Me Man Would Never Say Nope For More Great Post Rock From The Depth Of The 80's. Never! Ever!

Ike Yard may be the most innovative band you hear this year, although their only album was recorded more than 20 years ago. Yet another example of artists cheated of the recognition they deserve, Ike Yard were, among other things, the only American group signed to Factory Records. They shared bills with the likes of Suicide, Konk, and New Order, and the band’s Stuart Argabright would go on to form Dominatrix and Death Comet Crew. Ike Yard’s new compilation, 1980–1982 Collected, brings together everything the group released — the 1981 EP Night after Night (les Disques du Crepuscule) and 1982 LP A Second a Fact (Factory) — and adds additional odds and ends.

"Cherish"

The material that makes up "Night after Night" is cased in heavy, dark dub with scraping guitars and swirling synth sounds. It's so good it may make you pause the next time you automatically reach for PiL's Second Edition or Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures. On A Second a Fact, however, the electronics take over. You can hear traces of D.A.F., Cluster, and what would become Detroit techno, with Argabright arbitrarily singing like an entranced street shaman. "Loss" merges the infinite arpeggios of Ashra with Grauzone and Throbbing Gristle. It's really what you wanted last year's Black Dice album to be. The brilliant "NCR," meanwhile, predates Autechre by about two decades and outdoes them to boot. Whether or not these reference points mean anything to you, this group deserves its legendary status. And you need to hear them. Text by SFBG

"NCR"

Swiping their name from the record racks in A Clockwork Orange, Ike Yard were apparently more popular in that bleak, violent future than in this one. Sure, they opened for Suicide, SPK, Cabaret Voltaire and New Order in the nascent ’80s (we even heard the bass player dated Madonna), but being the first Yanks on Factory brings more cache now than it did then. Neighbors once more with Glenn Branca, whose screeching guitar pop (as Theoretical Girls) and symphonies have already been documented by the Acute label, Ike Yard is sonically closer to the imprint’s other archival project: the stiff, existential synth screeches of Metal Urbain.

"Kino"

“Night After Night” is a ringer in the Ike Yard retrospective, in that the drum kit of Stuart Argabright is still fully assembled so as to better emulate their beloved Can. Soon, it would be stripped down, filtered, looped or else abandoned entirely as Argabright manned the banks of their stockpiled Korgs, Rolands, Arps and Buchlas. Those ever-quickening cymbal eighth-notes glimmer here in the rain-slicked, perpetual noir of the L.E.S., a journey to the end of night intoned against the dual swoop of no-wave guitars and UFO hoverings. The bass throbs (soon to be the band’s focus) are as speedy, edgy and rambling as a cokehead in a spy thriller. Text by Paperthinwalls

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