'Historical'-era Pere Ubu Albums
Home of the
Avant Garage
'Historical'-era Pere Ubu Albums |
Home of the Avant Garage |
|
The Modern Dance (Jan 1978)
Cooking Vinyl Records
|
|
Buy the cd from Ubutique • Lyrics • FAQ • The Annotated Modern Dance |
|
|
Non-alignment Pact (3:19)
Modern Dance (3:30) Laughing (4:37) Street Waves (3:06) Chinese Radiation (3:29) |
Life Stinks (1:53)
Real World (4:00) Over My Head (3:51) Sentimental Journey (6:08) Humor Me (2:44) |
Jon Savage, Sounds, 2/11/78
Uh-oh, this is getting frustrating, trying to tell you how good this is - black and white is an inadequate substitute for the impact heard... This is a brilliant debut. Granted it lacks the superficial accessibility of lesser works, but this time around the aroma lingers. This is built to last! Ubu's world is rarely comfortable, full of the space beyond the electric light and what it does to people, but always direct and unwavering. And courageous.
Ian Birch, Melody Maker, 3/18/78
It's a devastating debut...this album has struck me with a vengeance. Because it delivers such a powerful, complex and open-ended punch, it's almost impossible at such an early stage to explain why or how in full detail.
David Stubbs, Uncut, August 2006 - 5 Stars
Announced by the siren squeal of Allen Ravenstine's analogue synth which launches "Non-Alignment Pact," The Modern Dance is a product of Cleveland, the living model of punk's post-industrial wasteland. Yet this is a far more cerebral, imperishable proposition than a mere local cry of urban discontent. The Eraserhead-style sad-clown personna of singer David Thomas, Tom Herman's nerve-shredding slide guitars and Ravenstine's abstract electronics combine to form a rock music as visceral and essential as The Stooges, yet which reaches parts of the brain untouched by their peers, predecessors or successors... An album that's only gotten more awesome with age.
#63 of 100 Most Influential Debut Albums, Uncut #111, August 2006.
#82 of 100 best pop/rock albums of all time, "Yediot acharonot," Israeli newspaper.
Produced by Pere Ubu and Ken Hamann.
Assistant engineers: Paul Hamann and Mike Bishop.
Recorded at Cleveland Recording and Suma (Painesville OH), 1976-1977.
Original artwork designed by S.W. Taylor from an idea by David Thomas.
Photo by Mik Mellen.
Reissue package designed by John Thompson.
|
Heart Of Darkness
30 Seconds Over Tokyo |
Cloud 149
Untitled Heaven |
|
Dub Housing (Nov 11 1978)
Cooking Vinyl Records
|
|
Navvy (2:43)
On The Surface (2:40) Dub Housing (3:40) Caligari's Mirror (3:48) Thriller! (4:35) |
I Will Wait (1:46)
Drinking Wine Spodyody (2:44) Ubu Dance Party (4:47) Blow Daddy-o (3:38) Codex (4:56) |
Jon Savage, Melody Maker, 11/4/78
A week is a month and you could be forgiven for thinking that the times would catch up with Pere Ubu (and overtake them) as they do so many others... Here, on their second album, Pere Ubu outflank and transcend these pressures. Not gratuitously but through the breadth and consistency of their vision. (I think I like it.) At very first, "Dub Housing" appears harsh, impenetrable and repellent... it seems to be working on some hidden internal logic, from some parallel (and disquieting) universe. On subsequent listens, the "logic," if indeed the tapping of the subconscious and intuition can be called "logic," becomes clearer; the album remains baffling, infuriating, haunting, menacing and ferociously funny... As in "The Modern Dance," they stomp all over "rock n roll's" accepted language and then create, with fire and discipline, one of their own...This album will last.
New Musical Express
Considered in a reasonably recent rock stream, it [Dub Housing] is more aggressively "symphonic" than Henry Cow (deep), but more sympathetically alienated or alienating than The Sex Pistols (shallow). Conventional avant garde music can sometimes be too wrapped up in educated guesswork. Pere Ubu play within terms of a possible resolution, but not into one. People are annoyed by Ubu's accessibility. Or ashamed!
