Chrome's 'Feel It Like A Scientist' Now Streaming at Consequence of Sound

The name catches it: Chrome, fast as quicksilver, curved in anticipation of the future, a redux reading of chromosome that feels more machine than man. Half Machine Lip Moves, the title of the third Chrome album from 1979, sets the blueprint for their crude cyberpunk take on rock 'n' roll. Thomas Wisse changed his name to Damon Edge and founded Chrome in 1975, but it wasn't until he met Helios Creed, a vocalist and guitarist with a name that made him sound like a solar phallic evangelist, that Chrome really came together, with a sound beamed from a dystopian vision of the future made by two guys with names like theoretical people.

The full album is streaming at Consequence of Sound http://bit.ly/1qa1NOb

Chrome played industrial avant garage like it had the power to eat up the past and make of it the future. They came out of San Francisco, the elephant's graveyard of rock 'n' roll, where The Sex Pistols went to die, where Throbbing Gristle terminated their mission, a place that Jack Kerouac characterised as being dominated by a feeling of "end of the land sadness end of the world gladness". Alongside apocalyptic contemporaries like Minimal Man and Factrix, Chrome played rock as a macabre form of self- immolating performance art that reflected on their status as kids camped up in the new rock 'n' roll necropolis at the toe end of the hippy era, too busy dying in the nowhere years of the late 1970sto get busy being born.

These days the term cyberpunk may summon up visions of Billy Idol in mirror shades, but Chrome were cyberpunk straight from the future-suburban armageddon of the sleeve of their second album, Alien Soundtracks, which featured their name scrawled on the ceiling of a modern day dream home like it had just been creepy-crawled by the Manson Family, while crude cut and paste lips and mouth beamed in from another nightmare altogether. Tracks like "Nova Feedback" sounded like robotic sex music made by loose kids at night. Feel it like a scientist, baby.

Which brings us to the new Chrome album. Edge is dead, his body undiscovered for a month in the Redondo Beach apartment in which he passed away in 1995, and since then Helios Creed has worked with a core Chrome line-up that includes Aleph Omegaon drums and Lux Vibratus on bass. Fee/It Like A Scientist adds Lou Minatti on guitar, performance/video artist Monet Clark- aka Anne Dromida - on vocals and a bassist named Steve Fishman who boasts of session work with everyone from Elton John to The Stranglers. While that kind of pedigree may not exactly inspire visions of blood curdling rock 'n' roll violence at the service of scientific kicks, the Chrome sound is so deformed by fantasies of cybernetic FX that it's more about musicians surrendering classic rock chops to annihilating production work than faithfully replicating any kind of historical aesthetic.

The first single from the album is titled "Prophecy" and it reinforces the classic Chrome approach. Over a distant recording of what could be the last words of Hassan-I Sabbah as channeled by William Burroughs, Chrome tear into backwards phasing and reverse tape strategies before an uncanny unveiling of a narcotic, stripped-down rockabilly performance by Creed. Lt reformulates rock via cut-up techniques and collage not as a hopeful nostalgia for the future (in the words of Brian Eno) but as an apocalyptic longing to bring the future to an end. By the time they kick into "Lipstick", rock has been drowned out by automata, with a rhythm section that is as deathly in its disco as Meta/Box-era Public Image Limited.

Chrome's organic/metallic dynamic remains Ballardian, fully eroticised."Lady Feline" matches a sleazy Stooges style riff and a vocal filled with dark sexual vibrato with a production style that takes the illogical, exaggerated approach of David Bowie's Raw Power mix and rethinks it as a deliberate experiment in tone science. Wailing wah-wah leads are pushed to the point of air raid sirens, and solos explode like depth charges. The title of "Something In The Cloud" suggests another attempt to waylay the future by second guessing it. It sounds more like a foreign country than the past, even as synth parts that match the remote emotional appeal of The Human League circa "Life Kills" instigate a connection with romantic memories of 1980s teenagedom. Think The Buggies' 1979 single "Video Killed The Radio Star" restaged as a hit by bounty hunters from the future. "Unbreakable Flouride LithiumPlastic" is a heavy metal love song to the structural possibilities of inorganic compounds, complete with an erotic auto-suggestive loop: "You're hot, sticky, your skin feels rough and chafed". "Nymph Droid", the album closer, is a drone dream of sexualised robots that unfolds in a slow pass over sleek metallic contours. It feels like the aural equivalent of running your tongue across a battery.

