Changez les Blockeurs

The first album by The New Blockaders, the duo of Richard and Philip Rupenus, is now firmly cemented in musical history as one of the first, and most significant, noise albums. Listening back, it’s not hard to see why, even as its relationship to what became noise can seem tangential. It’s a suburban ritual – recorded in a shed, it’s rife with the sounds of bowed metal, dragged junk, squeaking wheels, clanking tools – that perceptively joins the dots between noise and free improvisation. Forty years later, its combination of intense focus, Dadaist ‘anti-art’ ethos, and real-time responsiveness is still uniquely powerful.