RESEDA SPLEEN by VENTILATOR Set for Bar/None Reissue

Bar/None Records is set to reissue Reseda Spleen, the 1996 debut album from L.A. psych-pop outfit VENTILATOR, as part of the Hoboken, New Jersey label's ongoing 40th anniversary celebrations. The album, largely recorded at home by Matt Devine on a used Tascam 388 tape recorder, is scheduled for release on 12-inch vinyl, digital download and streaming services.

In the fall of 1994, after nearly four years of playing guitar and splitting the songwriting and lead vocal duties with former Three O'Clock leader Michael Quercio in the psychedelically-tinged Power Pop trio Permanent Green Light, Devine realized he needed to move on. 'When you're in a band where it's two singers and songwriters, there are always compromises,' he reflects. 'And it had gotten to the point where I just wanted to do what I wanted to do.'

Devine was ready to go with a subtly emotive tenor voice, a knack for creating atmospheric vistas and earth-scorching firestorms with a Les Paul Standard and a Marshall half-stack, and a bagful of poetic, highly personal songs that synthesized an impressively wide variety of influences. There was one defining element that pulled Devine further into his next phase, something which occupied the second bedroom of the North Hollywood apartment he shared with Linda Kennedy, his girlfriend and future wife: A newly acquired Tascam 388 eight-track tape recorder.

'It was a whole different scene from Permanent Green Light, where I was always rehearsing or hanging out at nightclubs,' he recalls. 'I had moved into this spacious, late-1940s apartment in North Hollywood with Linda, and we'd just gotten this terrific dog named Alex; I was 25, and happy to just stay home and work on my music. It was the experience of discovering, 'Okay, what am I going to do now?'' Reseda Spleen, named as a humorous nod to Charles Baudelaire's prose poem collection Paris Spleen and Devine's San Fernando Valley roots, would be the marvelous result.

With its brash power chords and proud chorus cry of 'I'll hem that coat as I want to,' 'The Tailor's Lament' - one of the first tracks Devine recorded for what would become Reseda Spleen - was radiant with the excitement of a fresh start. But there was an element of melancholy in the new recordings, as well; 'Happy New Year,' a song of unrequited love left over from Devine's first band Lazytown, spoke of how difficult it could be to reboot a sense of optimism after a particularly dark time, while 'Lansdowne' (named after Zachary Lansdowne, commander of the ill-fated airship USS Shenandoah) reflected his ambivalence about still plugging away at music while other friends were pursuing more 'adult' ambitions.

A huge Rolling Stones fan — the name Ventilator referenced Exile on Main St.'s 'Ventilator Blues' — Devine was intrigued by the idea of mixing the country-blues sound of a steel guitar into his songs, many of which also featured unusual sonic textures provided by a 1950s Gibson parlor acoustic guitar that Devine had strung with electric strings. He drafted his former Lazytown bandmate Jeff Caruana to grace several Reseda Spleen tracks with his evocative lap steel licks (including the epic closer 'The Daily Drag,' on which he played the instrument through a wah-wah pedal) and add some wistful Hawaiian steel guitar to 'Happy New Year'.

For drums, Devine enlisted Byron Reynolds, former (and future) drummer of Possum Dixon. After having Reynolds overdub drums on 'Lansdowne' and percussion to 'Jericho's Pool' during early sessions at the apartment, Devine and Caruana lugged the Tascam 388 (now known as the Ventilator Mobile Unit) to the Pomona home of his friend Karl Rumpf for the first of two drum sessions with Reynolds. For tracks like the straight-ahead rocker 'In Mysterium,' Devine performed scratch vocals and guitar while Reynolds recorded his drum parts, though Reynolds also used these sessions to overdub his drums on the already-recorded 'Lint Duet'.

In the summer of 1995, Devine had been invited by longtime pal Brad Laner to play guitar on the final tour by Laner's noise pop band Medicine that autumn, and Laner returned the favor by playing bass on 'Earthquake Song' and giving 'Schadenfreude' a radical mixing once-over, the only track not mixed by Earle Mankey, who Devine brought in after working with him on Permanent Green Light's 1993 release Against Nature.

'I was always gung-ho about getting other people into home recording,' Mankey says, 'but this was back in the 'dark ages,' when nobody had computers, and it took perseverance and grit to pull it off. So when Matt started asking me all these questions while recording Against Nature, like, 'How do you get that effect?' and 'Why did you use that mic?' I really encouraged him. We started hanging out at each other's houses and talking about recording techniques.'

Released in September 1996 by Chicago's Delmore Recordings, Reseda Spleen should have rightly caught on with lovers of noisy, guitar-driven pop. Unfortunately, as with so many indie releases before and since, the album's existence went all but unnoticed, save for two rave reviews (from The Big Takeover and TapeOp) which appeared in print long after Reseda Spleen had vanished from the scene.

Devine moved on, playing guitar with Possum Dixon for a year (and appearing on New Sheets, the band's Ric Ocasek-produced final album recorded at Electric Lady Studios in New York City, far removed from Devine's North Hollywood bedroom studio) before finishing the next Ventilator record. Titled Rock Folk Suicide, the album — a total sonic head-trip that picked up where 'Schadenfreude' left off — wouldn't actually see the light of day until 2008.

Notwithstanding, 30 years after Devine put the finishing touches on Reseda Spleen, his long-lost second-bedroom masterpiece is finally getting the full-fledged release it deserves. 'I leaned on my friends and had the resolve to put the work in,' Devine reflects, 'and the success turned out to be the good times and lifelong friendships for which I am forever grateful. Bar/None reissuing Reseda Spleen is another opportunity for total gratitude.'

'The record sounds incredible, and I know Matt will say that the Tascam deck was the reason,' says Laner. 'But no, it's what he did with that machine — he really achieved magic with it.'

Devine produced Reseda Spleen with mixing by Earle Mankey, whose credits include work with Sparks, Mumps, Runaways and the Beach Boys. The album features contributions from Byron Reynolds of Possum Dixon, Jeff Caruana and guest musician Brad Laner of Medicine. Devine previously played guitar in Permanent Green Light alongside former THE THREE O'CLOCK leader Michael Quercio before beginning work on the material that became Reseda Spleen.

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