Funeral Souvenir ý - La Noche Del Anhídrido [Verlag System ý - 2020]So today I'm reviewing a vinyl reissue of a 1987 “mythical” tape from Spanish industrial project Funeral Souvenir (aka Miguel Ruiz), Who you might pretend to know about from such projects as Orfeon Gagarin and Zytospace. The release was a compilation of multiple tracks the fella had released between 1981 and 1987. The press sheet says “considered one of the best albums in Spanish industrial” and “for fans of the almighty Zoviet France” and yo, they aren’t lying. It wasn’t exactly like the first time I heard all that sort of stuff but it still got me in that same head swaying zone. It’s just unreal, it scrapes and crawls and stabs and everything else you want out of a loner 80s noisy industrial release. Truly this was the time when the only basis you had was SPK and all that English stuff to guide your travels on old cheap synths and radios, once you get away from the bigger western scenes industrial in this time, you’ll either get poor and bizarre mimicry or something genuinely its own violent ass thing.
So Funeral Souvenir was something I’ve never heard before, and I feel pretty dumb for not hearing about it (although I guess how much stuff is out there like that honestly). The thing about these kinds of tapes is there are tonnes of people who made amazing stuff that didn’t get unearthed till years after they made the album (think of stuff like Witcyst). Fortunately, on a long enough timeline, you’ll find a lot of cool shit will get reissued in a time where the internet can hopefully put you across it in a way that you probably never would have had back when the guy made the thing.
Anyways, if you’re a fan of that magical window in time when folk just bought a synth and a drum machine, just realized they have no partner or friends and are working the same miserable jobs we all have and are figuring what their take on “fuck this planet” sounds like, don’t snooze on this. I’m giving this one 4 “why is their only other tape 100 bucks on Discogs god music collectors are the worst out of” 5 (kudos) A. Cooley
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