Sounds
But please, please, try and keep that 'difficult' myth well away if, as a result, you'll skip by this frequently beautiful, always highly listenable disc when it appears in the local racks. Because it seems to me there's no mystification like Ubu mystification...'Dub Housing'-- a triumphant addition to an already stunning body of work, more subtly cohesive than almost everything that's gone before. I don't think I've heard more exciting sounds all year.
What's On, 10/11/99
When they write their lists of the great under-rated bands of the 20th century, Pere Ubu will surely be up there... These re-releases [Dub Housing & New Picnic Time] showcase a brilliant band breaking every rule of aesthetics.
Alternative Press, 10/99, pp.105-6
Ubu were some of the most danceable freaks in all of post-punk America...if David Thomas' caterwaul and Allen Ravenstine's mind-altering keyboard riffs don't get you leaping around...you're not really alive and you never were.
Produced by Pere Ubu and Ken Hamann.
Engineered by Ken Hamann.
Recorded and mixed at Suma in 1978 on July 31, Aug 1, Aug 7-10, Aug 28-31, Sep 4-7, Sep 14-15, Sep 17-20, and Sep 22 and 24.
Portions of Thriller! were recorded at the Discohome, Bellfield Rd, Cleveland Hts, OH.
Original lp mastered at Air Studios, London.
Original artwork designed by John Thompson.
Photos by Mik Mellen.
Reissue package designed by John Thompson.
1994 Master: Digital transfer at 44.1khz/20-bit and eq by David Thomas and Paul Hamann at Suma in 1994.
2008 Master: Digital Transfer at 192hz/24-bit and eq by Paul Hamann at Suma in 2008. For more detail click here. Cds from this Master are identified with the words "2008 Master" on the tray card in the lower left.
Pere Ubu (v.3.2):
David Thomas - vocals, Ace-Tone organ, percussion, musette
Tom Herman - guitar, bass, backing vocals
Tony Maimone - bass, guitar, piano, organ, backing vocals
Allen Ravenstine - EML 101 & 200 analog synthesizers, sax
Scott Krauss - drums, organ, percussion
|
New Picnic Time (Sept. 1979)
Bomba Records
|
|
Buy the cd from Ubutique • Bug Report • Lyrics |
|
|
The Fabulous Sequel (3:16)
49 Guitars & One Girl (2:51) A Small Dark Cloud (5:49) Small Was Fast (3:39) All the Dogs Are Barking (3:03) |
One Less Worry (3:46)
Make Hay (4:03) Goodbye (5:18) The Voice Of The Sand (1:28) Kingdom Come (3:17) |
Dave McCullough, Sounds, 9/15/79
Yes, I like what I hear very much. It's a drunken, wanton, wilful sounding album with a spine as elastic and as totally absorbing as Beefheart...exhilarating, funny, somehow very vital music.
John Orme, Melody Maker, 9/8/79
They don't ask to be loved, but they do invite it. Whichever, they are open to instant embrace or rejection. Their music doesn't float on calm waters: it submerges, spurts, takes rapids, often half-dRest of Worldns on its back...Having fallen in a big way for the last Ubu album, I approached "New Picnic Time" with much suspicion, and almost half the album merits such temerity as the band overbalances into a world of half-formed ideas that lack the strength to carry their intent. For the rest, Ubu have developed a wider maturity in scope, feeling and atmosphere, and I can only praise them for it. Don't forget to laugh.
Scott Laurence, Herald-American, 7/5/99
Weird. Weird and wonderful. Weird, wonderful and so far beyond the expected that these deconstructions of popular music [Dub Housing & New Picnic Time] are as charmingly retro as the Beatles and as modern as today's blendings of funk, hip-hop and alt-rock. Revolutionary and demented yet full of fun, Pere Ubu are indispensible to any collection of 20th century rock... "New Picnic Time" spins wildly out of control, even for Pere Ubu, and resulted in frightening away Chrysalis, their record company at the time.
Alternative Press, 10/99, pp.105-6
"A moodier, artsier record, with more experimental tracks...and less outright boogaloo madness. It's still vital to continued spiritual health, though..."
Produced by Pere Ubu & Ken Hamann.
Engineered by Ken & Paul Hamann. Recorded & mixed May 21-30 and June 4-28 1979 at Suma. Original lp mastered at Sterling Sound, New York City, under the supervision of Ken Hamann & Scott Krauss.
