Mesh-Key bring to light more primo Vanity Records fair with this first time reissue of one of Kansai's more mysterious exports. A three piece with close connections to the Japanese punk avant garde (associates include Non Band, EP-4, Taco), R.N.A. Organism stand as a kind of flagship Vanity band, embracing early electronics, dub-sonics and proto-industrial aesthetics with an iconoclastic zeal. Similarities with British contemporaries like Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle are easy enough to recognise, but rarely are things that straightforward with Japanese music and less so when you're talking nearly 45 years ago when ideas travelled slower but mutated unobserved and quickly, too. And so this is a truly mutant sound formation, a government-experiment-gone-wrong, radioactive shock of uneasy sounds and corrupt grooves. There's an artful minimalist primitivism to a track like the perfectly titled 'Say It Loud, I'm Dilettante, I'm Proud' that feels born of a M.E.S hive mind, nasally, belligerent, aware that it's very, very good indeed, while 'Howareyou, Whyyou' travels the other way to Australia to state some allegiance with Tom Ellard's particular approach to civilisation wrecking. Really, though, my listing of these more familiar names is just there to open a door you might otherwise keep closed - be sure that R.N.A Organism are a thoroughly singular operation, doing that very thrilling, very 1980 of seeing what can happen when you just give it a try. Loads of otherwise unconnected people were coming to this same conclusion at the same time, and R.N.A.O. Meets P.O.P.O. reminds us just how different the same idea can be.
See also: Various – Vanity Demos - 6 CD boxset
