Unrest Classic or Dud?

& "yes she is my skinhead girl" is a great indie pop song.

But dud, especially for "Isabel".

And Ms. Bridget Cross STILL needs to get that Panax / what-have-you project off zee ground, please?

Also, Bridget Cross = minimalist bass genius.

I may even like Flin Flon better than Unrest, just on the strength of "Swift Current" and _Boo Boo_ (the first album isn't as good).

He does it by listening to a lot of "What Goes On" and '89-90 Wedding Present? j/k

Unrest must haves:

• Imperial f.f.r.r - UK version on Guernica (confusing US version contains lyrics for the UK bonus tracks not included?) dreamy pop, wine glass drone, kraut-fixations, rhythmic interludes.
• Isabel Bishop EP - there are several versions of this... i think the tracklisiting is all the same... "Heathers" joke, compiles some earlier single tracks
• A Factory Record - 1991 Sub Pop single of the month... covers of ESG, Miaow, Crawling Chaos and Fin.
• Yes She Is My Skinhead Girl - K Records... features the kraut- jam "Hydroplane" in truncated form... also available in half hour full format on various Cath Carroll promo CDs along with the track from the Stereolab split.

further covered "isabel" on their sometimes chimes 2xLP. really strange evocative version. speeded guitar/sample sounds like a harpsichord.

David is OTM, except I wouldn't really know. Well, I have the experience of sudden shock and joy, dragging myself up those imaginary stairs. The recognition component is high. Tom, in the chapter of your book on the tension between rhythm and recognition, anonymity vs. eye contact, in (not) dance music, you've got to mention Unrest! (The rhythm component isn't bad either, but I suppose glorious=not cool.)

I prefer Perfect Teeth to Imperial f.f.r.r., 'Make Out Club' and 'Six Layer Cake' to 'Suki' and 'Cherry Cherry'. It's better when Bridget sings the songs that are not supposed to be glorious, e.g., 'Light Command'. Her version of 'Winona Ryder' is also better than Mark's.

I have to agree with Douglas on the "imperial f.f.r.r." being the "Another Green World" of indiepop bit. Thankfully, it was this record that got me into indie rock, and not something more uniform and less minimal. My favorite pieces on this album are, as David mentioned, the more warped difficult ones, like "Firecracker" and "Imperial". Tom, "Isabel" and "Cherry Cherry" don't exactly describe this album as a whole. If anything, this record kinda approximates the feel of a Tall Dwarfs record. "Imperial f.f.r.r." is a stunning record.

And over time, so is "Perfect Teeth", though it's more of an indie- pop record. "Angel I Will Walk You Home", "Cath Carroll", "Soon It's Going To Rain", "Food and Drink Synthesizer" (maybe getting the titles wrong here), "Stylized Ampersand" are all amazing songs.

"Malcolm X Park" and "Kustom Karnal Blackxploitation" are amazing in completely different ways. Then, they seem like a band that's sorta poking fun at Dischord while really drunk... though I think they serious... maybe. Is this where the whole punk-embracing-soul thing started? Seriously... the Make*Up must have listened to "Disko Magick" and ran with it, sans humor.

FYI, "Disco Magik" rips off the Red Hot Chili Peppers ("True Men Don't Kill Cayotes"). They staggered around a lot and could be smartass/obscurantist in the worst way--I hate Fuck Pussy Galore, most of Kustom Karnal Blaxploitation, most of Perfect Teeth, and all Air Miami. (I noticed Christgau hates Imperial but he seems to have no facility for trancing.) Unrest influencde much crap, too.

Still, they made a new kind of jam minimalism that built on Sonic Youth without copying. They heard what was beautiful about Beat Happening and applied it to what they took from Joy Division. They had a mystery about them that made mail-order pop seem fun for a couple years.

Classic: "Teenage Suicide" off Kustom Karnal Blaxploitation (cover of the tune from Heathers), Malcolm X Park LP, Yes She Is My Skinhead Girl EP, Cherry Cream On EP, that Sub Pop single of covers, Imperial f.f.r.r. (American version), BPM compilation CD, "Nation Writer" off Isabel Bishop CD, "Where Are All Those Puerto Rican Boys?" off promotional Cath Carroll CD, "Angel I Will Walk You Home" off Perfect Teeth. Also: The Olympic Death Squad CD (Robinson solo) and Flin Flon live.

