Compilation of later trio recordings with Dan Hosker on 2nd guitar from 1997.

"All high energy music tends towards the omega point that would see it escape form altogether, where the jam is the thing and the song a mere excuse for getting there. Even hardcore, the most doctrinaire of rebel musics, planted the seeds of its own overthrow in its urge-to-accelerate, with each successive wave of groups battling the last in terms of speed of execution, of hyper-exaggerated moves, in order to be the ones that even time couldn’t hold back. Where psychedelia was all about leaving your body behind, hardcore posited a muscular oblivion by way of a punishing physicality, one that went hand-in-hand with a puritanical aesthetic, a skinhead form of scourging to ecstasy. Harry Pussy were the most extreme hardcore group of the post-punk era. They were hyper everything, hyper-fast, hyper-crude, hyper-free, hyper-dexterous, hyper a-musical. They boasted a once-ina-lifetime line-up, straight out of Miami: Bill Orcutt on electric guitar, a weird film maker and prodigiously talented instrumentalist; Adris Hoyos, first-time drummer and vocalist, a goofy tough-attitude chick from Cuba with a feral performance style; and Mark Feehan and Dan Hosker, two separate second guitarists, the presence of one or the other serving to define the group’s two distinct eras.

It’s the later Hosker-era that this new 42 track compilation of rare and unreleased recordings is drawn from. The main difference between the line-ups is that Harry Pussy actually got faster as they evolved, tracking the opposite trajectory of normal punk groups. When Feehan was playing with them they could still get strung out, still play more obviously ‘free’. But by the time of these recordings Harry Pussy were playing 60 second bursts of chaotic rock ’n’ roll that barbarise whole histories of freakout style, from free jazz through classic hardcore, boogie, blues, Black Flag, Germs, most explicitly through Beefheart, but all hyper-condensed into ultra-kranky riffs that Orcutt plays at hallucinatory speed, compressing Zoot Horn Rollo-style avant confusion into lighting runs and metallic two note knock-outs. Hoyos’s style is so primitive that it’s wildly avant garde, with an instinctive feel for time that confounds the most advanced improvisatory strategies with the most hysterical. And her vocals are post-Yoko in the truest sense, not directly informed by her but sharing the same spontaneous energy and a-musical appeal, sometimes breaking from songs completely to expand on barely articulated vocal rants and fever pitched bouts of screaming. During the Hosker period the whole group existed in a zone that was constantly beyond technique. You’ll Never Play This Town Again features some of the best Harry Pussy recordings, the Untitled/Tour/Fuck You LP, the live 10”, the split singles with Pelt and Frosty (what the hell happened to them?) and the Radiation Nation single on De Stijl alongside seven unreleased tracks, all expertly remastered. The May 1997 studio tracks are as formally staggering as anything on Trout Mask Replica. “Ice Cream Man” is “Dali’s Car” at four times the speed, just as “Smash The Mirror” is “Ella Guru”. The tracks are also cut in an extremely appealing audio-verite style. Hoyos is nasty, sarcastic, infectiously funny. Despite the improvised feel of most of the tracks, Harry Pussy were an ultra-tight performance unit and played actual songs, with out-takes and live versions sounding just as rigorously conceived as the originals. The live recordings are important both for successfully capturing the insane energy of the group and for including their legendary version of Kraftwerk’s “Showroom Dummies”, where Orcutt’s irresistible “Big Eyed Beans” groove and Hoyos’s mad vocals and drums create a reading that’s more pneumatic than motorik while spearing the very heart of the tune. It’s still one of the all-time great cover versions. Teenage Jesus And The Jerks are the group that Harry Pussy most often get compared to, but hearing them covering that group’s “Orphans” on a bonus live track (coincidentally the last track from their last live performance), it’s clear that Harry Pussy were of a much more rock/roll bent than any of the No Wave groups, making music that wasn’t so much a refusal of previous rock modes as an exaggerated celebration of all of its most outlaw attributes. Of the rest of the unreleased material the most interesting track is “Velvet Pussy”, a take on a Velvet Underground-style rocker that sounds uncannily like your dream VU bootleg. But it’s the officially released material that’s the real attraction, tracks like “Sex Problem”, “Smash The Mirror” and “Chuck!”, with Hoyos pulverising time and Orcutt out-stripping it completely. The closing extended take on “Smash The Mirror” is one of the great free jazz-inspired electric guitar freakouts, up there with The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High”, Television’s live reading of “Fire Engine”, The Blue Humans’ Clear To Higher Time and The Dead C’s Helen Said This. Harry Pussy formed in 1992 and imploded in 1997, played a bunch of legendarily riotous shows, got barred from a whole bunch more, released a string of amazing LPs and 7”s and then disappeared. Hoyos is currently married with two children, working in computers, living with musician and artist Graham Lambkin and seemingly retired from music. Rumours persist of Bill Orcutt making a return to the stage but outside of reports of a shady uncredited 7” nothing has been heard of him since. The arc of their career was perfect, the mission truly accomplished, and all that’s left is this amazing series of recordings, a body of work that has had a disproportionate effect on the minds, if rarely the actual sound of the underground."

David Keenan, the Wire


Dylan Nyoukis from a blindfold test in The Wire

Harry Pussy “Mandolin” From You’ll Never Play This Town Again (Load) 2008 Beefheart? No, it’s Harry Pussy, man. I should’ve known it straight away. This, to me, is what punk music should have been. I discovered punk music ten years after the fact and I think I was doubly disappointed. I imagine, if my life had been a different throw of the dice, I might have been a kid in 1980 or 1979 discovering punk and being so disappointed with how it sounded: so boring, so absolutely fucking objectionable pub rock. Terrible. I just leapfrogged that shit to Metal, which is in itself just goofball shit, and then into weirdo shit. And then I heard Harry Pussy. This is what I thought punk should sound like. It’s wild shit. It’s visceral. It’s about where you are at the moment. It’s about where your fucking stomach is, on the moment. Where is your belly positioned? Chocolate Monk released Harry Pussy quite early on. We released Vigilance, on a C120: two hours of jams, but I guess the recording mechanism was a bit goofed up so a gap keeps appearing.