Alan Vega during a concert in Berlin in 2002.
Photo: imago/Seeliger
Alan Vega, founding member of the legendary New York no-wave duo Suicide, died eight years ago. To this day, his romantic lines “Dream Baby Dream” from the 1977 song of the same name ring in the ears of thousands of newlyweds. Yes, Vega could definitely be a romantic. But first and foremost he was a nihilist. With his congenial duo partner Martin Rev, he deconstructed punk at a time when it was just beginning to emerge.
With Suicide, Vega recorded a total of five albums between 1977 and 2002, of which the self-titled debut and “The Second Album”, released three years later, have cult status today. What many people don’t know: He also worked as a solo musician and was extremely busy. Vega released 15 albums during his lifetime. Always looking for adequate means of expression, he became a vagabond of pop music: he restlessly traversed the coordinate system of modern sounds, combining his love for Elvis Presley, which he developed in his early youth, with minimal techno, no wave with new wave, industrial patterns with acoustic sounds. The main thing is that it drove him to places he hadn’t been before.
Anyone who thought that death had placed natural limits on Vega’s creative drive was wrong: after “It”, released in 2017, and the “Mutator” that followed four years later, “Insurrection”, the third album from Vega’s estate, was recently released. The artist and widow Vegas, Liz Lamere, was responsible for all three publications. She worked closely with her husband during his lifetime and has managed his estate since his death.
“Mutator” already showed Vega from his dark, mysterious side. “Insurrection” takes it all a step further: For long stretches of the album it sounds as if The Birthday Party – the legendary noise-rock combo around the young Nick Cave – had been locked in the rehearsal room of the electronic pioneers Kraftwerk in 1982 . Already in the opener “Sewer” the machines clank coolly, while Vega sings desperately against it, as if he were actually in a sewer – a sewer.
Unlike his solo albums from the early and mid-80s, the pieces on “Insurrection” seem less classically composed and more like a sound-technical style of playing. The second song “Invasion” is the big exception with a somewhat melodic synthesizer line that runs through the entire song. Overall, tracks like “Crash”, “Cyanide Soul” or “Murder One” are dominated by murderously distorted, electronically generated drum beats, over which Vega spreads his fascinatingly diverse vocal organs: sometimes whimpering, sometimes screaming, sometimes accusing, sometimes listless, sometimes deliberate.
It remains to be seen whether “Insurrection” will be retrospectively classified as an artistic masterpiece in Vegas. However, it is already clear that the publication – unlike many other estate administrations – did not result in any corpse-pulling or commercial exploitation. On the contrary: the eleven tracks on the album are great sound art.
Alan Vega: »Insurrection« (In the Red)