Industrial Sponge - s/t

More of that hard-to-beat teenage scheming with this latest discovery from Concentric Circles, 45 minutes or so of 4-track absurdity from short-lived (/barely ever existed) Olympia outfit, Industrial Sponge. The name is a bit of a giveaway here, the sound of friends joking 'n' poking around with their primitive grasp of home recording technology and fertile imaginations. Drum machines sputter and pulse, electronics drone and wheeze, and various voices take it in turns to share their thoughts on lizards, beers, dope, social mores and the like, the very definition of DIY fuckery. Was the wider world ever meant to hear this? It remains unclear, but here we are, scratching our heads nearly 40 years on wondering if imagination might be the most enduring aspect of the human spirit. Direct comparisons remain elusive, but you might not be entirely misled by references to Earth Dies Burning, Axemen, and Screamers, and I even hear traces of No Trend in their disdain for suburbia's constraints. Essentially something that could have conceivably turned up on Al Margolis' Sound of Pig imprint. As you can deduce from such a range of household names, this remains pretty singular stuff, a document of a very particular set of people alone in a room together finding out what they can get away with. Concentric Circle report that this LP captures just the second side of the sole 90 minute cassette they recorded and that the group's driving force, “Fearless” Frank Gunderson, is now a professor in musicology at Florida State University. None of that really makes any sense, exactly as things should be - weird, a bit wrong, wholly unexpected, a perfect expression of America's hidden underbelly. Edition of 200. Naturally, unlikely to be seen again.