My love/hate relationship with Soul Jazz Records continues. There is still something about the set-up that grates, but they do come up trumps so often. The recent Miami Sound set was wonderful, but now the New York Noise collection is perhaps their best yet. And they could so easily have fallen on their face with a collection sub-titled 'dance music from the New York Underground 1978-1982'. The danger is in defining an arbitrary area of music that could be facilely fashionable; but as ever if some of it sticks, takes root, and blooms afresh, then I'm all for it. The context is right (like the earlier UK equivalent set, In The Beginning There Was Rhythm) and the track listing exemplary. I do hope it will prove to be a jumping-off point, and that prospectors will dig deeper. It certainly set my mind shooting off at tangents:

The stand-out sequence which joins the Contortions to Glenn Branca to the Bloods to Dinosaur L has to be one of the bits of programming ever. The markers are set out to prove that what was going on in New York then covered a lot of ground musically, united perhaps in terms of spirit of adventure, and it's easy to suggest what came after pales into insignificance. But then it's easy to forget people like Ut and Luscious Jackson, who were shaped by what was happening in New York then. It was their education. They absorbed it all, and went on to create some exceptional records.

In the liner notes to an Au Pairs reissue, one of the group states his disappointment in the femme-groups that followed, and in particular how they opted to rock out like blokes. In contrast, he says, the female musicians of the punk/post-punk explosion created a distinctive feminine sound of their own, and rewrote the rules - just as I would argue the exceptions like Ut and Luscious Jackson later did.

The Au Pairs must have recognised the Bloods as kindred spirits, and helped put out a single that has long been missing from my collection. Button Up still sounds brilliant, and it's worth drawing attention to the Adele Bertei link that connects the Bloods back through the Bush Tetras to the Contortions. There is also a Bloods soundtrack to the Born In Flames film which I would love to have.

For those that would typecast New York's 99 Records as a generic minimal punk/funk set-up, it is worth noting that as well as disparate gems as Singers And Players' War Of Words and Viv Goldman's classic Launderette, the label's first release was Glenn Branca's Lesson No.1. Lesson No. 2 was featured on the recently reissued The Ascension set, which is an absolute must. Scholars would point here to minimalist modern composers, but it's just punk rock symphonics. And very beautiful and liberating too. The presence of Sonic Youth's Lee Renaldo seems just right, as the set solidly lays a foundation for what that group would achieve. Sadly there are no Kim Gordon sleevenotes around here, for she maybe more than anyone carried the torch for what New York Noise suggests.

© 2003 John Carney