John Bender – I Don’t Remember Now / I Don’t Want To Talk About It

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Not to be confused with the Breakfast Club character of similar name, John Bender recorded scores of tracks in his Cincinnati home in the late ’70s and early ’80s, putting the results out in minuscule runs on his own Record Sluts label. The tracks are never denoted by name, but rather position on the tapes that he amassed as he recorded this stockpile of material. Hence, “35B1” would be on tape #35, side B, track 1. He then rounded them up into collections and hand stamped the covers, each one unique.

But what’s more beguiling than the process or the packaging is the music contained inside, a kind of shut in electronic DIY. Minimalist to its core, the tracks are stripped to their core, all chewed wire and buzzing synths with close-miced vocals, each track feels like a bomb shelter blast of paranoid wrath. Included in the set is a duct-taped deconstruction of Faust’s “It’s A Rainy Day” that seems to slot itself in just perfect with the rest of Bender’s minimalist creations. Superior Viaduct is wrapping this lost gem up in a limited red vinyl package and hand-stamping the covers in a nod to Bender’s originals. For the fans of less is more, this one’s a necessary find given new life.




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