Monday, October 1, 2007

Venus Beads - Incision (1991, Emergo)

In their brief, early '90s lifespan, the feedback-laden Venus Beads managed to make a ripple in their native UK, but barely earned a modicum of respect stateside. Not woozy enough for the shoegazer side of the fence, and light years from the Madchester set, I've come to the conclusion that the Venus Beads were if anything, anti-scenesters. Logic dictates that the Jesus and Mary Chain and Mega City Four were more their style.

Incision is seeped in youthful ambition and vigor. It's the sound of fledgling rockers grasping for a slice of affluence, while still maintaining an indie-rock ethos. By today's standards, this album is something of a mess, if due to anything else, a lousy, compressed mix by anyones standards. It's a safe bet that Incision was an attempt to migrate the Beads noisy, on-stage racket to vinyl, but sonically, the results are feeble. Despite the album's shortcomings, there are some real buried gems here. Lots of them in fact, including "Moon Is Red," and "Treading Water," just two of many representative songs here that exemplied the Venus Beads melodiously-aware penchant for indie guitar-rock of their era.

01. Treading Water
02. Precious Little
03. Incendiary
04. Never Always Mine
05. Moon Is Red
06. Silver Cloud
07. On Second Thoughts
08. Another Door Closes
09. Then
10. Ghosts of Summers Past

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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

very nice blog :)

Unknown said...

Thanks for the Venus Beads! I loved them (especially the 'Day of Nightmares' 7") and never understood why they didn't get more attention with all that praised noise stuff from creation records around.
Amazing blog and you're comments are quite entertaining and to the point!

knock me down said...

do you have the day of nightmares ep? i would love to get a copy of that again.

Litotes and Bathos said...

Heck yeah, respect the Beads. I found Incision in a used bargain bin at Pure Pop Records in Burlington, VT when I was a high schooler (1993ish).

I wrote the lyrics to "Treading Water" on a tee shirt and wore it for a month.

Thanks for the memories!

Anonymous said...

I still remember a famous guitarist from Venus Beads named Anthony P. who I really admired during the 90's. Someone told me that Anthony P. should be taking viagra online at this moment of his life.

Posi Jeff the Record Guy said...

Thanks for posting! First time I heard of this band, I love "On Second Thoughts"