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The Units: “I-5”
From the album The History of the Units - The Early Years: 1977-1983
The Units began in San Francisco in the fall of 1978 and existed through numerous changes in personnel until in 1984, when they disbanded for good. Their first LP, Digital Stimulation, was described by a UK reviewer as “possibly the colony’s first ever partytime electronic album, [which] frequently achieves the exquisite pop vertigo of our own Human League.”
The Units were among the first bands on the West Coast to apply the synth-centric approach generally associated with German and British acts of the time. Their rejection of the guitar was a principled stance against the commodification of rock symbolized by that instrument: “Guitars had become a negative symbol. They represented ‘socially acceptable’ dissent for young people. As long as you held a guitar and jumped around like an ape you could could spout anti-establishment poems while selling tons of hamburgers, beer, and T-shirts.”
This track, “I-5,” shows the band in a less abrasive mood than is typical of their music— the sound here is closer to prog rock than punk. Named after the highway that runs up the West Coast from San Diego to Seattle (and perhaps channeling the spirit of Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn”), ”I-5” was a previously unreleased track that first made it to light on the compilation album The History of the Units - The Early Years: 1977-1983, released by the label Community Library in 2009.
An impressive archive of information on The Units is maintained at synthpunk.org.
Played 70 time(s).
February 04, 2011, 11:40am
