Debbie Harry’s recently published biography Face It is very much not of the standard industry trope; searingly honest, it catalogues a fascinating whirlpool of charachters she met in New York, particularly in the seventies, a cabal that hummed with creativity, diversity and artistic freedom.
Alan Vega has a few cameo intersections with it, but the city’s richly evocative canvas which Harry draws adds more substance to his work when taken in conjunction with Mutator, which was originally recorded in 1995 but has now only recently been rediscovered by his wife Liz Lamere and close friend Jared Artaud.
Having passed away in 2016, this is Vega’s second posthumously released work following the confrontational IT, but whilst the temporal dislocation inevitably makes for stark differences between the two, his method of setting polemic and poetry to abstract noise is a consistent thread. Fans of Suicide, the electro-punk auteurs in which he found fame, may not get much by way of an extended legacy, but those of Cabaret Voltaire‘s primeval early 80’s electronica will find solace on tracks like Fist and Muscle, whilst Samuarai is a weirdly affecting, Julee Cruise style ballad. You guess Blondie would approve.
You can read the full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 
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