Original artwork designed by John Thompson. Photos by Mik Mellen. Digital transfer & eq by David Thomas & Paul Hamann at Suma in 1994. Reissue package designed by John Thompson.
Songs written by Herman - Krauss - Maimone - Thomas - Ravenstine.
Pere Ubu (v.3.2):
David Thomas - vocals, wood-flute
Tom Herman - guitar, bass, pan-gong, bkng vox
Allen Ravenstine - EML 101 & 200 analog synthesizers, piano, dice
Tony Maimone - bass, guitar, piano, organ, bk vox
Scott Krauss - drums, percussion
|
The Art of Walking (Jun. 1980)
Cooking Vinyl Records
|
|
Buy the cd from Ubutique • Bug Report • Lyrics • Press release |
|
|
Go (3:34)
Rhapsody In Pink (3:35) Arabia (5:00) Young Miles In The Basement (3:00) Misery Goats (2:38) Loop (3:15) Rounder (3:25) |
Birdies (2:27)
Lost In Art (5:12) Horses (2:36) Crush This Horn (3:02) • Misery Goats (Jew's Harp) (2:39) • Arabian Nights (3:57) • Tribute To Miles (4:20) |
Chris Cutler, Melody Maker, 1980
Ubu are moving even further from the conventions of rock music - and from their own past - but still moving forward, without a doubt, and losing none of their integrity as a group. Much of the music operates like a loose-bound net, where apparently hardly connected parts can co-exist, somehow still adding up at the end to an irreducible whole... this is a record of unique beauty - a beauty marked by truth and thus also tragic and sometimes painful.
Ian Penman, New Musical Express, 8/30/80
It is obvious that (the history of) Pere Ubu should not be thought of in terms of a linear development - reducing its entire operation and presence to an exclusive concern for 'working and succeeding in' rock and roll. Unfortunately, most criticism - of Pere Ubu, of many other folks - assumes that words have one meaning, that desires point in a single direction, that ideas are logical; it ignores the fact that the world of language, noise and desire is one of lack, insecurity, interruption, struggle, blundering, disguises, ploys, embarrassed grins.
Dave McCullough, Sounds, 8/30/80
So, things being as they are, we're supposed to keep our eyes firmly closed (lest they reveal the relative dirgeness of all else) when a record as exciting and as funnily subversive as 'The Art of Walking' comes around...If [it] is difficult then I'm much much cleverer than I thought, and every other 'successful' music I've heard this year in comparison must be roughly equivalent to sticking your thumb in your mouth and sucking long and hard... The only way [it] isn't a record full of much excitement, fun and compelling interest is if you don't want it to be so.
Time Out, 1999
"These re-releases [AOW & SOBM] showcase a brilliant band breaking every rule of aesthetics... and sounding all the more exciting for it."
Produced by Pere Ubu and Paul Hamann.
Engineered by Paul Hamann.
Recorded and mixed January 1980 at Suma.
1980 release mastered at Masterdisk.
Artwork by John Thompson.
Photos by Mik Mellen.
Reissue package designed by John Thompson.
This is the most "fluid" record in Ubu history. The Director's Cut contains all the variants as extras. For the whole byzantine story click here.
Songs written by Krauss - Maimone - Ravenstine - Thomas - Thompson, except "Horses" written by Thompson.
Pere Ubu (v.4.0):
David Thomas - vocals, Vox Continental Baroque organ, drums ("Lost In Art")
Mayo Thompson - guitar, piano, backing vocals, lead vocal: "Loop" & "Horses"
Allen Ravenstine - EML 101 & 200 analog synthesizers
Tony Maimone - bass, piano, organ
Scott Krauss - drums, horn, piano, drum machine
|
390° of Simulated Stereo
Out of print.
|
|
Non-alignment Pact (3:45)
Street Waves (4:08) Real World (4:05) My Dark Ages (5:32) Modern Dance (3:33) Humor Me (2:44) |
Heart of Darkness (4:07)
Laughing (5:15) Can't Believe It (2:16) Over My Head (4:46) Sentimental Journey (4:53) 30 Seconds Over Tokyo (5:42) |
Tapes transcribed by Paul Hamann at Suma.
