Opener “Kick (Disco Combine)” was recorded in 1980, the identical 12 months as Speaking Heads’ Stay in Mild, and the temper is comparable: Matta’s guitar is as percussive as Niang’s supple beat and Jean-Pierre Coco’s speaking drums. Gysin and Cherry inject the groove with varied permutations of the phrase, “Kick that behavior, man,” whereas Cherry sprays and squiggles along with his pocket trumpet. It’s intoxicating. The reissue appends two very welcome variations, a “7″ Various Combine” that’s basically an edited vamp, and an instrumental dub; these jonesing for extra ought to rating “Kick That Behavior Man,” a sort of cowl made the identical 12 months by San Francisco industrial innovator Monte Cazazza for a 7″ launched by Throbbing Gristle’s Industrial Data.

With its bassy hook and chicken-scratch guitar, “Sham Ache” might be Stylish, if their legendary fury at being turned away from Studio 54 soured as a substitute of soared. “Insane, insane! Why am I at all times in charge?” Gysin screeches. Guitars make sounds of scrunched-up faces, the bass rolls its eyes. “Complain, complain!” he caterwauls. “I appear to recall we had some sort of ball/However for the lifetime of me, darling/I can’t appear to recollect your identify/It was an extended noble identify….” The sneering tumbles out of him, bravura and effete. The title observe punctures the druggie slumbers his demimonde too typically mistook for a muse with literal alarm bells and a bassline that stumbles round prefer it’s looking for the ground. “Junk is not any good, child,” Gysin proclaims, and backup singer Yann Le Ker, of French post-punkers Trendy Man, concurs with a catchy, “no good, no good, no good.” Gysin ponders varied permutations of the sentiment, however the reply stays the identical.

Two tracks discover the fun of queer intercourse. No matter you consider primitivism as a fetish—and, given Gysin’s in depth educational work, together with writing a historical past of slavery in Europe, as one of many very first recipients of a Fullbright, the racial politics can’t have been misplaced on him—the bounce of “Baboon” is plain, and his supply outrageously profitable, someplace between the understanding flamboyance of Quentin Crisp and the louche menace of Grace Jones. “V.V.V.”, in the meantime, is a Sapphic celebration so insouciantly horny that it appears unattainable to consider that it slunk round for some forty years with out attaining at the very least the underground anthem standing of, say, Gina X’s “No G.D.M.” Let’s rectify that.