So here’s another old LP I’ve had kicking around for years that I was prompted to give a thorough re-listen to just recently. It would seem that many LPs from bands in the punk/hardcore realm that held some importance to me in my youth in the 90s are coming back to the surface again — releases that I figured passed under a lot of people’s radar as they were generally obscure, part of what I figured was a somewhat specific underground scene, and perhaps left behind with ruthless, onward march of time.
First started by a well-respected label such as The Numero Group — a Chicago-based label (usually known for its re-issues of more “classic” rock and soul records) that has created lush box set releases for underground bands of that time such as Unwound, Indian Summer and Universal Order Of Armageddon (covered in a previous entry in Track Of The Day) — there’s been a few new “kids on the block” as far as record labels providing archival re-issues of similar bands in this scene, such as the somewhat recently founded Solid Brass Records (named after a Circus Lupus album), which brings together a few veterans of that scene — including Thumbnail‘s Justin Sinkovich — and their experience to unearth even further lost treasures from that era from bands such as Shotmaker, The Red Scare, Grain and more.
As I follow the activities of Solid Brass on the Instagram social media platform, it was recently announced the label would be taking up some yet-undetermined release project from the band Regulator Watts… now there’s a name I hadn’t heard in ages!
This band — active in a short period from 1996-1998 — was born out of the ashes of a much-loved group I was into called Hoover — mentioned and featured numerous times throughout this website — which splintered in 1995, with its three vocalists (an oddly large number of vocalists in any band) into two camps after its dissolution with guitarist Joseph McRedmond and bassist Fred Erskine (also of June of 44, covered in TOTD) moving on to The Crownhate Ruin and guitarist Alex Dunham forming Regulator Watts, which is named after one of Hoover‘s more minimal and atmospheric tracks (see video at bottom) from their one and only album, The Lurid Traversal of Route 7, and that track laying a blueprint for the sound of Regulator Watts — which I’ll get into more further.
I picked up an LP copy of their first LP called The Aesthetics of No-Drag (which I assume is some reference to aerodynamics) shortly after it was released, and that was around the time I moved to Vancouver in early summer of 1997 — probably buying it from an amazing little record store called Washout in Vancouver that was co-run by an ex-bandmate of mine from Radio Berlin (before that band was even conceptualised).
Even now I remembered how the packaging for this release was so visually engaging — attractive vintage colour gradients composited in an abstract industrial urban landscape with what looks like a surrealist (futurist?) impression of an old 1950s automobile looming on the horizon, all rendered in what is overall heavily stylised art deco piece and printed on a tactile matt, uncoated stock.
The artwork itself was done by Jason Farrell, guitarist in the late 80s DC hardcore group Swiz, then followed by two projects he additionally provided vocals for — Bluetip (mid 90s) and Retisonic (following Bluetip) — as well as being an in-demand graphic designer over the years for numerous bands and record labels in the punk/hardcore underground, including the creation of packages for many albums on Washington DC’s Dischord Records. His design style at times can be very recognisable, including this release for Regulator Watts which embodies a style that’s definitely a trademark of his.
It’s at this point that I should note at this point I haven’t given this LP a good listen since the late 1990s, pulling it out of its preservational slumber within my squished rows of LPs in the main sitting room. There’s always an odd feeling of anticipation and preparation for the “unknown” when I give an album a listen that I haven’t listened to in years — well, decades at this point.
While Hoover already added elements of dub and spring reverb–enhanced, moody atmospherics to the Washington DC post-hardcore sound of that time, Regulator Watts — which brought over Dunham from Hoover — takes that creative approach further. A track like “Seedtick East” is a great example of this, sounding like the band at times is playing in some large, cavernous warehouse on “the other side of town”, evoking the feeling driving down a deserted road somewhere in Nowhere, America in deep evening fog.
“Seedtick East” is a unique track on the album for its moody sparseness, whereas the majority of other tracks are more driving and pulling in from more of a post-hardcore influence — such as the album closer “Witchduck” — but even then the production, especially with the guitar work, is laden with a lush, atmospheric apporach, like an audio equivalent of an early Coen Brothers film such as Blood Simple or Barton Fink.
There’s far more of a connection in my head to the band to more gloomier, atmospheric post-punk of the 1980s — at least at where I am at this point in time — which is a genre that perhaps members of this band had some awareness of. There’s some interesting parallels to a track like “Jennifer’s Veil” — a later composition by The Birthday Party — and numerous bands of that ilk, with the main point of differentiation with Regulator Watts being one of more complex song structures and a vocal style more in line with post-hardcore than the dramatic, baritone crooning style that is more associated with bands that are more normally tied bands associated in the “gothic” post-punk genre.
And in listening to this album for some reason title sequence of David Lynch‘s classic Lost Highway comes to mind as headlights illuminate the dividing line down a two-lane highway, and if anything there’s crossovers to some of the soundtrack work by Angelo Badalamenti in some of his compositions that have a similar approach to “rock” music. For me the diagetical music that occurs in one scene in Lynch‘s follow up to the hit TV series Twin Peaks — Fire Walk With Me — for some reason instantly came to mind, when Laura Palmer and her best friend Donna head off for a night of vice and drugs with two meat-headed truck drivers with a seemingly endlessly repeating loop of a soupy, dissonant rock riff completely obliterating the volume of everything else, including conversation (this sequence in the film has subtitles to demonstrate that).
Overall, I always got the impression members of Hoover and their projects that followed listened to a far broader range of music outside of the “post-hardcore” scene that they were active in at the time, and to me it would seem that Dunham had his own independent routes to tapping into this darker thread of Americana — like the other artists mentioned here — that still evokes some instinctual impulse.
Again — these are impressions are literally come to mind on these two tracks on this LP, and if anything it’s interesting writing these thoughts down all of these years later — especially as my scope of music is far more expanded than where I was about to move into my twenties, when my musical world was far smaller, and far more anchored to the music I was listening to the time, in which a band like Regulator Watts was included in.
And in carrying on the momentum of this release after re-listening to the LP, I listened to an interview with guitarist-vocalist Alex Dunham where he mentioned he had a in the early 1990s driving auto parts to numerous backwater areas of states around Washington DC, where he was living at the time, with only an AM radio in the vehicle he was driving. This to me totally offered some insight to the music he was creating at this period in time.
There’s some great moments on this LP, and after all of these years stands on its own in a unique space and is definitely an underated release, which is probably why even with Solid Brass picking up the band as of recent, the LP The Aesthetics Of No-Drag already had a vinyl LP re-release just a couple of years ago on the Spanish label BCore that’s almost pretty much sold out.
It should be noted that at least to me, Dunham has always has the ability to pair himself up with quality bass guitar players, with another track by his late 90s/early 2000s project Abilene also included below to demonstrate just that — another project of his to get a recent, BCore re-release treatment.