Artwork by David Thomas.
Photo by Mik Mellen.
|
Song of the Bailing Man (1982)
Cooking Vinyl
|
|
Buy the cd from Ubutique • Lyrics • Press release |
|
|
The Long Walk Home (2:34)
Use Of A Dog (3:17) Petrified (2:16) Stormy Weather (3:20) West Side Story (2:46) Thoughts That Go By Steam (3:47) |
Big Ed's Used Farms (2:24)
A Day Such As This (7:17) The Vulgar Boatman Bird (2:49) My Hat (1:19) Horns Are A Dilemma (4:21) |
David Fricke, Melody Maker(?)
"Song of the Bailing Man" is an inspired, invigorating, confounding, disturbing... yeah, one hell of a swinging way to go. Still the futility Ubu must have felt making far sighted music in a chronically near-sighted world is pressed hard into these grooves.
Time Out
"These re-releases [AOW & SOBM] showcase a brilliant band breaking every rule of aesthetics... and sounding all the more exciting for it."
Alternative Press, 4/00, pp.95-6
"Continues the downbeat trend, with even its more rocking tracks...suffused with melancholy confusion....This disc is an essential purchase, but they're definitely not dancefloor or party fodder."
The Wire, 4/00, p.63
"Swathed in layers of reverb-as-sugarcoating and [drummer, Anton] Fier's backbeats ensure that every song here moves several bpm faster than anything else in [their] catalog....easily Ubu's most accessible material."
Pere Ubu (v.4.1):
David Thomas - vocals
Mayo Thompson - guitar
Allen Ravenstine - EML 101 & 200 analog synthesizers
Tony Maimone - bass
Anton Fier - drums, piano, marimba, percussion
Eddie "Tan Tan" Thornton played trumpet.
|
Terminal Tower (1985)
Cooking Vinyl Records
|
|
Buy the cd from Ubutique • Bug Report • Lyrics |
|
|
Heart of Darkness (4:44)
Final Solution (4:57) Untitled (3:28) Heaven (3:05) The Book Is On The Table (4:08) |
30 Seconds Over Tokyo (6:19)
Cloud 149 (2:37) My Dark Ages (4:00) Humor Me (live) (3:01) Not Happy (3:26) Lonesome Cowboy Dave (1:53) |
Andy Gill, NME, 11/30/85
Yet by 1978 they had achieved what no other group would even attempt, before or since, they had become the world's only expressionist Rock `n` Roll band, harnessing a range of rock and musique concrete elements together in a sound which drew its power from, and worked on, levels of consciousness previously untouched by popular music. The music Ubu made in 1978 was heart and soul, body and mind, in one.
Paul Mathur, Melody Maker, 11/30/85
I have an idea that, when the final card is dealt and the last chip hurled into the centre, Pere Ubu will be looked back on as the most important group to have come out of America in the last decade and a half. Either that or they will be entirely forgotten...Some of the greatest moments from the constantly reshaping line-up are certainly pinned down here, and it's only when they ARE paraded next to one another that you realise just how widely influential Ubu have been...this is darned near to being the most important record you'll buy all year.
The album collects the Hearpen singles from 1975 to 1977, the rarity "Untitled", the Chrysalis B-sides, and the Rough Trade single. There are some quality issues with Rough Trade and Twin Tone releases. See The Bug Report.
Digital transfer and eq by David Thomas & Paul Hamann at Suma in 1994.
Original artwork and photos by Mik Mellen.
Reissue package designed by John Thompson.
|
One Man Drives While The Other Man Screams (1989) |
|
Buy the cd from Ubutique. |
|
|
Navvy (2:53)
Street Waves (4:16) Heaven (3:09) On The Surface (2:37) Dub Housing (5:10) Caligari's Mirror (3:58) Small Was Fast (3:19) |
Misery Goats (2:49)
Go (3:57) Ubu Dance Party (4:32) Birdies (3:06) Rhapsody In Pink (5:21) Codex (2:29) |
Reissue edit and mastering by David Thomas at Suma with Paul Hamann engineering.
Re-packaging by John Thompson / idrome.
Original artwork by John Thompson.
Photos by Kathy Ward and John Thompson.
