Songs of the Robocalypse Vol. 4: Che - Suicide

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.

You're Goin' Miss Your Candyman - Terry Callier

Terry Callier has had a tough time.

Despite several critically acclaimed albums recorded throughout the late 60s and early 70s he failed to catch on commercially and finally decided to stop touring. He went back to his desk job at a local university and settled into a comfortable nine to five, his musical past for all intents and purposes a secret identity he'd left behind.

Then he was rediscovered.

Slowly he was coaxed out of hiding and back onto the road. Some moderate success followed. People were buying his albums. They were attending his shows.

Then he got fired.

When the University he'd been working at discovered his 'secret identity' they threw him out the door. The exact circumstances remain somewhat shrouded, only cryptically referred to by Callier himself in interview.

If I had to guess a reason from the sound of his music, it was for fear he'd sex the pants off of every college aged girl in a 50 mile radius. You're Goin' Miss Your Candyman is a track off of Callier's breakthrough album The Color of Love, and mother-god-damn is it a good song.

Essentially Callier's take on Midnight Rider, the track is both a musical magpie and time machine of genre and style over it's seven and a half minutes. Folk picked guitars gently caress you through the doors, shimmying bongos slap you on the back, and then one of the slinkiest and sexiest funk basslines ever put to wax spikes your drink while pushing you out to the dance floor.

Callier's voice is equal parts silk sheeted soul singer and blues wolf on the prowl. By the time the string section is duking it out with Motown horns in one of the biggest bar brawls you've ever seen, he drags you into his private back room for a quiet moment alone, before letting the whole thing roar back up again into a long hot finish.

The song can be found in two flavors: the original album mix (which is great) or a version slightly remastered by The Cinematic Orchestra for their Late Night Tales mix album. The answer to choosing between the two? Easy. Get The Cinematic Orchestra's version first, and when you realize you HAVE to hear more of this man, get The Color of Love in it's entirety. Let's give the candyman we never knew we were missing the love he deserved way back when, just a little late coming.

EDIT: If the video above has trouble loading, here's the song as trimmed by The Cinematic Orchestra.

Terry Callier – You're Goin' Miss Your Candyman