Alan Vega built a career on the fringes, a cultural blade runner perpetually on the bleeding edge of conceptual art who kicked down barriers of convention to expose uncharted territory of artistic expression. A true pioneer in every sense of the word, Vega’s work as one half of avant-garde post punk duo Suicide and prolific solo output was so remarkably forward thinking that it will still yet take alternative music decades to catch up to his revolutionary compositions. Like many great creators, Vega left behind a veritable gold mine of unreleased material, a portion of which is finally seeing the light of day thanks to the efforts of his longtime collaborator Liz Lamere and The Vacant Lots’ Jared Artaud. Mutator is the first archival release of Vega’s vault catalog on Sacred Bones Records, releasing later this spring.
Lead single “Nike Solider” is a blistering neo-noir industrial experience, all throbbing synth and buzzing effects bathed in cathode tube radiation thrust violently into shattered glass high definition. Oppressively thick instrumentation builds an inescapable atmosphere of apocalyptic anxiety as Vega barks and croons above the chaos like Roy Beatty howling through the crumbling walls of the Bradbury Hotel, mercilessly stalking the final threads of rational humanity unravelling in the face of unwavering paranoia. The entire track maintains a constant level of energy throughout, taught and confrontational, never permitting a moment’s reprieve from the tireless menace that pads ever closer through the swirling miasma of steaming sewer grates exhaling terror beneath flickering neon. This is nightmare music, the soundtrack to a digital end of days abandoned to the vacuum of history by the twisted apocrypha of a vacant culture too far beyond the reaches of salvation.
Vega is summoned from the beyond in a stirring portrayal by a modern scion of uncompromising expression in the form of Kris Esfandiari, a worthy successor to Vega’s boundary shattering genius that has built a reputation for herself by wielding beauty and violence in equal measure as blunt instruments against demons within and without. The punishing brutality of Esfandiari’s NGHTCRWLR and DALMATIAN projects plays nicely within Vega’s theater of terror, but there is an icy layer of impenetrable cool courtesy of video director Jacqueline Castel that creeps like metallic frost as the artists waver and merge into each other against a backdrop of religious imagery and archival footage. Depictions of the masculine and the feminine deteriorate into static juxtaposed against brilliant flashes of individuality before retreating into an ambiguous amalgamation like binary suns orbiting the event horizon, a techno-tribal dance of death on the lip of infinity awash in the forbidden sexuality of total annihilation.
Alan Vega’s lasting impact is undeniable, kept alive through the accomplishments of artists inspired by his unflinching originality. As long as visionaries like Kris Esfandiari continue to embody the spirit of Vega’s voice it will never truly fade away, but it’s certainly incredible to hear such a powerful persona continue to define his own legacy long after the artist himself has left the building.
Mutator is out April 23. Preorder the album from Sacred Bones Records.
