Bleep

San Francisco’s Superior Viaduct presents a first-time reissue of DIY purist John Bender’s 1980 debut album I Don't Remember Now / I Don't Want To Talk About It. Hailed as the visionary minimal lo-fi electronic album, it consists of songs the producer recorded between 1978 and 1980 at his home in Cincinnati, Ohio. His song titles illustrate the amount of material he selected the tracks from, referencing the exact position of a certain song in his collection – 35A9, for example meaning cassette #35 side A, piece #9. The 40-minute album's at times dry, at times processed synthesizer sequences sound ahead of their time, Bender’s half-spoken vocals completing the DIY practice. There’s a psychedelic quality to his songs throughout which he achieves by repeating his patterns, yet they're always at risk of morphing into something else, take ‘33A1’s’ dark, machine-like intro for instance, evolving into the sweetest jump’n'run-game melody.