Mars: Angry Red Planet Waves

Within a two-year span (1978-'80), Mars played a mere 25 shows (none outside Manhattan) and made three recordings (all out of print, not a full-length among them) and still managed to become the stuff of hipster myth, still spoken of (though largely unheard) some 16 years after their demise. If a memorial wall were erected in tribute to proto-chaos, art-school-fueled, anti-music standardbearers, their names would be etched deeply in its granite.

Low-key but prominent members of the no-wave cadre that burned through lower NYC in the late '70s, they and their peers -- Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, DNA, the Contortions -- ascended to the status of noisemakers who got it right. As the new discographical 78+ CD (Atavistic) proves, no developmental coups have gone down yet that tarnish their stature one bit.

There's no denying that the sound sucks, or that completists get short shrift; fidelity sinks no lower, and only their first single ("3E/11,000 Volts") is in its original form. No source credits are listed, and two songs from the original five on the Mars EP have been replaced with live versions from a 1992 French import CD, as is one track out of four from the No New York compilation (Antilles, 1978; produced by Brian Eno, which included other No Wave principals). There's one other song, "Fractions," from the French CD that is unlisted on the disc, and two other uncredited live tracks ("Cat" and "Cairo").

Although their confreres may have delivered more of the rock goods, Mars concocted a truly gripping oeuvre with their aggressive pursuit of dissonance. It wasn't so much their aggressive attack as their complete refusal to let more than a fragile Velvet Underground tendril anchor them to anything but primitive musicality. On "Fractions," "The Various Stages of the Erotic," and "Puerto Rican Ghost," obsessive drum and bass percussion drive a beat into a corner and maul it bloody. At other times they play with a little more control and self-awareness. On slower numbers, the guitar glides up and down the neck in an atonal shimmer. And in general the voices moan and shriek, every bit the equal of the rest of the caterwauling. The New York band Live Skull would later take these elements, neaten them, and ride the concept for a welter of essential discs.

What makes Mars so compelling today is the simultaneous destructive/constructive impulse behind these tunes. They're reactionary to the marrow, and you get the impression that their refusal to acknowledge anything beyond the most rudimentary melody or form is an ideological decision. As non-brutish as their delivery is (they're much less assaultive than other No Wavers, including early Sonic Youth), the sense of hot vengeance in the grind and scrape is right on the surface. At the same time, they occupy a universe all their own. Without ties to structure, there's not much in the way of the familiar; in congress with the moodiness -- hysterical, creeped-out, always dark and depressive -- you feel stuck somewhere a million miles away. And the possibility of the unexpected makes that space a riveting place to be.

Ultimately, Mars are the actuality of what a clutch of writers imagined the then-prominent punk army perpetrating; within these 14 tracks there are more musically assaulting, aesthetically interesting moves going on than in an armory's worth of Sex Pistols. Before this reissue, there was a crucial piece of history gone and buried. Here's your chance to hear the record straight.

-- Jonathan Dixon