The Modern Dance
by Pere Ubu

Pere Ubu take the spirit of old-style garage-rock and distort it in a rhythmically groteque way. These 'Beefheart-ian' influences, are though, merely an alibi for frontman David Thomas's nuerosis, surreal lyrics and abstract humour which emphasise the dramatic force of his theatrical-style performance. The atmosphere of 'The Modern Dance' is one of spiritual decay of post-industrial society and the sense of alienation, anxiety and fatalism that stems from that. These feelings are expressed through primordial and grotesque musical textures that often take the form of psychedelic dissonance, electronic distortions, expressionism and Dadaist abstractions. This album is arguably the most original and innovative of the new wave and sounds about a decade ahead of its time. This is probably the first post-punk album. In many ways, like the art of Beefheart and Red Crayola, this album represents a musical vocabulary that has still yet to be fully realized or understood by mainstream critics. This is why you are unlikely to find it on many 'best of' lists. I like the fact that Pere Ubu, as with Faust who artistically they have much in common with, tend to shun the commercial circuit.

A great post punk album. Similar in attitude and presentation with Joy Division's, unknown pleasures. The modern dance, is a fantastic record of alienation, frustration, and anger, and delivered with a swagger. There is no point in picking out individual tracks, it all needs to be listened together in one sitting, like most great albums. A classic late seventies LP. (Edited)

The guiding theme of Modern Dance (1978) is that of alienation and anxiety within industrial society. Pere Ubu take the fear of the modern world and transplant it into a different scenario, in which death is not physical but spiritual, not due to bombardment but to economic and social mechanisms.

Their sound starts out from the spirit of old-style garage-rock, but the sound is distorted in a rhythmically groteque way. Thomas is more of an 'actor' than a musician for whom surreal lyrics and student humour attenuate the dramatic force of the performance. Within the sound there is also a feeling of resigned fatalism, collective madness and rational fear - the same kind of emotions that seized the young of the post-war era, when the atomic threat held everybody in suspense.

However, the fear now is justifiably more real because capitalism is increasingly reaping its own kind of holocaust - from the dramatic negative effects of climate change, to the grotesque levels of global socio-economic insecurity and inequality.

The message conveyed in the album appears to be the following: As long as such problems are one's that human beings are individually deemed to be pathologically pre-disposed to (as opposed to one's that are rooted in the economic and social system), the human race are inevitably doomed to destruction.

In other words, 'Modern Dance' invokes the necessity of the human race to grapple with the problems it faces in an objective way, if it is to avoid becoming the complicit author of its own holocaust.

The album is composed of free-form phases (woodwinds, cacophony of the keyboards, rattling guitars, psychotic thrills) alternating with sudden powerful rhythmic flarings and veritable flashes of hallucinatory violence in the calm of the urban neurosis, in which Thomas gives vent to his raging vehemence. The singing of Thomas is schizophrenic in the 'Beefheart-esque' tradition as is the overall innovative sound. The rhythm section grinds out a paradoxical rhythm, a rough and elemental danceability, to the twisted accompaniment of a primitive, strange and hypnotic guitar sounds.

Electronics and effects are used in a way that has influenced a successive generation of musicians. The earthy and disarticulated way they have been used acts as an ironic counterpoint to the maniacal anxiety of the band.
Thus unbalanced, the music is ambitious enough to function as the soundtrack of industrial landscapes and, by extrapolation, as that of the holocaust.

Pere Ubu's aesthetics is one of auto-destruction and of the absurd and grotesque - themes which can be referenced to Jarry. Within 'The Modern Dance' is a prophetic apocalyptic vision of catastrophe and despair, of lonelinless and isolation, of madness and violence. Above all, the album is a 37 minute pagan representation of the world's impending end.

One of my all time favorites. Brilliant! A masterpiece.
I first heard this masterpiece in 1980 at universty, and although it sounds relatively tame in 2017, in 1978 'The Modern Dance' was a radical revolutionary new kind of music, birthed in punk - soaked in experimentation and sophistication.
It has dated well, an exceptional work. (Edited)

From planetneutral 01/13/2018 05:16 | #205362 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

This album was surprisingly fun to listen to, although I found the last ten minutes or so more of a trial than I typically like.