Arkansaw Man - Arkansaw Man

Here is the unlikely CD debut of Arkansaw Man, a wildly obscure San Francisco art-punk band that flickered to life all so briefly, between 1981 and 82. This self-titled EP was its only 12-inch release. 25 minutes of music, 25 years ago … and sayonara. Were we now in the 1920s, such output would be the equivalent of a long-neglected 78, stuffed in someone’s attic. Three minutes and a pile of dust. Still, the best things in life – in the life of music, anyway – often are tucked away where they are hard to find. This is a great and unique record. It revels in terse and choppy guitar, the languid, sour leakage of keyboards and horns, and occasional lyrics sung as ironic disclaimer. The spare yet vaguely ominous bass lines recall the Gang of Four played back at 4 RPM. With a brilliant economy of means and a sparseness reminiscent of dub, the band got an amazing jump start on the whole post-Slint, post-Gastr, post-Rock thing.
A quarter of a century ago, the spindly funk machinery and discordant scraping guitars of Arkansaw Man failed to give the world much to latch onto, so its music got lost, abandoned in a locker at pop culture’s bus depot, the key left floating in a gutter somewhere one day to be scavenged. There’s no better place to find a glimmer of artistic gold.

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