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Avg: 4.5 (21 ratings)
- Date Released: January 1, 1980
- Genre: Alternative/Punk
- Style: Indie Rock
- Label: RER USA / IODA
How long can one band repeat one chord? This Heat try to find out.
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We Say...
The single that followed This Heat was the group’s greatest recorded moment: the epic "Health & Efficiency" (named after a long-running British nudist magazine) channels the intense cerebrality of their debut into something that's almost a bizarre kind of dance record. "Here's a song about the sunshine/ Dedicated to the sunshine," they sing. And then, two minutes in, the song catches on fire as if the sunshine has been focused on it through a magnifying glass. The band hits a clench-and-release groove, a single chord and a single rhythm, and stays with it for hundreds of repetitions, cranking up its intensity a little more each time and overlaying it with sounds from the world outside of music that's made by human intention. It sounds mechanical at first, but it's actually incredibly physical: music about the joy of having a body.
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They Say...
This two-song EP from 1980 showcases what This Heat did so brilliantly, if so far below the radar that it is only posthumously that the groundbreaking British trio gets recognized: somehow they manage to be astronomically influential yet polarizing in the same breath. The eight-minute A-side, "Health and Efficiency" (titled from a bandmember's in-joke about the benefits of bicycling to the recording studio) is an insistent and pulsating Krautrock projectile, hurtling forward anthemically on herky-jerky discordant guitar splatter and a pummeled and abused drum kit. It's an obvious precedent to latter-day experimental rockers like Sonic Youth and Le Fly Pan Am. The 11-minute B-side, "Graphic/Varispeed," is an epic sprawl of barely shifting drone that can just as easily hypnotize the listener as provoke them to rip it from the turntable in a fury. Graciously, the listener was originally encouraged to play it at the speed of their choice, 16, 33-1/3, 45, or 78 rpm. The band's assertion that "it sounds great at all speeds" leaves it up to the listener to agree or rebut.
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