Chrome: C or D?

yesssss

I know this is inconceivable, but hi dere Cleopatra plz include Read Only Memory as bonus trax.

at one time I had copies of the unedited tapes from their 1981 shows in bologna and SF.

A 1981 SF show from Mabuhay Gardens just popped up on D!me@d0zen -- sounds pretty good so far.

Yeah, saw that as well!

that sf show is the same one I leonardo'd last week... synchronicity or related phenomenon?

maybe I should throw the '81 italy show up on DAD

Mix CD Kings.

so Red Exposure is out, there is (was?) a ltd vinyl edition as well.

anybody heard this? I'd be interested in hearing how it sounds compared to the orig Siren/Beggar's Banquet vinyl.

Would love Red Exposure vinyl

yes but it is on CLEOPATRA who are notorious for doing shoddy jobs on releases, that's why I would like input from someone who has heard the new version...

I no. But the others sound pretty okay. Packaging is way worse than the pressing (surprisingly).

hmm I thought the others were on Noiseville? with the buttons and patches? I could be wrong. Those do sound great.

The vinyls are mysterious. Matrix #s look like they're from teh Siren pressings. Noiseville did the CDs, dunno who did the wax. Thought it was Cleo.

ahhh, thanks. that IS weird.

I saw the Cleopatra CDs of 'Red Exposure' & 'Retro Transmission' at Amoeba. Back covers on both looked so low effort, same cheap font just containing the titles, and the spines of both of them read 'Chrome - Retro Transmission' -- mr. Illustrator guy forgot to change the spine title before sending it off to the factory. Out of fear for how bad the rest of it would be, I ended up springing for that Harmonia Deluxe CD reissue on Lilith, with extra pictures / Tietchens liners / etc

Too bad Cleopatra did this one, 'Red Exposure' is their most accessible / catchiest (but still completely fucked) album, I hope the reissue occasions reviews at least

wait waht is Retro Transmission?

I'll still buy it if someone reps for the mastering

xpost 2002 Creed reformation album (had to google to find that out myself, the packaging says nothing) - never heard it, amazon reviewers say it's fair

ah, ok, thanks but I will probably pass. OTM about mastering being the key issue here.

red exposure sounds fine on cd. yeah, it looks like shit, but it sounds good to me - granted i haven't heard the original in a long time.

but it doesn't sounds like it comes off of a cassette or anything.

"Blood on the moon" is out (with sort of bonus tracks too).

The reissues sound okay.
As pointed out above, in pure Cleopatra style there are ridicolous mistakes here and there, but at least the albums are available.

am in the mood for chrome ...at the office. how long before management 'have a word' about the racket, do you think??

Listening to Half Machine Lip Moves tonight.

Also, many xposts & time gone by now, so here's the Eno cover "Here Come The Warm Jets" which is great.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SC55VD6U

Hey Chrome experts. I want to buy a copy of Half Machine Lip Moves since I love this album and I only have a CD-R some friend gave to me. But I was wondering what format and edition is the best purchase in terms of audio quality and presentation, the Noiseville CD or the Cleoplatra LP?

Hope that you can help me.

The two-fer with Half Machine Lip Moves + Alien Soundtracks released on Touch N Go has always done the trick for me...

The Noiseville reprints of Chrome are fine. I had a Cleopatra best of -- as well as the 'remake' of the Chrome box. Both were similarly fine. Six of one/half dozen of the other, depends on taste at the moment.

can't go wrong with the noiseville ones, at least they cared

Heads up:
just soze ye nose:
the Lilith records "Blood on the Moon" LP w/complementary CD version reissue is a shambles.
The packaging is sweet but when we get to what really matters it's cobbled together from (mostly)live versions of the BOTM tracks (from the "Live in Bologna" LP, I'm guessing) - the whole thing is presented as a verbatim reissue and isn't - which I'm guessing is why I was able to pick it up cheap - could be for some other entirely disconnected reason, though.
The live tracks just do not have that corkscrewing mania we need from chrome.
Lilith is a turd.

yeah they suck, fuck them and their overpriced bootlegs.

Wow, that's fucked up. Good to know.

Chrome with Helios Creed = Classic.
Damon Edge solo + non-Creed Chrome = Dud.