On a side note, what do you all think of the 24 Hour Party People flick?

unrest never did a damn thing for me, except one song off fuck pussy galore that i can barely remember. (i want to say track three, but that'll be some horrible shambling indie pop thing and i will look the fool.)

102 Beats that publication date = 26th September by the way, i.e. six months after part 1.

I get the feeling it needs to be thought of somewhat in context to be appreciated. American indie rock coming through into the nineties was pretty much deplorably rock: the 80s models were bands like the Replacements or Fugazi, big shouty crunchy-chord American rock bands, and just before 93 -- when Perfect Teeth was released -- a great grungy shot of even rawkier influence had been injected and toppled the whole thing over toward the mainstream. Meanwhile the UK was seeing stirrings of a less traditionalist indie approach -- Too Pure, roots of post-rock or what-have-you -- but while plenty of American bands were following this, they weren't really impacting the overall course of American indie, and even the American bands flogging that stuff in the UK, like Th Faith Healers, still had heavy doses of very American grit.

Perfect Teeth was not only an antidote to that but an advancement on it. It was entirely clean-lined: Robinson's big guitar blasts pretty much lacked distortion -- in America! in 1993! -- and instead gave us that frantic sped-up jangle that's distinctively his contribution to the lexicon. The record was also spacious, and spacey. At the point Stereolab was still working its wall-of-sound drone, but a lot of the tiny blip-tone melodies Unrest were constructing pointed ahead to the stuff Stereolab would be doing during a much later phase of their career -- the backing vocals at the end of "Angel I Will Walk You Home," for instance, this sort of concrete tone-placement approach that's all over the record. They managed to turn the foreground of their music into something like a Mondrian painting, the clean-lined blocks of particular tones, in a way that seemed to turn away from most of the other things going on at the time, and the sort of techy spaciness of those tones combined with Robinson's vague leaning toward some image of a 50s-style pop combo to create and probably surpass what would, four or five years later, become a major theme in indie internationally, even though no one connected that with anything Unrest had been doing.

It seemed cleaner and spacier and more friendly and cerebral than the highly-emotive rock idiom of the moment, and more bedroomy, and more personal: "Back when I was twenty / I didn't think anyone liked me." And it managed to set all of its most fascinating impulses in context: it functioned terrifically as a rock album, as a pop album, and as an "experimental" album. Which is, I think, a lot of why it gets praised so often, but also a lot of why it gets slated as a run-of-mill record: it certainly seems continuous with most of what else was going on at the time, but really it's quite difficult to come up with anyone else who sounded quite like them, or even anyone else who's particularly followed the techniques that were actually uniquely theirs.

Well, I probably shouldn't have used the term "indie-pop" so loosely, as I meant it colloquially, and not as any sort of "pop" at all. Ooops.

Don't get me wrong. "Make Out Club" and maybe "Cath Carroll" had at least some potential for radio play, IMHO. But as a whole, "Perfect Teeth" is certainly not a 'pop' record.

Nabisco did a GRATE job of his summation of said record. Though, I'll add that since listening to a heavy dose of early Factory record bands since, I can now definitely hear those elements in almost all of Unrest, unique they may be, in the 90s. Mark Robinson would be the first to admit it. (Well, "A Factory record" is pretty much an admission right there)

Also I think their post-Unrest projects do a good job of pointing up what was uniquely theirs: the minimalist concrete rock of Flin Flon is really quite intriguingly assembled, and deserves credit for feeling more like the propulsion of let's say Gang of Four than most of the bands actually imitating Gang of Four; and I still think the Air Miami record is lovely, a perfect showcase for the side of Robinson that's obsessed with arranging these clean hypnotic tones into breezy beachy pop songs. It also gets at his weird habit of taking Factory-style sounds but swinging them toward punchy major-key pop (the Stockholm Monsters are maybe the only precedent I can find for this, and it's still sort of different) -- as generally "new-wave" as they sound, it's tough to find very good analogies for the approaches of "Sweet Little Heartbreaker" or "Neely."

