DEBRIS - s/t (Static Disposal) LP

Highest recommendation.

Truly brilliant proto-punk offering you've likely never heard. If you haven't preordered this before we reopen the store and we see you in person, expect us to enquire WHY you haven't. Richie took a punt on the last reissue (some 17 years ago) and has enjoyed it ever since!

Recorded December 10 and 16, 1975 at Benson Sound Studio, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and released on January 20, 1976, before the first Ramones LP.

Leading off with a song called "One Way Spit", Debris' can now be seen as the most important proto-punk band, too often snubbed by "punk historians" who don't want to admit to having to rewrite their historical templates.

Opener “One Way Spit” could easily be mistaken for a lost KBD single—from Chuck’s bizarre count-in to the band’s trashy start-stop rhythms, unfurling a Dadaist flag around Johnny’s visceral vocals. On “Tricia,” a reference to the then-current Patty Hearst trial, Oliver’s gruesome groans are sardonically juxtaposed with an electric saw. These LSD-tinged tunes are a potent mix of Beefheart-ian controlled chaos and the genuinely weird avant-rock associated with the mid-’70s Cleveland scene.

Enhanced by analog synthesizers and electronic effects, the album sounds like Eno-era Roxy Music or Stooges’ Fun House buried deep in the red Oklahoma dirt. While punk would spark a handful of bands who boldly straddled the line between the primal and the experimental, the relatively unsung Debris’ were one of the first to do so.

The LP sounds almost contemporary today, with its aggression, angst, wild analog synthesizers, guitars and vocal experimentation, and a supercharged, avant-psychedelic recording quality.

Top quality reissue on Superior Viaduct. Recommended for fans of Chrome, Pere Ubu, MX-80 Sound and Captain Beefheart.