Classic understates how much I love Chrome, incidentally. Amazing band, one of my favorites.

Crome Box in black of night, by cathode ray light

Spent last night listening to a bunch of Chrome stuff cuz it'd been while. Still love Alien Soundtracks and most of Half Machine Lip Moves, but I'm on the fence about the rest. As a result, I was quite surprised to see the AMG ratings, which treat their albums with Helios Creed (even the semi-shitty odds 'n' sods comps) as more or less equivalent in quality.

Tastes differ and all, but it's hard not see a substantial drop in inspiration and invention from those first two albums with Creed to Red Medicine, which is texturally interesting but constrained and repetitive in comparison to the wild-ass space monster tape-splicing shit that made their reputation. The drop from there to Blood On the Moon is still more obviously catastrophic. It sounds like the work of the band that cut Red Medicine, but shorn of their experimental inclinations and given to a rather hokey theatricality. They keep recycling the same limp riffs and rhythms as though they were pop songs, and they just aren't. It's got moments, especially if you're into the sound, but they're occasional at at best and tend to drag on way too long.

The most offensive thing, to me, is that 3rd From the Sun, the band's sixth album (fifth with Creed), is held a notch above anything else they did. I'll happily grant that it's better than Blood On the Moon, but not by a massive margin, and I honestly can't understand why anyone would single it out as their finest hour, ranking it above even Alien Soundtracks. Shit is bananas.

Scored Correctly:

The Visitation (1976) - ★★½
Alien Soundtracks (1978) - ★★★★★
Half-Machine Lip Moves (1979) - ★★★★
Red Exposure (1980) - ★★½
Blood On the Moon (1981) - ★★
3rd From the Sun (1982) - ★★★

Okay, hold up. I'm being way too hard on Blood On the Moon. It's at least energetic, and the problem isn't that the riffs are "limp" (they're pretty great, actually), but that they're similar, and the tempos are similar, and there isn't really anything to the songs but the riffs. As a result, it gets tiresome fast. Taken in isolation, most of its tracks sound pretty damn good. 3rd From the Sun, otoh, sounds like a band running out of gas and not really caring.

So I guess I didn't score them "correctly" after all. Probably should have snatched a star back from 3rd From the Sun and given it to Blood On the Moon.

Anyway, it's weird how those three late albums each seem to isolate an aspect of the early Edge/Creed sound, reducing it to a recognizable style. Red Exposure concentrates on dystopian sci-fi soundscapes, Blood On the Moon pushes protopunk riff slinging, and 3rd From the Sun groans out the dirgey spacerock. Maybe what I miss is the unpredictable, irreducible manner in which Alien Soundtracks and Half Machine Lip Moves combine all those things.

The Visitation is weird. I'm new to it, having listened for the first time only last night, so I'm not yet sure what to think. It sounds like an embryonic hybrid of the harsh, blazed, sci-fi weirdness of Alien Soundtracks and some faceless West Coast psych band of the era. Which I suppose it is, but I think I like it. It's sort of the anti-Blood On the Moon, all loose, meandering and organic. Drags in the middle, but the opening and closing acts are pretty entertaining.

It was my first Chrome record, found an original with a lyric insert.
I'll always love it, but it is a different beast.

wow, shit, i've never even seen a copy

I like The Visitation. Production not fully crazed yet, but nowhere near normal, and some good songs. Sounds like a really bent early 70's southern / country hard rock band, way closer to James Gang than Hawkwind.

Read Only Memory is also up there with the best, but I don't know anyone who doesn't put AS/HMLM at the top, but I think Red Exposure has moments, they were obviously intentionally going for something more straightforward and better produced, which I always thought they completely nailed with their two pop songs for the Subterranean Modern compilation; clean but weird.

My offhanded what-do-I-know guess is that when they moved to (slightly) higher fidelity recording on the later records, they lost their workflow which allowed them to splice the flow of the album together out of fragments. AS/HMLM sound like they were painstakingly edited together & compositionally mastered at home on really cheap equipment; the later records ones have more low end, and sound professionally mastered in the studio, on the clock, but those 4-7 minute songs lack all those bizarre left-turn edits & details. But even reading your post slagging them off makes me want to go back and check them out again, there are moments.