I saw them live at Maxwells after Perfect Teeth and they did this long a capella bit that was beyond goofy. Bridgid Cross started to crack up in the middle of it, which was cool.

The bonus tracks aren't hugely revelatory (and fans probably have 'em already, except for the demos), but do buy it for the nice remastering job.

this is the truest statement on this thread. as a guitar player, "cath carroll" makes me jealous. as a songwriter, "isabel" makes me jealous. as a grammarian, this paragraph is loaded with problematic sentences, but i'm too lazy to edit it.

There are a million things about the album I love, but I particularly love the double-tracked vocals on "Blushing" and how they diverge into non-obvious, amazing harmonies. Or on "June" where Bridget sings a pedal note for the "How did it feel to be 26 degrees?" part along with the main vocal melody.

...or how they put two instrumentals back to back, as if to say, "These are not throwaways" - and they are indeed essential! (On the other hand, I wouldn't have cared if they had left off "Food & Drink Synthesizer" from Perfect Teeth.) You have the drum machine precision of "Champion Nines" followed by the kinda-sloppy-but-in-a-good-way drumming of "Sugarshack".

Mark's guitar sound is just perfect. I mean, when I listen to the opening notes of "Goodbye," I'm practically in tears.

How does ILX rate the Phil Krauth solo albums? I only have Silver Eyes - it's okay, didn't really inspire me to buy more, though. That Panax song that was on one of the TeenBeat samplers was great. Do they have anything else?

http://64.224.76.125/miva/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=KRAD&Product_Code=KCD016&Category_Code=IJ

The Panax 7" is so so so so great. Their entire output is that 7" and the comp track which is also great.

i'm gonna have to top and say completely fucking classic! i love this band so much.

I totally love their cover of "God Gave Rock and Roll To You". After being blown away by that in the early 90s I picked up Perfect Teeth and never really got into it. But that one cover was amazing.

And right you are for it! xpost

After not listening to them for a year or so I random-shuffled onto "Imperial" the other day and was elated all over again. What a great band.

Yeah, to me they are just undeniably fantastic. Its so easy to call them one of my all time favorite bands.

The comparison to "what goes on" way up thread is very otm

Was just thinking about them a bit yesterday. Very glad to have caught them twice, both times great.

I saw them the night Bill Clinton was elected! They were great.

Was just reading Matos' "great out-of-print albums" column on Perfect Teeth in Idolator the other day.

'I do believe that you are blushing'was always a favourite of mine
Beautiful. That album (Imperial...) on the wonderful and badly missed Ajax records for a while?

I have an album by Unrest in my loft that sounds more like I thought Unrest would sound - punk. And it's not the one with the girl on the cover.I've just done a fruitless, probably lazy, google and not found it. Any ideas?

it is so good, and I wish I could find a lyric sheet because I just hear fragments of pleas and regrets and memories ("I found my mailbox full of you", what a lovely line) and I want to get a better understanding of what's falling apart and how. I think I understand what rock and roll has to do with it though.

so good

Retrospective piece in the Post today about Unrest, mostly the Imperial-to-breakup phase: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/dcs-indie-music-scene-thrived-in-the-90s-a-look-back-with-one-of-its-most-beloved-acts/2018/01/02/7f4611be-dc45-11e7-b1a8-62589434a581_story.html

https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2018/01/02/Magazine/Images/Unrest-Knoxville_199201_byMarkRobinson.JPG

Not sure how I never managed to post in this thread. Total classic & much missed.

It was an unexpected thrill to hear them on the radio the other day. The Current played "Make Out Club."

I was listening to the Isabel Bishop EP last night and realized how great the funkier version of "Isabel" is.

Haven't heard the EP is a couple decades but how far from the original with the "Ashley's Roachclip" drum break added is it?

iirc the EP version is the same as the "Isabel Bishop" 7" - only the version on Imperial is drumless

I want a Mark Robinson/Unrest anthology...

god i love this band

Same!!

perfect teeth was so great, what a way to go off into the sunset

love

Any Air Miami fans?

Tomas MacLoughlin
8 years ago
the drummer, phil krauth is my English teacher!!!
how cool is that??

xp Mike Fellow is no Phil Krauth, but Air Miami are OK. Never clicked with them the same way.

