This Heat

Angry guitar chatter, looping percussion, weird studio effects and strange synthesizer screeches: The sounds (if not “music”) of This Heat’s formerly rare debut record require total concentration. At times completely atonal and rhythmless, This Heat has nothing but the most adventurous audience in mind, influencing so many avant-garde acts since its release that it’s hard to believe it came out in 1979. After the barely audible digital chirps of opener “Testcard,” “Horizontal Hold” assaults speakers with aggressive guitar and drums that jarringly give way to quiet chicken-scratching guitar, then back to loud guitar biting off and spitting out random notes before a primitive organ solo takes over. It fades into “Not Waving,” with Charles Hayward’s sad-Brit moans and evocative random percussion clanging like wave-slapped buoys. Midway through, “24 Track Loop” has a jazzy drum loop soaked dub-style in reverb that somehow creates a creeping, jittery paranoia; the drums’ abrupt halt has the shocking effect of something leaping from behind a door in a horror movie.

Fortunately, that hard-core target audience no longer has to cough up hundreds of bucks to buy rare vinyl copies on eBay; the debut was recently remastered and available alone or as part of a six-CD box set Out of Cold Storage (which also includes the more tuneful Deceit LP, Health and Efficiency EP and live recordings). As self-indulgent as it is awe-inspiring, This Heat will bewilder you and challenge your ideas of what music is, reminding you it isn’t always pretty.