Now that their future has finally come, in the shape of countless lo-fi clones, Chrome's influence on the contemporary underground is plain. But no one, really, has taken their precise marriage of classic rock 'n' roll moves and steely cybernetic deformity further than themselves - aside from Harry Pussy, whose eviscerating take on Kraftwerk's "Showroom Dummies" is closest in spirit to the way Chrome put blood in the circuitry (there are plenty of groups that superficially sound like Chrome, everyone from Australia's Satanic Rockers/Sacred Product axis through to US underground groups like Factums and The Hospitals). Chrome, then; something you catch your own reflection in as it jets off into the future.

Dave Keenan/The Wire

Walking into Electrowerkz is like stepping back in time to an era of scuzzy chic, when basing your club on the set of Alien (though it's actually closer to Red Dwarf) was a totally radical concept. There's black paint peeling off the low ceilings, the walls are exuding a background fug of hash, patchouli oil and BO, and the sound manages to be both harsh and muddy.

Which of course makes it the perfect venue for Chrome to be playing their first London gig in 25 years. Here's a band whose genuinely unique brand of sci-fi garage rock has been on the periphery of every happening scene since their inception in 1975 without them ever being assimilated or neatly classified. They seem to exist in a musical twilight zone, their deconstructed metal kosmische mostly unacknowledged by the alternative orthodoxy yet somehow wildly influential on the collective unconsciousness of post-punk, industrial, neo-psych, out-rock, you name it.

That all might sound a bit wearing, but Chrome live are a blast. With his panama hat, beach shirt and tache, singer and guitarist Helios Creed might look like he's just walked out of The Big Lebowski, but he's still holding true to the vision that he forged with (the sadly departed) Damon Edge during their classic late 70s-early 80s period. It's the sound of information overload, both trashy and robotic at the same time - if you were to reduce it down, we're talking the Stooges jamming with Hawkwind and Malcolm Mooney's Can, but Chrome are absolutely their own thing. Creed's dense, compressed guitar sound mimics the squalling innards of the data networks crushing the breath out of the world, while the muffled clatter of Aleph Omega's drums is relentless, a dubby electronic snare occasionally cutting through the sonic haze. (Special mention too for second guitarist Lou Minatti, who manages to look both puppyish and cool in trapper hat, leather jacket and aviator shades)

ave for a few lights flashing on and off (and Creed throwing some guitar hero shapes), there's not much by way of visual accompaniment to Chrome's apocalyptic rock & roll, but a pleasing sense of chaos pervades the venue nonetheless. There's shouts from the crowd of "turn it up!", while keyboardist Tommy Grenas calls out in panic for a set list before the second song. 'TV As Eyes', 'Zombie Warfare', 'March Of The Chrome Police' and 'Chromosome Damage' all get an airing along with the heavy trance rock of new single 'Prophecy'. It's also great to hear 'Something Rhythmic (I Can't Wait)' - with its catchy chorus of, ahem, "I need you tied to my bedposts" - from the excellent "lost tracks" album Half Machine From The Sun released last year. As Creed explains from the stage, it was one of a number of songs that Chrome considered "too commercial" to release at the time.

For me, the biggest thrill is hearing tracks from the final album that Creed and Edge made together, the gothic space rock of 3rd From The Sun. The title track crackles with malevolent energy, while 'Armageddon' has a planet-quaking riff and a mid-section that suddenly opens up like a black hole in the noise. They close the main set with 'Firebomb', the threatening cyberfunk groove of its bassline heralding an extended excursion into the void.

Chrome have had a pretty chequered history since their original split in 1983, so it's great that we now have an operational version of the band that's building on the legacy of those early albums, a band that is capable of slipping it to the android once again.

Joe Banks/TheQuietus.com 6/25

The brilliant San Francisco psych/industrial/space-rock/sci-fi band Chrome has been reactivated again.

Formed in 1975 by drummer Damon Edge, the band really came into its own with the addition of Guitarist Helios Creed for their second album, 1977's Alien Soundtracks. Straddling pre- and post-punk turf, Chrome used the collage and cut-up techniques of industrial music and the heavily effected guitars of the most brain-fried cosmic acid rock to forge a massively tweaked sound that's still tough to pin into any single rock genre. (God knows I've tried, but nobody will accept my insistence that "sounds like a bunch of awesome giant-ass '60s TV space robots with eye lasers that grudge-f phaser pedals" is a genre, and so Chrome remains orphaned.)

Edge and Creed would be the band's core creative duo for four more LPs through 1982 (Half Machine Lip Moves and Red Exposure are especially recommended, as is the recently issued "lost" LP Half Machine From The Sun), after which Edge moved to France, leaving Creed behind and forming a new Chrome lineup that continued until his death in 1995. Afterward, Creed, having enjoyed an extremely fruitful solo career, reassumed the Chrome name, releasing new albums between 1997 and 2002.

