Big Black - 5 Hard Noises demo (1982) & Live @ Exit, Chicago, IL 11/25/84

This is a sad fu%kin' blog post.  I'll be lucky if I don't bust out crying.  In fact, 2024 was a tremendously sad f'n year overall.  On an otherwise non-descript spring day it was announced that Steve Albini perished from a sudden heart attack May 7.  The world didn't see it coming. While the sometimes cranky and invariably idealistic recording engineer and musical auteur hasn't popped up very frequently on these pages, the recordings he made with seminal proto-industrial punks Big Black, and later, Rapeman resonated with me substantially when I was younger.  

For those who regularly tune into this site, the mention of his name (and furthermore Big Black)

might strike ya'll as the biggest curveball I've hurled yet.  That's fine.  I'm not really here to sell you or evangelize, because I came to the realization decades ago that Albini's music was hardly palatable to everyone, especially those of us more aligned to pop-centric musical constructs.  However, I hope a few of you will take this dive into B/B's nascent steps, if only to illustrate they weren't entirely (anyway) the abrasive, Dadaistic malcontents they were routinely painted as.  True, stiff drum machines and coarse vocals don't necessarily emanate fruity rainbows and daisies, yet on 5 Hard Noises, a solo demo concocted by Albin to win over recruits for his then upstart combo, there's a distinct post-punk undercoating suggesting Joy Division as much as say, Cabaret Voltaire.  The icy sparseness of "I Can Be Killed" and "Peeled" belie warmer notions should you opt to pursue the glints of light at the far end of the tunnel.  I'll reiterate, not for everybody, but 5 Hard Noises provides fascinating insight into Big Black's blossoming vision.  

By 1984, the lineup had fanned out to entail Santiago Durango on guitar and Jeff Pezzati (courtesy of Naked Raygun) on bass (and I think sometimes live drums). The November '84  gig live in the band's hometown of Chicago I'm presenting is an above-average audience tape featuring songs from B/B's first trio of eps: Lungs, Bulldozer, and the then unreleased Racer-X which would drop within the next year.  The band was still a good year-and-a-half out from their debut full length, Atomizer, but the crowd is treated to a preview of "Big Money," and the live staple "Cables."  By now, B/B's dense, signature sound had reached fruition, albeit the tempo and sheer intensity of future material would be heightened considerably during the latter half of their tenure.  There's plenty of banter in this set, but I don't hear anything particularly unnerving/amusing, and it certainly doesn't overshadow the music. Btw, I only have MP3s to offer for the demos.

5 Hard Noises (1982)

01. Jump the Climb

02. I Can Be Killed

03. Peeled

04. Live in a Hole

05. Rip

Hear

Live @ Exit, Chicago, IL 11/25/84

01 Seth

02 Rip

03 Live in a Hole

04 Albini on Kraut

05 Il Duce

06 Dead Billy

07 Albini chats

08 Deep Six

09 Cables

10 Albini on Pezzati

11 Big Money

12 Texas

13 stage chat

14 Pigeon Kill

15 Shotgun

16 The Crack

17 Racer-X

MP3/FLAC