As a result, I was quite surprised to see the AMG ratings

The reviewer might or might not have had final say on some of those ratings, I believe.

i dig the later edge/creed stuff, but I"m a sucker for their goofy psychedelic sci-fi doomsday cult sound. not as creative as alien soundtracks, etc., but it's an aesthetic not many have mastered ... or gone near ... or really exists outside of chrome. so it's like a nice little treat once in a while.

they were obviously intentionally going for something more straightforward and better produced, which I always thought they completely nailed with their two pop songs for the Subterranean Modern compilation; clean but weird.

yeah, otm, those two are great. so are both songs on the inworlds 12" ("danger zone" and "in a dream") and stray tracks off the last three albums: "the need", "insect human", "eyes on mars" and "firebomb", among others. would love to hear a good remaster of 3rd From the Sun, which though it's relatively well recorded, really gets lost in the murk.

lol, just opened all the 3rd from the sun tracks in audacity, dropped the volume, boosted the midrange (esp towards the top), and then compressed them a bit for uniformity. sounds a lot sharper.

LFW. i guess i want chrome to hurt my ears.

i listened to the visitation again this afternoon, and i think i'm starting to fall in love. was way premature in scoring it so low. might like it as much as half machine, but will have to wait and see.

tbh, i prefer the band when the structures they're operating w/in are a little less rigid than they got circa blood on the moon. i understand that they were probably trying to write "real songs", stuff they could play live, wanting to move beyond pasting together lofi jam snippets. they were also clearly borrowing from the formal rigidity of then ascendant new wave, downplaying the more open-ended 70s sounds they started out with. funny thing is, though, that they never sounded more perfectly and presciently NEW than on their more messily digressive early releases. they sound like band of ranxerox on alien soundtracks and half machine, like this violent, malfunctioning machine leaking sparks, noise and pornography. relative to that kind of insanity, they can't help but come across a little fuddy-duddy in wavo sex-vampire drag.

anyway, i do dig quite a few late period tracks. in addition to the stuff i mentioned earlier, i really love "perfumed metal" and "armageddon".

those are the two tunes that immediately came to mind when I read through your earlier panning of those recs. I think it's all solid, really best to think of them as three different bands - Visitation, the 78-79 period, and the later stuff until Creed left. sure the 78-79 stuff is the visionary breakthrough, but Third From The Sun and the Chronicles albums tower above most other music from that era - and really, is there anything from that time period that even sounds like "Shadows OF 1000 Years"? It only sounds lacking when you compare it to the peak.

and really, is there anything from that time period that even sounds like "Shadows OF 1000 Years"? It only sounds lacking when you compare it to the peak.

― sleeve, Friday, August 3, 2012 10:43 PM (Yesterday)

had to think about this for a minute, cuz it isn't one of my go-to favorites. "shadows" really does exemplify the weirdest aspects of the late edge/creed sound. so draggy and fucked up, seemingly from another planet, but dealing pretty straightforwardly with everyday life shit. you know, if you're a down and out borderline drug casualty enduring visions. kind of like PK dick in that regard. love the way the deliberately flat and "dumb" lead vocals contrast with the star trek style backing vox on the chorus.

your point echoes what spectrum said earlier ("I'm a sucker for their goofy psychedelic sci-fi doomsday cult sound. not as creative as alien soundtracks, etc., but it's an aesthetic not many have mastered ... or gone near ... or really exists outside of chrome. so it's like a nice little treat once in a while."), which i can't deny. they've really got the zoned, sepulchral, interplanetary drug weirdo thing nailed down tight.

it's not that i don't like the later edge/creed stuff, which i suggested by rating it so harshly, but that i move from "holy shit, i love this band/album!" to "holy shit i love this song (but not that one so much)." which isn't so terrible, really. i'm more about songs than albums anyway. i'm just as hard on my other big 70s/80s favorites: blue oyster cult, ELO, devo and talking heads.

The reviewer might or might not have had final say on some of those ratings, I believe.

yeah, i'm sorry if that came across dickish. the reviews themselves are great. it's only the ratings themselves that mystify me.

have been working on a chrome playlist, hopefully something that would fit on 2 CDs, as a primer for friends. had it working it pretty well, but then felt i had to include a few more late period edge/creed tracks and threw the balance off. now part 2 runs 90 minutes instead of 77. ah, well...

