Suicide & Alan Vega

Suicide rose to prominence in New York during the early years of the New Wave. Their sound managed to graft the endless modulations of minimalists onto a solid rockabilly foundation. The spectral vocals then painted a metropolitan anguish closely related to that of the Velvet Underground.

Suicide was a duo composed of the cursed rocker Alan Vega, who embodied the wild tradition of rural rockabilly, and the hallucinatory keyboardist Martin Rev, who embodied the intellectual revolution of urban new wave (in reality, Vega was a light sculptor and Rev played free jazz).

They debuted in 1971, performing apocalyptic blues in Manhattan art galleries, and gradually allowed themselves to be influenced by the climate of self-destruction that reigned among Soho’s intelligentsia.

Suicide (Red Star, 1977) (reissued with unreleased tracks in 1981) is their breakthrough album and one of the milestones of new wave. Their tracks are delirious tales of voluntary suicides in metropolitan labyrinths, exercises in self-flagellation that reach a paranoid pathos through a monolithic existential catalepsy. The sparse yet relentless sound fabric is suddenly pierced by desperate screams of ghostly men emerging from amorphous nothingness and clinging to the endless walls of skyscrapers—chilling moans propagating through echo effects, evoking hallucinatory states and whispering in the catacombs the death of humanity. Their work is a lament advancing in pulses through the glacial silences of the city’s main traffic arteries: the tender, majestic, moving litany of Cherie, a weave of obsessive melodic phrases and delicate chimes, the cosmic tribalism of Rocket USA, the pounding syncopation of Ghost Rider, the psychotic rockabilly of Johnny, the lascivious moans of Girl, the industrial nightmare of I Remember, the anguished, funereal requiem of Che. Vega’s cadaverous singing—also made of long silences, gasps, and reverbs—complements Rev’s icy pulsations, creating atmospheres of almost religious intensity. Torn between “fatal” stories and political diatribes, their songbook leaves no respite for the human condition.
Frankie Teardrop is the ultimate nightmare, a sort of 2000s Sister Ray, a vertiginous demonic rhythm plummeting into the atrophied consciousness of the metropolitan underclass, a luminous, manic projection of the ego onto a dark screen, a sequence of sounds that moves from the “concrete” noises of traffic to a tornado of echoes and cacophonies in the finale, a slow-motion detonation of dynamite. Vega’s suspenseful, almost casual yet tense and quivering recitation, with endless pauses, scattered traffic noises, disconnected screams, and the final sequence of echoes and cacophonies, makes it even more horrifying. It is one of the darkest and most anguished tracks in the entire history of rock.
Suicide embodies a typical attitude of Manhattan’s intellectual circles at the turn of the decade, drifting in vortices of repressed emotions and painful pangs hidden beneath an apparent impassivity.
The group pioneered, before Devo, the “devolved” way of interpreting “standard” genres, like rock and roll, all in hushed tones with mechanical, pneumatic pacing and the unnatural tension of a horror show.

The single Dream Baby Dream / Radiation (Ze, 1979) measured the ongoing metamorphosis, from catastrophic neurosis to cybernetic balladry, which was completed on the second album.
From Alan Vega Martin Rev (Ze, 1980 – Restless, 1990) onwards, the sound leaned toward disco-electro-rock: transcendent lullabies (Touch Me), tribalisms (Mr Ray), industrial dances (Dance) cynically exploited metronomic rhythms, Rev’s disorienting keyboards, and Vega’s reverberated vocals, sometimes turning into lightweight pop (Sweatheart) or disco (Diamonds, Shadazz).
Towering over all is the desperate urbanism of Harlem, the duo’s last great electronic melodrama, immersed in a wild and apocalyptic atmosphere, which Vega’s conversational vocals and Rev’s infernal rhythms rend into a crescendo of suspense.

For the revival of Teutonic electronic experimentation, the poetics of dehumanization, and the duo formula of voice and electronics, Suicide can be considered forerunners of several trends in the new new wave.

That same year saw the release of the first solo keyboard album by Martin Rev (Infidelity, 1980), reissued as Marvel (Daft, 1996) with unreleased tracks. All tracks feature the floating repetition of minimalism and employ the signature synthesized rhythm of Suicide, but the transcendent sound of Mari, the lush exoticism of Baby O Baby, and the musique concrète of 1986 with bells and various effects, are pale echoes of his former urban neurosis. The most original moments appear in the mantra-like disco of Temptations, the cosmic-industrial music of Jomo, and the cacophonous rockabilly of Asia, amid electronic whirlpools and metallurgic rhythms.
Even more ambiguous are the atmospheric ballads of Clouds Of Glory (New Rose, 1985).

