NEGATIVE REACTION

Negative Reaction

(Zaius Tapes) LP $20.00 (Out-of-stock)

The brilliant lone album by Australian trio Mick Kingham, Milan Stojanovic, and Jim Bodnar was originally released on cassette by Tom Ellard of Severed Heads (Terse Tapes, 1981) and reissued on LP in 1982 by Dogfood Production Systems (home of the estimable Slugfuckers). So you know the pedigree is tip-top. While you’d be correct in assuming the vibe here is experimental — merely by association — be prepared for a perfect example of dystopian malaise released by a band from the then-burgeoning post-punk movement. It’s easy to overlook that in the dawn of the ’80s, specific niche genres hadn’t been painstakingly carved out. Negative Reaction’s album trods forth across the landscapes of industrial, experimental, and minimal, gathering the Cold War gloom and the bleak threat of impending global nuclear holocaust, and forges it all into this self-titled masterpiece. Done primarily with recitation, blurred guitar lines, echoes and feedback, it’s a harrowing snapshot from the other side of an inevitable apocalypse. The beauty is in its simplicity; it doesn’t jolt like SPK, nor does it attempt to shock like Throbbing Gristle. Negative Reaction go for the sublime, matter-of-factly and evenly laying down six tracks of impending doom that give “John” and The Book of Revelation a run for its money. One of the most pivotal records ever from a bygone era that was teeming with them. Edition of 250.