Pylon - Chomp [Multi-Color Splatter]

Chomp catches Pylon taking their own songs apart and rebuilding them smarter, a 1983 record now back in print on multi-color splatter vinyl.

They started as University of Georgia art students with big ideas and no real intention of becoming a band, which somehow made them one of the sharpest to come out of Athens alongside the B-52's and R.E.M., all of it happening within the same few blocks at the turn of the decade. Gyrate had already announced them as something genuinely strange and rhythmic in 1980, and this follow-up shows self-described non-musicians turning, almost against their own will, into real ones. New West remastered both albums from the original tapes for this reissue.

Crazy is the song that outlived everything around it, angular and hypnotic enough that R.E.M. covered it themselves. Beep rides Randy Bewley's guitar in tight, wiry circles while Vanessa Briscoe Hay's voice cuts through at odd angles, M-Train locks into a groove and refuses to resolve it neatly, and No Clocks earns its title with a rhythm that seems to float free of any fixed tempo.

Art-school theory turned into some of the most physical post-punk of its era. Chomp is where that transformation finished.

Tracklist

1. K
2. Yo-Yo
3. Beep
4. Italian Movie Theme
5. Crazy
6. M-Train
7. Buzz
8. No Clocks
9. Reptiles
10. Spider
11. Gyrate
12. Altitude