The electronic shaman Alan Vega effectively continued Suicide’s spectral, consumable electro-rockabilly alone.
His first hit was Jukebox Baby from Alan Vega (Ze, 1980), featuring the characteristic cold, stuttering vocal phrasing, robotic and feverish rockabilly cadence, and metallic guitar tones, slightly reverberated almost like reggae. This would become his style. Like all true “authors,” Vega has his own expressive language, shaped differently depending on the content. His language would remain this futuristic, decadent rockabilly.
On the same album, the sly interpretations and surreal arrangements of two other rockabilly tracks, Kung Foo Cowboy and Fireball, as well as the epileptic bluegrass of Speedway (practically a preview of Gun Club), crown his quest for a personal voice. Vega is a songwriter in the mold of Bob Dylan and Neil Young, but he needs to channel his cursed stories through the neurosis of rhythm.
The lugubrious, funeral-paced rhythm and blues of Love Cry, with piano and guitar playing bare chords, and especially the monumental, terrifying plantation blues of Bye Bye Bayou, with a locomotive rhythm, highlight the malignantly pessimistic charm of his personal futurist revival.
Vega’s program is a natural continuation of the Suicide project, without Rev’s apocalyptic electronic backdrop but with the same dehumanizing emphasis and the same sick genius for deconstructing rock and roll.

Collision Drive (Celluloid, 1982) begins with another classic of his demonic rockabilly, Magdalena 82, a new glimpse of cadaverous anguish at infernal pace. Raver, Rebel Rocker, and especially the “southern” heavy metal of Outlaw in ZZ Top style.
His voice, vaguely “Reedian” in its cold, bored, metallic delivery (nonchalance plus cynicism), became one of the most distinctive of the 1980s—a psychotic singing style pairing hypnotic calm with corrosive bursts of despair in high-level psychological performances. Vega sublimates in the immense Viet Vet (thirteen minutes), a Jim Morrison-style psychodrama railing against American values over a dying blues, punctuated with noise and guitar distortion.

The third album, Saturn Strip (Ze, 1983), employing broader orchestration, reached a fusion of disco music and rockabilly (Video Babe, Saturn Strip) with Velvet Underground overtones (American Dreamer). The album reconciled him with the public but actually lost the luciferian grit that had distinguished him.
Hermetic and gothic, his style remains the most authentic descendant of Suicide’s deliriums.

Alan Vega and Martin Rev reunited once for A Way Of Life (Chapter 22, 1988) (Wax Trax, 1989), even managing to craft an anthem worthy of their past, Jukebox Baby 96.

Three more years passed before the duo returned with what is, in the end, only their fourth album in sixteen years: Why Be Blue (Enemy, 1992). Though lacking the abrasive violence of their debut and with occasional slips into disco, some tracks rekindle the maniacal minimalism (especially Pump It) and electrifying “talking blues” (the title track, in salesman mode) of their early work. Masters at composing gray, depressed, fatal atmospheres brimming with spleen, Suicide does not fully exploit this skill. Alan Vega retains unique talents as a neurotic, ironic, seductive, and cryptic storyteller (in the carousel of Last Time) but contented himself with the role of nightclub entertainer.

After the anthology Vega (Celluloid, 1989), Alan Vega’s solo career continued with Deuce Avenue (Musidisc, 1990). Accompanied only by Liz Lamere on “machines,” Vega stubbornly repeats the tracks that made him famous under different titles: Be Bop Jive, Deuce Avenue, and La La Bola.

But Vega increasingly turned to other art forms: in 1990, his first photography book, Deuce Avenue War, was published, followed the next year by a prose and poetry collection, Cripple Nation.

Distracted and demotivated, Vega records little and poorly. Power On to Zero Hour (1991) and New Raceion (1995) are perhaps his worst albums.

It took two years before the album recorded in 1994 with Alex Chilton and Ben Vaughn was released: Cubist Blues (Thirsty Ear, 1996).

