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Void
Sessions 1981-83
Dischord 171
Released on October 25, 2011
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Thirty miles north of Washington there is a town called Columbia, one of the first planned-communities built in the US,
and in retrospect, the perfect birthplace for a band as completely chaotic as Void. Their DC debut was in 1980 at the first
Wilson Center show, a marathon 15-band affair largely organized by the Bad Brains. When Void started a song it was as
if each member was playing his own parts as fast as humanly possible, but not necessarily together. Unlike most bands,
whose performances become predictable, Void shows became increasingly discombobulated and ever more fraught with
disaster. The live chaos remained present even as they started to embrace a metal image and sound towards the end of
their three-year existence. While to some it may have seemed like complete cacophony, to those in the know it was music
on a higher level.
While organizing the Dischord archive, we came across the 4-track of Void’s first recording session. This was done with
Steve Carr at Hit and Run Studios in November ‘81 and never released (though there has been at least one bootleg made
from a cassette of the original mix). The master tape was nowhere to be found, so the tape was remixed by Ian MacKaye
and Don Zientara at Inner Ear earlier this year. It was like digging through a treasure chest! Hearing embryonic versions
of what would become Void classics as well as songs that didn’t make the cut made it clear just how driven this
band was to capture their own sound.
Sessions 1981-83 features the entire Hit and Run session along with the first Inner Ear Demo (including the Flex Your
Head cuts and the songs that ended up on the Condensed Flesh 7”), two out-takes from their second Inner Ear session,
and a couple of live recordings including one that I think must be the last song they ever played.
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