anal Kitties, Phantom Limbs) and Miss Kel. Black Ice are, Weegs aside, the finest act on the Hungry Eye Records roster, and “Terrible Birds” stands as a perfect little handbook of batcave sound.

In a nutshell: a telluric bass conjures up abysses of deep alienation, fractured rhythms, a bored Siouxsie/Lunch-style vocal delivery that skirts hollow glam posturing, and the ghost of early Christian Death lingering pretty much everywhere. Yet it's undeniably an enjoyable listen, despite the dangerous tendency to indulge in the genre's clichés, since the songs turn out to be pleasant and sufficiently well-crafted. If we wanted to reach for some overly colourful phrase, we might call Black Ice “the epitome of moral collapse…” or “a dark testimony of a wrecked generation…” and so on. You get the idea, right…? Jokes aside, get hold of this record: if you like the genre, you won't regret it. 2007's “Myopia” is also worth a listen.

Also worth hearing are the Bellmer Dolls with “The Big Cats Will Throw Themselves Over”, produced by Jim Sclavunos. Much the same applies here as with Black Ice. Full-blooded death-rock, with thunderous guitars and a passionate bluesy streak that invites comparisons with Crime And The City Solution. Standouts include “There Is No Oblivion”, which lurches forward on thunderous funk-soul convulsions, and “Pictures”, proudly carrying the trash-punk torch lit by the Cramps. The singer lacks the shamanic hypnotism of a Jeffrey Lee Pierce (perhaps we were asking too much…), but the overall sound doesn't suffer too much for it, helped along by rather incisive guitar-bass interplay that pushes everything else into the background.

In short, the sound is there; what's missing, perhaps, is a bit more songwriting.

The reissues deserve a separate mention — two of them, to be precise — of genuinely cult albums: “1933” by Missing Foundation, originally released in 1988, and the self-titled Ep, dated 1982, by Urban Waste.

Urban Waste were among the leading acts of CBGB's Sunday Matinee Days, true happenings of the hardcore generation, in which bands of the calibre of Gorilla Biscuits, The Cro-Mags, Agnostic Front, Sick Of It All, Rest In Pieces, Warzone, Youth Of Today, Murphy’s Law, Leeway, Sheer Terror, Minor Threat and Killing Time would take turns in a bill that filled the entire afternoon, often running well into dinner time.

The Ep in question, 8 tracks in all, plays out under the truest banner of “Live Fast Die Young”. Fast, tight hardcore-punk, original enough despite its brevity, with clattering guitars and feedback-saturated distortion generating a radioactive magma capable of annihilating everything in its path. Listen while holding your breath.

Two members of KMFDM and Peter Missing formed Missing Foundation in 1984 — without a doubt one of the most radical outfits of the late '80s, torn between aleatory, uncontrolled chaos and catastrophist post-industrial bacchanals with barely a hint of structure. In short, imagine a more feral version of early Einsturzende Neubauten…

“1933” is Missing Foundation's second work, and it's advisable to use it with caution if you intend to preserve your sanity. Music fit for an asylum, caught between chaotic noise bacchanals redolent of primitive rituals, terrifying Naked City visions and cacophonous brutality worthy of early Swans.

If the acts on the roster point to an unmistakable stylistic direction, it's equally likely that the label is entrusting these reissues with the task of diversifying its output, without however betraying its underlying philosophy. Also worth keeping an eye on is MATW Records (www.matwrecords.com), Hungry Eye Records' sister label, devoted to hardcore-punk-rooted sounds.

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