Arab on Radar

Three One G Records

Review by Dave

So, I’m just getting back to work after being unemployed for a period of four months. I think one of the most awful, alienating experiences in modern life is being isolated from friends and family - simply by not having money to participate in social/leisure activities or the commodified, meaningless rituals substitute for social interaction (movies, tv, shopping, dating). Isolation through purely economic means is one of the most infuriating experiences one can go through, and I haven’t met anyone who has gone through that experience for any length of time without it effecting their personality and outlook on life. Why do I bring these things up? These days, when I feel trapped by the politically twisted, selfish, short sighted environment other people would call the modern office, I like to jump on the computer and dig up performance footage of Arab on Radar and blast their viscous no-wave antics for a good hour or two to cleanse myself of eight plus hours of middle American mediocrity.

I’m not going to review any specific album by these guys, because I don’t own any. Like any proper no-wave band, Arab on Radar’s sound is about as pleasant as listening to fornicating cats being repeatedly tasered. When I’m having one of those days where burning down a business park seems like a reasonable option, and I think Stalin might have been right, I break out Arab on Radar. Take the musical concepts put forward by Captain Beefheart, the Butthole Surfers, Flipper and the more jagged concepts that Sonic Youth came up with, combine them with the anarchic fury of classic Black Flag and you have Arab on Radar. If you have heard any releases put out by the label Three One G you will have a pretty good idea of the basic vibe this band works with. I always visualize some high school chemistry nerds getting a hold of mushrooms and a sizable amount of black powder for the first time, on the same day.            

To put the sound of Arab on Radar in words is pretty rough. I’m impressed by the fact the two guitarists in AOR are able to make their instruments sound like a wide array of industrial machinery in the process of breaking down; they rarely sound like guitars. The drummer furiously propels the mayhem along with relentless, very stiff, disco/d-beats. The whining, caterwaul of the vocalist tops off this sonic dementia sundae with such heart-warming lyrics as, “hunting size madness for a death certificate/i am punished by her sober etiquette/pill poppers seek salvation in spectator sports”

While the sound of Arab on Radar is very challenging, it isn’t really new. The basics of their deconstructionist musical ideas can be traced back to Schonberg and serial music, John Cage, Captain Beefheart, the late seventies New York bands like DNA, Flipper, early Butthole Surfers and other Three1G bands like the Locust, the Blood Brothers, ect. All these artists have operated with a revolutionary mindset. They aren’t happy with working with the classically accepted norms set by the larger culture they live in, and without someone pushing the outer limits of any art form it will begin to stagnate and loose relevance.

So how is AOR relevant? I think their sound speaks to people who have been alienated by the mass media glut ideals of consumerism and ass-backward prioritization of form over content. I think of the people I’ve worked with in humble customer service positions who are too fat, have crossed eyes, thick glasses, extreme allergies, chronic skin problems and have otherwise been told in their formative years they will always be losers because they would never be presentable on an episode of “Friends”. Don’t expect to get a decent job, travel or have the finer things in life. Sorry bro you don’t have the pizazz to network with the frat assholes and develop into proper American corporate sleazeball; (A. or pathetic syncophant; (B. Welcome to World of Warcraft, your real life ends here! The fine gentlemen in Arab on Radar make a pretty awesome attack on the idealized phony America. They revel in the strange, embarrasing and awkward. They also do the best job of lampooning the classic rock/metal “bad ass rebel” ideal of any band I have ever seen.      

Sometimes when I have to hear some phony suite- and -tie drone rattle off some corporate noise, I pretend they are singing AOR lyrics. It’s much more entertaining, and the day becomes much more stress free. For example, I imagine middle management troll #1 belting out at the beginning of a meeting, “Sometimes, i just gotta jerk off/my heart is a horseplay lawyer/my mind is a muffler!”

To conclude, I always hate it when people try to say the best albums were written twenty years ago and that there is nothing new to be done with rock ‘n roll. The possibilities are as open as the frequency spectrum of 18,000 htz and the imagination. I then generally blast those people with something truly avant garde , AOR being one of my favored options. Check out the link to the video below if yeee dare!