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Album Details

• Artist: Transmission
• Album: Transmission
• Label: Radium
• Year of Release: 1983/2006
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2006-10-08

This is a re-release of a 1982 EP by Jonathan Kakne and Daniel Galliduani, both of whom became original members of Swans. As is fitting, the six songs here are dirty industrial, downtown NYC all the way, pre-Knitting Factory, when assaultive drone like this, swans, Rhys Chatham and leftover Fluxus people roamed the clubs. Here the drone is driven by a primal percussion, and oddly tuned saxes that also recall jungle wailings. “South Wind” builds and builds into intensity and falls into the background; “Fireball” never seems to even really begin, but drives on anyway. “With Dawn” and “Battlecry” would work in a Tony Conrad as well as a M. Gira setlist. “Power Stations” sounds like an exorcism performed in a filthy bathroom at a bus depot. Abrasive and freeform because it wants to be and the possibilities are endless, Transmission recalls a time when it still seemed as if this shit would change the world.

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