There’s no way to classify a great deal of music. Some performaners so actively seek a broad swath of influence and practice that working towards a succinct description of its sound is ludicrous. And every act associated with the Los Angeles Free Music Association would agree. They’d each have to. However many groups found themselves under the aegis of this loose knit group, there can’t be said to be too many similarities. Noise and an adventurous nature might be just about the only things hemming it all up.

What’s interesting, though, is that while the LAFMS crew was revving up to unloose its racket en masse, the New York counter part in no-wave wouldn’t really come about for a few years. It’s inarguable that the East coast was a bit ahead of the curve when it came to punk. But for whatever reason, the West coast was able to extend the ideas punk proposed and arrive at a city-specific noise.

Beginning as an actual duo and adding players along the way the Doo Dooettes were unquestionably less interested in song structures then its peers in the Decayes. While each ensemble favored noisome excursions, it would appear that the Doo Dooettes concerned themselves with focusing its career on just that as opposed to adding anything approaching a regular rhythm.

On its Picnic On A Frozen River, a Faust cover, the Doo Dooettes work to include some semblance of a rhythm section. It might just be that the device was necessitated by a desire to emulate the German band. But its there – if only briefly. The tape was given over to this one experiment and its sixteen minutes. Hearing such a brief snippet of the band engorged with regularly pulsing intentions, though, is kind of a let down seeing as the Doo Dooettes wouldn’t really work again in this mold again.

What followed was to be the band’s final release - Free Rock. But engaging an internationally known guitarist - Keiji Haino - to collaborate worked in its favor. Contrasting this work with the Doo Dooettes first full length, Think Space, which was actually the score to a film, becomes a bit difficult, because the differences might be attributed to the band simply changing over time.

No longer are industrial sounds audible. Free Rock’s still all a masterful mess, but eschews some of the band’s accumulated personality and shamanic feel. In examining Eastern musicians working in a Western context – yeah we invented rock and roll – there’s sometimes an inclination to denote mysticism or some zen nonsense. But really, there’s none of that here. And even if there was, it’d be really difficult to explain its presence. Zen and its culture can’t still today exert influence over legions of folks reared in the post War era, eating burgers and listening to the Beatles. That just doesn’t work.

What does work is the band’s cacophonous backing of Keiji’s guitar noise. There might not be too much to hold on to melody wise, but the passion exuded in the effort to get this to tape is perfectly audible thirty years on.