If, like me, you came of age in the late 70s and early 80s, you came of age in a time of remarkable musical experimentation. Inspired by the punk movement to abandon the established cliches of rock and roll music, and liberated from the guitar/bass/drums paradigm by the development of synthesizers, groups like Devo deconstructed and rearranged music to create new forms. 4/4 time gave way to jagged poly-rhythms. Free-flowing organically derived sound gave way to repetitive and mechanical atonality that held a mirror up to the children of the computer age.
While we may think this age of experimentation has passed, many bands look back to this time for inspiration. The Japanese band Polysics is one of these bands that drinks fully from the font of post-punk, proto-electronic music. This is not to say that Polysics is an exercise in nostalgia. While songs like
I My Me Mine borrow heavily from Devo, they are still heavily informed by modern sensibilities. Polysics may not musically throw the baby out with the bathwater like Devo did back in the 70s, but they sure keep that bathwater awfully fresh.
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