Part 1 - The Visitiation, Alien Soundtracks and Half Machine Lip Moves:

How Many Years Too Soon
Raider
Return to Zanzibar
Sun Control
My Time to Live
Memory Cords Over the Bay
Chromosome Damage
The Monitors
All Data Lost
SS Cygni
Nova Feedback
Pygmies in Zee Park
Slip It to the Android
Pharoah Chromium
ST 37
TV as Eyes
Zombie Warfare (Can't Let You Down)
March of the Chrome Police (a Cold Clamey Bombing)
You've Been Duplicated
Abstract Nympho

Part 2 - Red Exposure, Blood On the Moon, 3rd From the Sun, etc.:

Anti-Fade
Meet You In The Subway
Eyes On Mars
Eyes In The Center
Isolation
Perfumed Metal
Out of Reach
Blood On the Moon
Danger Zone
In A Dream
Beacons To The Eye [single version]
Anorexic Sacrifice
Open Up (Locust Door)
Fire Bomb
Armageddon
Off The Line
Shadows of a Thousand Years
Wings Born In the Night [edit]
Gehenna Lion [edit]

skip the struck tracks, and it works just fine.

Really enjoying the posts here and have been listening to the albums this weekend.

i understand that they were probably trying to write "real songs", stuff they could play live

Chrome played a total of two shows.

"Apparently, Damon and Helios slowly became estranged over the issue of touring. Helios wanted to go out and do live shows while Damon did not."

Chrome did not like H at first since he showed up to the audition dressed in some kind of pirate outfit. 

since i'd spent so much time revisiting chrome, i decided to go back and catch up with helios creed. not everything, as he's put out a ton of stuff over the past quarter century, but at least through the mid 90s. basically his subterranean and amrep albums, most of which i heard at the time of their release, along with a few associated stray tracks.

sadly, it turns out i don't like creed much as a solo artist. he's obviously a gifted guitar player with some strange ideas, but his compositional palette is extremely limited. he's more a jammer than a songwriter. as a result, the musical character of his output is strongly dependent on band chemistry and editorial oversight. when he's working with people who simply follow his lead, he invariably falls into a plodding, overextended, space-noise rut. since he changes bands every year or two (sometimes for every recording session), the quality of his solo work is terribly inconsistent.

1990's boxing the clown is the only helios creed solo album i really love. for one thing, it's concise. many of the songs run only two or three minutes, while most of his other releases are larded with bland riffs stretched out to epic lengths. what's more, the riffs here are genuinely catchy, you get a memorable chorus every once in a while, and the production is fantastic. it's heavy and cavernous but not at all muffled, with clear instrumental separation and lots of detail. it's also the best band creed's ever had, a power trio featuring super-genius ex-scratch acid drummer rey washam and bassist mark duran, who'd been working on and off with creed for at least five years. washam all but steals the show. his drumming is brilliant, frequently the "lead" instrument, and since he co-produced the album (with creed and jonathan burnside), it's tempting to give him at least some credit for its remarkable sound and refreshing brevity. one of the best least-remembered noise rock albums of the era.

beyond that, while there are a handful of songs i enjoy scattered among creed's many solo releases, i haven't yet found any other albums i enjoy all the way through. "the warming" is a decent single from '91. the amrep albums that followed boxing the clown, lactating purple and kiss the brain, are often fondly mentioned by fans, and the latter does feature some kickass (and surprisingly suitable) slap bass from paul kirk, but i only like odd moments here and there. for instance, i love "flying through the either", an uncharacteristically lovely pillow of bright guitars and cloudy synths that shows up early on lactating purple. kiss the brain is a better album, overall, but the only real keepers, afaic, are "mountain mystery", a wierd tale of alien visitation in the sticks (driven by crazy slap bass), and "legs", a hilariously depraved take on the theme made famous by ZZ top ("smell the leather, taste the whip, feel your master start to drip").

the less said about the version of chrome he cobbled together in the late 90s, after the passing of damon edge, the better.

X-Rated Fairytales is a great Helios solo album, I dunno I have only listened to a handful of Creed's solo albums. I probably have a longer space-noise tolerance level than most