With Dujang Prang (1996), Vega suddenly experiences a rebirth. He discovered a terrifying sound and threw himself, body and soul, like a vampire, into his songs. Instead of rock instruments, Vega opts entirely for modern electronics, but does so with the same rebellious spirit as in his early days—indeed, with a spirit worthy of punk rock. Hammered, Life Ain’t Life, Big Daddy Stat’s Livin’ On Tron, and so on may not be significant as compositions, but their execution is deadly. When in form, Vega has few rivals in the world.

Meanwhile, Rev wastes his talent recording a tribute to doo-wop and girl groups, See Me Ridin’ (ROIR, 1996).

Vega completes his artistic rebirth by recording two albums under the name VVV with Ilpo Vaisanen and Mike Vainio of Pan Sonic: Endless (Blast First, 1998) and Resurrection River (Mego, 2005).

For some reason, critics have always believed that Suicide should not make another album, and they resented every time Vega and Rev violated that taboo. Yet everything can be said about this duo except that they flooded the record shelves. Everything can be said except that they sold out to major labels, as many of their (ungrateful) disciples are doing.

In reality, nothing has changed since their beginnings. Today, as then, Suicide expresses through electronic rock the anguish of living, the alienation, and the neuroses of metropolitan man. Their work remains fundamental in the history of rock for teaching how to use electronics not for pictorial or futuristic purposes, but for inner expression.

Surprisingly, Martin Rev's next move was, Strangeworld (Sahko, 2000), a collection of sorrowful ballads.

The duo reunited to make American Supreme (Blast First, 2002), an album that adds techno locomotives, hip-hop beats, turntablist scratching, funky bass, metal guitars and programmed keyboards to their original recipe. There is little here that is as lugubrious as their first album, although the songs were composed after the September 11 terrorist attacks and occasionally make references to it. It is not simply a reunion: this is a new Suicide. They sound different, and they are different. No ghostly rockabilly and no electrical shocks. Instead, a wasteland of syncopated beats and a coiling miasma of distorted sounds, and, planted in the kernel of the machine, a messianic voice in the tradition of Jim Morrison, Lou Reed Nick Cave (most often speaking rather than singing).
The stylistic range is gigantic: techno (Death Machine), digital charleston (Begging for Miracles), house (American Mean), Prince-like funk (Child It's a New World).
The emotional range is likewise far more varied than on old Suicide albums. Mostly, the songs exude a sense of impotence, best expressed in the noir atmosphere of Televised Executions (funk guitar, scratching, reverbed vocals, tribal shuffle), Wrong Decisions (martial organ beat, chirping electronica, pow-wow drums), and Swearing at the Flag (hyper-fast breakbeats, moaning recitation, bubbling electronica),
Occasionally, the ritual turns into despair, as in the cacophonous psychodrama of Dachau Disney Disco (Throbbing Gristle meet the Pop Group). The main disappointment is Vega's voice, hardly the terrifying icon that used to be. Even Billy Idol can do a better imitation of Alan Vega than Vega himself.

Martin Rev's To Live (File 13, 2003) survives the hypnotic cyberpunk rhythms worthy of Billy Idol of To Live before getting lost in the swamps of synth-pop.

Alan Vega's Station (Blast First, 2007) seems to finally reenact the spirit (if not the letter) of the harrowing electronic noise of the first Suicide album. However, that feeling of fear is transposed from the alienated individual to society as a whole, the society of the post-2001 world, a society still traumatized by Al Qaeda's terrorist attacks and George W Bush's invasion of Iraq. The alienated young man has become an alienated adult man as he surveys the collective psyche in Freedom's Smashed, Psychopatha and Devastated. All the songs are between five and seven minutes long, only one shorter and none longer, as if Vega had finally found the perfect format for his music.

Martin Rev released Les Nymphes (File 13, 2008) and Stigmata (Blast First Petite, 2009), both collections of digital vignettes. The latter is a requiem mass for his wife performed on cheesy electronic keyboards instead of a church organ.

In 2012 Vega suffered a stroke. In 2016 Vega exhibited his portraits of faceless figures in New York.

Alan Vega's last album IT (2017) is de facto a collection of poetry and noise. Vega recites his verses against the robotic assembly-line beats of DTM, under the radioactive rain of Dukes God Bar, in the guitar firestorm of Vision, on top of the industrial dance of IT, in the buzzing percussive tornado of Screamin Jesus, in the distorted pulsating inferno of Motorcycle Explodes, and under the shower of violent alien signals of Stars. The soundscapes are all sinister and borderline apocalyptic.

Alan Vega died in 2016 at 78.