SIMPLY SAUCER

Cyborgs Revisited In The red Deluxe reissue of Canadian sci-fi garage punk classic.

simply Saucer were the crashed UFO in the industrial heartland of Ontario that nobody bothered to investigate at the time, so out of step were they with the mid-70s Canadian music scene. But following the retrospective release of Cyborgs Revisited in 1989, the rest of the planet gradually caught up with what these purveyors of “heavy metalloid music” had been up to all those years ago… and that was basically creating the perfect fusion of the avant/garage psych of The Velvet Underground and the Stooges with the raw space rock of Hawkwind and Syd-era Pink Floyd.

Essentially a six-track demo

(recorded in the basement of future U2 producer and Brian Eno collaborator Daniel Lanois) plus three live tracks, Cyborgs Revisited literally fizzes with the curled-lip sneer of disaffected youth, but rather than smash the state, these guys were intent on gatecrashing inner space. Singer, guitarist and band leader Edgar Breau whipped up a murky vortex of sci-fi noise to complement his strange, dystopian lyrics, with the atonal electronics of John LaPlante also an essential part of the mix.

Instant Pleasure is exactly that: a twominute hit of slashing riffs and the manic churn of a band heading straight for oblivion, Jonathan Richman

& The Modern Lovers transformed into wild-eyed androids. Electro Rock and Here Come The Cyborgs Pts 1 & 2 are full of testifying urban energy, the ever-present howls and drones of whatever LaPlante is playing – modular synth, audio generator or theremin, it’s unclear – breaking the surface like alien glossolalia. Bullet Proof Nothing is an almost sweet ballad, an unselfconscious VU homage – while the nightmarish circular riff of instrumental Mole Machine is Krautrock on cheap speed.

Released as a remastered “deluxe” edition by In The Red, this reissue comes with an additional album of live tracks that will delight existing fans, songs such as I Can Change My Mind and Rock & Roll Brain Cells offering an even more primitive take on the Simply Saucer template.