Lo Flux Tube: OLD and Martian Music

 

In the late 80s and early 90s, the English label Earache, along with Sub Pop, was one of my favorites. Napalm Death, Carcass, and Morbid Angel records came out of there. The grindcore sound was launched thanks to that label and became a well received alternative to the mainstream. But Earache wasn’t only about grindcore. Records by bands like Godflesh and Nocturnus proved it.

One of my favorite albums from that era is Lo Flux Tube by OLD, once known as Old Lady Drivers, a name that maybe came after watching the movie Driving Miss Daisy. Guitarist James Plotkin, vocalist Alan Dubin, and bassist Jason Everman were determined to create a unique piece of music that would show the world grindcore wasn’t just blast beats and punk rock riffs on steroids.

Bringing in John Zorn as producer was already a full statement of intent. That same year, 1991, Zorn would produce the debut album by Mr. Bungle for Warner. It must have been a strange year for him. Lo Flux Tube is one of those rare works that sound like nothing else from their time. It’s better understood as an open window onto the future.

Yes, there are elements of Godflesh, Ministry, and Voivod, but remixed in a way no one imagined back then. It wasn’t the band’s first album, but it was the first where all those elements came together properly. The extremism of grindcore, the crushing mechanical side of industrial music, and the strange touch of the avant garde.

The foundation wasn’t human. Plotkin programmed the drums, and he and Dubin handled the samples and effects. Everman brought bizarre textures and a deep, brutal bass. Even Zorn jumps in to improvise on saxophone and adds more weirdness to the already strange sound of the band. Zorn stepping outside free jazz into this Martian industrial, or into the mutant funk of Mr. Bungle.

Just like with the Velvet Underground, the album was ignored by an audience that didn’t understand it and didn’t care. The only anecdote that circulated was the presence of Everman, former bassist of Nirvana and Soundgarden, who here sounds like anything but grunge. Years later Plotkin and Dubin would reunite in Khanate, that legendary extreme drone band.

Here OLD dared like no one else to sound brutally heavy and at the same time progressively intellectual, a complicated combination for most people. They had everything against them because they were trying to conjure an abstract sound completely opposed to the commercial currents of the time. It was furious and completely inaccessible.

I still remember the look of horror on my friends’ faces when I enthusiastically played them this album, the same look they gave me when I made them listen to Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica. Lo Flux Tube is a masterpiece for anyone who keeps an open mind and lets themselves be carried by the extremes, feeling more without asking for explanations. As if David Lynch had made a record with Justin Broadrick.