But though someone in a band called "Chrome" was making records from 1975-2002, the last dozen years have seen no releases of new material from the band, until now. Feel It Like a Scientist, a 2XLP of new Chrome music, will be released in August 2014. Per Creed from recent interviews:

"I have the best band put together, finally."

"The album is coming out...it's how I've always wanted Chrome to sound. It's what I always imagined Chrome could be post Damon, ya know. I've been able to take it to the next level."

Having heard Feel it Like a Scientist, I have to agree-this feels music like "the next level." I've never been super crazy about any Chrome material that didn't have both Creed and Edge, but this stuff is worthy. We can't share the entire LP with you, but we're sure you'll enjoy the song "Prophecy," making its streaming debut today here on DM.
Ron Kretsch/DangerousMinds.net 6/3

At last, Helios Creed has delivered an album under the Chrome moniker that not only lives up to the name he established with founder Damon Edge (RIP), but also rises as a high point in his entire career as a solo artist.

Admittedly, Creed's resurrection of Chrome has been spotty, with earlier recordings taking on an industrial vibe with varying results, but Feel It Like A Scientist is born entirely from the original '80s sound. For the most part, songs tread between the classic 3rd from the Sun and vastly underrated Blood on the Moon, though "Lipstick" takes on a striking similarity to Half Machine Lip Moves and "Lady Feline" treads in solo Helios Creed territory circa Lactating Purple and Kiss from the Brain. Bassist Steve Fishman and drummer Aleph Omega perfectly capture the the tight rhythm section of John and Hillary Stench from Chrome's classic lineup, while Tommy Grenas adds Damon Edge-esque keyboard flavor and second guitarist Lou Minatti allows Creed to take things even further in his guitar blasts. It's the album Helios Creed has striven to make his entire career, so lovingly delivered to us puny humans for aural consumption.

Somewhere in the cosmos, Damon Edge is smiling, knowing that, finally, his thought transmissions have reached their destination inside Helios Creed's brain and Chrome are truly whole again. Welcome back to Earth, spacelings.

Chuck Foster/BigTakeover.com 7/13

Chrome may have a reputation based on their being the progenitors of industrial rock, and with Helios Creed steering the band since joining in 1976 (the band originated with drummer and vocalist Damon Edge in 1975 who took inspiration from influences as divergent as proto-Punk pioneers such as The Stooges, to sound art experimentation like the work of John Cage and Allan Kaprow) but such a narrative is painfully reductive, ultimately, not least of all on account of the band's numerous phases.

Chrome have long incorporated myriad elements within their music, forging a uniquely hybridised sound, and since the band's reconvergence with Helios at the helm following Edge's death in 1995 (remaining active between 1997 and 2001 and again more recently. Feel it Like a Scientist certainly probes and grinds its ways down a number of different avenues, powering headlong in many different directions with an energy that's at times quite bewildering.

It's pretty crazy s - just the way you'd want it from a band who've spent over 40 years at the cutting edge of exploratory psychedia and warped rock. As soon as you've acclimatized to the burning guitar crunch, the synths screech in and dominate and lead the track on a twisted sci-fi prog path... and then a swell of noise like a jet engine roaring for take-off obliterates everything, and even that, in turn, is swallowed by distortion and a slow sonic disintegration that reveals everything else is still going on underneath. And that's only the first track. Help us, indeed!

Feel It Like a Scientist is an album that never lets up on the throbbing bass, pumping percussion and solid guitars, all providing a backdrop for the dirty gothic croon of Creed's vocals. 'Prophecy' sounds like a Sabbath track played backwards while someone rides a motrobike through the studio... and then a thudding metal-edged fuzz guitar slices in and Creed croons low and throaty. The sinister overtones of his grinding vox is countered by the helium-filled backing vocals on the bicker rock thud of 'Lady Feline.' The only other bands that could possibly pull off a track like this are Melvins and Butthole Surfers, but of course, Chrome were there first by quite some margin (and the latter have openly cited Chrome, not surprisingly, as an influence on their crazed take on the 'rock' sound).

'Lipstick' crosses Krautrock with Heavy Rock, and spaced-out synth weirdness collides with frenetic percussion and gritty guitars on the robotix metal of 'Something in the Clouds,' which actually boasts a fair hook, too. Elsewhere, 'Six' sounds like Danzig playing the Bond theme on some heavy psychotropic drugs. It's just a pity Danzig don't actually sound this way. 'Captain Bosun' is a work of freaky space rock à la Gong with a heavy dash of Scott Walker. Crazy? Of course, and it works brilliantly. An insistent rhythm, strolling bassline and a mess of fed-up distortion and noise are the main ingredients for 'Cyberchondia.' The album's final track, 'Nymph Drid' slowly drifts on a cloud of ambience and transports the listener out of the room altogether.

