Dark Entries Punk | Hardcore 2 Items

Nervous Gender’s legendary synthpunk LP Music From Hell burbles up from infernal depths to resurface on Dark Entries! Confrontational, unhinged, and unabashedly queer, Music from Hell is an unholy grail for fans of the strangest underbellies of post-punk, minimal synth, and early industrial music, and is presented here newly remastered and on expanded double LP. Nervous Gender (de)formed in LA in 1978 at the hands of Phranc, Gerardo Velaquez, Edward Stapleton, and Michael Ochoa. Phranc, the androgynous embodiment of the band’s name, left in 1980. Following her departure, a wide cast of LA freaks would find themselves drawn into the band’s orbit, including Alice Bag of the Bags, Paul Roessler of the Screamers, the Germs’ Don Bolles, and an 8-year old drummer named Sven Pfeiffer. In 1980, Nervous Gender appeared on the seminal Live at Target compilation alongside Factrix, uns, and Flipper. With the band’s notoriety cemented, Music from Hell followed in 1981 on Subterranean Records (as no LA label would touch this material). Side A, dubbed “Martyr Complex”, presents a more punk-forward sound with live drum salvos and slabs of aggressive synth. These twitchy, unsettling shockers ooze with the kind of snotty misanthropy that will endear them to fans of the Screamers or Crass. Side B, known as “Beelzebub Youth”, is a live performance the band labeled "an electronic bruto-canto dissertation on the banality of spiritual transcendence." Mutant melodies cede way to synthesized clangs, whirs, bleeps, manipulated tapes, and howls of despair. In addition to all the material from the original LP, we’re treated to a full disc of the band’s demos, the material from the Live at Target compilation, and early live recordings. Included are unrecognizable covers of Carly Simon and Lou Reed, and the Sex Pistols that are so despairingly skewed they fall into the void. This reissue of Music From Hell includes a 36 page lyric booklet, foldout poster, and gatefold sleeve with photos, flyers, and news-clippings designed by Eloise Leigh. Tackling taboo issues like sexual kinks, mental illness, drug use, and childhood molestation, Music From Hell is still surprising – even shocking - over 40 years after the album’s release. Nervous Gender stand as one of the most genuinely anti-establishment outfits in underground music, a colossal fuck you to social norms from religious strictures to gender essentialism.

Dark Entries and Sacred Bones team up to release the early discography of UK synth-punk and Deathrock label Outer Himmalayan Records. Between 1979 and 1982, Nick Blinko and Martin Cooper’s Outer Himmalayan Records released 7-inches by three short-lived bands – The Magits, Soft Drinks, and S-Haters – who would nonetheless cast a massive shadow on the UK’s burgeoning post-punk/anarcho punk scene. Outer Himmalayan Presents collects all of the music found on those original records, along with rare and unreleased tracks by all three bands. It’s a snapshot of a period of frenzied creativity by some of the UK’s most thrilling experimental punks.


Before Blinko went on to found the essential anarcho band Rudimentary Peni, whose storied body of work also appeared on Outer Himmalayan, he and label co-founder Cooper were The Magits. The lone release by the minimal synth-and-vocals duo, Fully Coherent, was the inaugural release on Outer Himmalayan — and, in fact, Blinko and Cooper’s impetus for starting the label. The four tracks on Fully Coherent are short, sharp bursts, comprising a total of four minutes. Here, they’re presented alongside the five-and-a-half minute “A Pawn in the Game,” a song that sees Blinko and Cooper get truly weird with the extra space the longer runtime afforded them.


The next release on Outer Himmalayan was S-Haters’ Death of a Vampire 7", which the quartet quickly followed with Stories as Cold as the Irish Sea. The band was recognizably a deathrock act, their gothic punk in the same lineage as Joy Division and PIL’s Metal Box, but it showed the same sonic adventurousness that characterized the rest of Outer Himalayan’s output. “1980,” an oddity taken from the rare Another Bouquet on the Grave of Free Enterprise cassette comp, shows the most experimental flourish, with dueling male/female vocals and a prominent acoustic guitar.


The final Outer Himmalayan release before it became strictly a Rudimentary Peni label was Soft Drinks’ Popstars in Their Pyjamas 7". Popstars ended up being the tongue-in-cheek synth-punk trio’s only release before their breakup, though they would also record “Dangers of Drink,” for the Bouquet of Barbed Wire comp and included here, as well as the one-off track “Misconception,” previously unreleased but now available exclusively on Outer Himmalayan Presents.


All songs have been mastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. Cover artwork features a collage by Eloise Leigh and each copy includes a 20-page zine featuring liner notes and ephemera associated with the original pressings plus never before seen photos.