Suicide are a sporadically active electro-punk duo best known for their unnerving self titled debut released in 1977. Suicide by Suicide is a harsh and ragged piece of punk machinery. Rejecting the guitars-n-three-chords sound of the time, vocalist Alan Vega and synth smasher Martin Rev elected to take a stripped down electronic approach. Keyboards and drum loops hiss out industrial rhythms and burbles under Vega's reverb drenched vocals.
The entire album feels like the paranoid fever dream of an android. I like to think of it as the rise and fall of a robot built to operate in a rodeo before he sets out to discover the American dream and is destroyed by the world. You'll have to listen to the full album of course to see if I'm right (which you really should) so let's see if today's Song of the Robocalypse can convince you to search it out.
'Che' is the final track of Suicide. The entire song sounds like it's barely being kept alive by its instruments. Icy electronic cellos echo across scrapyard cities, flickering in and out of existence. A deep pulsing piston hearbeat of a drumline struggles to reboot the synapses of a fallen mechanical man. Glimmers of hope shimmer through in the form of long held distorted harpsichords before they are crushed out by the death dealing cellos and the whole structure begins to rebuild once more. All the while Vega's vocals drift in and out of consciousness- glitching into echo and buried in digital dust.
These are the thoughts of a dying robot- a fallen soldier of the Robocalypse, presciently honored in song by Suicide.
PS: Yes the song is about THAT Che. I like my version better.
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