It's a cracking album that's simultaneously coherent and diverse, and far from being the sound of some old has-beens going through the motions, it's a challenging and exhilarating work. Longstanding fans won't be disappointed by the high standard that's maintained throughout, or the mania that drives the album, and for those unacquainted with the band (where have you been?), it's a most appealing port of entry - as long as you're up for getting your brain bent a little.

Chris Nosnibor/Paraphiliamagazine.com 7/13

Spawned unto the world in 1976 like a mutant beast from an unearthly morass of twisted steel on a splatter movie, San Franciscans freaks Chrome have loomed large ever since as a triumph for murky noise alchemy - borne of technology gone wrong, and thriving in a blizzard of information overload. Forced to lurk in the shadows of relative obscurity for the vast majority of the last four decades, the fevered brainchild of twin ne'er-do-wells Helios Creed and Damon Edge, in the band's most celebrated incarnation, created post-apocalyptic junkyard chic still unmatched for outtasight dementia and Stoogian/Stygian bliss well into the twenty-first century. Somehow a band beyond both punk and psychedelia, their twisted racket came closest to the sound of Martians attempting to reinterpret earthling rock music with a load of old washing machine parts, home-made effects pedals and a copy of the Fill Your Head With Rock compilation on scratched vinyl, played backwards.

These enlightened dirtbags possessed a genuine capacity to bewilder unlike any others. Gritty, crotch-level rock abandon, yet allied to a bracing vortex of aural anarchy that seemingly rendered street noise, cultural detritus and TV scree unto DMT-addled plateaux unknown, frequently all within the same couple of minutes. Accidentally analogous to the irreverent yet synapse-shattering literary dimensions of the likes of Philip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut in Marshall-stack and four-track form, the classics of Chrome were as much about the silver of Iggy Pop's Raw Power-era strides as they were the hue of a 1930s Flash Gordon spacecraft.

Yet, to hosannas from the cult of casualties who worship 'em, future tenses have shifted and warped like the ocean of trash from whence Chrome arrived, to usher in a new era for this unnatural force. Moreover, the resurrection of said scrap metal colossus is quite the spectacle to behold. Warning signals were first acknowledged with the recent release of Half Machine From The Sun - The Lost Chrome Tracks From '79-'80, which despite being ostensibly comprised of cutting-room floor morsels from the band's golden era, couldn't help but sound alarmingly fresh and satisfyingly perplexing in true Chrome style. Yet now, Feel It Like A Scientist, the new album under the Chrome name from acid-fried axeman and frontman Helios Creed, who has been handling the name since Damon Edge sadly succumbed to heart failure in 1995, is almost upon us, and blow us down if it isn't a tonic for the troops.

This is no less than the spirit of the deathless Alien Soundtracks and Half-Machine Lip Movesreborn for the 21st century. Damon Edge's kraut-damaged trash compactor percussion and malignant whine may be gone, and John Lambdin and Gary Spain, who also contributed to the former record, may be nowhere to be seen yet Feel It Like A Scientist manages to pull off the neat trick of mainlining the bizarre Chrome magick of yore without coming across as some Pixies-esque pastiche of the band's greatest era. Decadent and deranged, yet possessed of a sleek, unearthly allure and refined for a still more confusing new age, it's possibly the most welcome and fitting comeback album from a veteran avant garde artist since Celtic Frost's tumultuousMonotheist hit the racks in 2006. There are moments of spatial elegance herein, as on the crooning glide of the single 'Prophecy', which sounds like Scott Walker disassembled for interplanetary travel in the manner of Cordwainer Smith's visionary sci-fi novel Norstrilia, and backed by a lounge-dwelling Monster Magnet. There's dirge-dredging debauchery as on the slow-burning midrange meltathon of 'The Mind'. There's found-sound disorientation. There are eerie, opiated ambient washes. What's more, the paint-stripping, third-eye-cleansing howl of Helios Creed's guitar is everywhere, a veritable shower of asteroids on the consciousness.

Speaking to Helios himself by the medium of email, it turns out that this new effort was made very much with their earlier triumphs in mind. "We set out to top Half Machine Lip Moves, that was the paradigm", Helios confirms. "I told my band that we had to make the best Chrome album ever, and we undertook that challenge. We wanted to go beyond the brink of musical sanity in the spirit of Half Machine Lip Moves. Each song is a foreign planet and we want to impress the natives. And absolutely, it feels like the right time. It will be up to the fans to decide."

[read the entire feature here: http://thequietus.com/articles/15284-chrome-interview-helios-creed] JimmyMartin/TheQuietus.com 6/4

To post a comment, you must register and login.