Circle X – Prehistory (Vinyl LP)

Circle X’s Debut Album Prehistory on LP.

A reissue of Circle X’s first full-length album. Prehistory was recorded in 1981 and released in 1983 by Index Records, making them, strangely enough, labelmates with Wall of Voodoo. Circle X were formed in 1978 from the remnants of No Fun and the I-Holes, Louisville, Kentucky’s first two punk bands. Circle X got the hell out of Dodge quickly enough, settling upon New York, then Dijon, France, and then back to New York again. Prehistory is a tire-burning left turn from the band’s earlier EP. The pendulum arc of Tony Pinotti’s vocals still contain throat-shredding howls, but expands to contain croons, moans, speech. Bruce Witsiepe’s lacerating guitar is dumped into a dubbish aquarium of reverb, and Rik and Dave Letendre worry obsessive polyrhythms nearly to death.

The music of these Louisville-NYC art-punk-rockers continues to exist bafflingly outside of time – so when better than 42 years after initial release to reissue their album debut on vinyl? New listeners will find, in addition to the roiling compulsion of its odd, dance-damaged clockwork and synthesis of feral and aestheticized values, a refined understanding of the width and breadth of “post-punk” music, from any era, known or unknown.