Not to brag but I saw Unrest at Maxwells and The Ropers were the openers...

...in 2010

I kinda want to be a completist but it is expen$$$ive.

― sleeve, Wednesday, February 27, 2013

five years later, the only formal Unrest releases I'm still missing are the "Make Out Club" 7" and the split tape with Dust Devils, but then there are a bunch of impossible-to-find Teenbeat cassette compilations as well.

Were you really finding it expensive at the time? None of my Unrest records are worth that much money. I don't see a lot of interest in Unrest these days in general. I'm wondering if they will be "rediscovered" by p4k or someone and have their classic status affirmed a little more among the general public someday.

the really expensive one that I still don't have is the UK LP release of Perfect Teeth, it's like $80 or more

Make Out Club single is > $20 and I just can't justify it since I have all the tracks already afaik

most of this stuff is pretty affordable, I think I had to spend $40-50 on the 1st LP original

This one? https://www.discogs.com/Unrest-Perfect-Teeth/release/1622164

yes, trying to find a copy for sale in the US is very difficult

Based on that marketplace, Germany is hoarding all of them!

Any Air Miami fans?

*raises hand

tbh I bought the Air Miami CD because I saw it 2nd hand for about £2.50 some time in the 90s because of the Unrest connection, listened to it a couple of times but didn't think that much of it. A few years later when I first started talking to my now-wife about music she was a fan (of both bands) and sent me a copy of their demo and got me to listen to the album again, and that time it clicked for me.

Any Cotton Candy fans?

me otm 16 years ago about flin flon and ESPECIALLY about panax's "the garden" (from the 2000 teanbeat sampler):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiP1U1DIcMM

when i was a kid in dc the teenbeat stuff felt a lot less cliquish than the dischord post hardcore cool guys and a lot more stylish than the theater dork pukka shell stylings of the dismemberment plan.

yes, trying to find a copy for sale in the US is very difficult

sleeve, i will keep an eye open for that one for you

<3 thank you!

Oh my god, I Do Believe You Are Blushing, where have you been? Apart from, of course, on my shelf for the last decade, unlistened.

Where do I go after Imperial ffrr?

Perfect Teeth, immediately :)

and then BPM

I do believe your blushing is their best song imo

uh wow

Unrest 06-09-1991 Middle East

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtVDyKwVZws&feature=youtu.be

aw man, gone already

nah it's there, just Google "Unrest 06-09-1991 Middle East" and it'll be the first result

thanks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ryyk4ee5Tw

nice thx

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndlZ3NJfZSE&feature=youtu.be

what was that supposed to be?

oh wow is it gone already? Unrest live at the Khyber in Philly 1992

https://youtu.be/ndlZ3NJfZSE

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ea-MgTUWkAAFAqL?format=jpg&name=medium

A new radio programme debuts tomorrow morning at 11AM on
@wmbr
. Mark & Evelyn's American Top 41 starring
@evelyn0909
and Mark Robinson. http://wmbr.org

Cool! They do a lot of kitschy station identification jingles for WMBR, and every now and then pop up here in town (Cambridge/Somerville, MA) in their Cotton Candy guise, so this show should be a lot of fun.

that's very good

also, this is not really related, but I'd like to post it here anyway, just for fun

https://cdslimspine.com/assets/photo-img.png

Terry Tolkin (R.I.P.) did a lot more besides release Imperial, but that’s where I know his name from. Mark tribute from earlier today:

Terry, me, Richard. Teenbeat 173 with Teenbeat 178 on the table. Teenbeat Banquet 1995. pic.twitter.com/JoRm4u16sO

— Teen-Beat / Mark Robinson (@Teenbeat463) January 22, 2022

I need to look back at that Teenbeat item re to Tolkin No. 6 label .

In an email I just got

Party Milk
Your Problem as a Mountain
35-song single LP
The new album from the duo D. Trevor Kampmann (hollAnd) and Mark R. Robinson (UNREST). Originally dubbed FANG WIZARD, this dynmaic group of two changes their moniker with every release.

Pop experimentalism like you've never heard before. An electric, eclectic, and electrifying duo from Washington, D.C. Their unique, (mostly) lyric-less instrumentals are created by combining old school melodies with futuristic beats and bizarre, fractured howls.