Freaks Amour: NArt (Not Art), NNoise (Not Noise)

On occasion an ensemble’s name should grant access to its sound. In the case of Freaks Amour, that’s true and then not so true. Surely, being a freak might endear one to any number of sub-terra rock genres. And while this isn’t a rock and or roll band, that’s the closest proper genre these folks might be associated with.

Freaks Amour and its 1989 album Regressive Music for Mind and Body has been figured as the confluence of the Velvet Underground, Pere Ubu and Throbbing Gristle. There’s unquestionably an industrial vibe here – both Ubus and Gristle have been cited as founding the genre – but that’s not the overwhelming and dominant thread here. Nor is it the Velvet Underground’s R&B come freak out.

Instead Freaks Amour sound like a few of the more experimental Los Angeles Free Music Association acts. It might be a stretch to make that connection seeing as Freaks hail from the north east, but the intention of its music fits soundly within LAFMS directive to be willfully weird while still churning out exciting music that maintains some semblance of a pulse beat.

Regressive Music’s first track on its second side, “Live Radio Feedback,” begins with an organ vamp straight out of Sun Ra’s oeuvre. But with that being the assumed basis of the track, the song soon focuses on what can be assumed to be a bouncing synthesizer line repeating itself into oblivion. If couched in a rock setting, this stuff would have been the stuff of legend. Instead, Freaks Amour come off as the middle ground between ambient mischief and noise’s utter abandon for form. It might not be the highest compliment levied on the band, but its meant as such.

Either way, the remainder of the album moves around a bit within the group’s self defined aesthetic of anything goes as long as its weird. Being released in 1989, though, the band seemed to have missed the inaugural moments of this approach to music and just about a decade ahead of the noise mongers that constitute that brash cognoscenti.

It’s difficult to figure of digging up Freaks Amour’s catalog is going to result in a spate of new found fans. Possible, yes. But as a result of the band crafting such difficult musics, most of its releases were relegated to relatively small pressings. Find one if you can, it’s a dense listen, academic seemingly at times, but worth a few spins.