3 out of 5

Label: Purge/Sound League

Produced by: Dave Sardy

I try to cast myself back to a time before I heard Barkmarket’s Gimmick or L. Ron, to a late 80s of art punk, and early Touch and Go-styled sludge; how might 1-800-Godhouse – Sardy’s second solo-ish outing as Barkmarket – sound?

Weird. Then; now; it’s a weird record. It casts a different version of what I’d end up knowing as Barkmarket, for sure, and makes me wonder what would’ve happened if the group hadn’t formalized its lineup, and hadn’t begun to zero in on riffs and noise over the experimentation on witness here. Would I have become as addicted to their sound? Would I have had a reason to dig further?

Look at that collage cover art; the zine-like lyric printup, with Sardy’s sorely missed slashes at class and society in half-curious, half-blunt rambles. He covers a John Cale track on the B-side, before concluding the record with an endless loop of ambient clatter. The A-side of the record hints at why a group like Skeleton Key was such a good match for Sardy’s production, and links his collage approach to The Lounge Lizard’s oddities, from which SK headman Erik Sanko sprang; proto-versions of tracks Poverty, Salvation, and Sonny appear here with their funk intact, but only after emerging from swirls of noise, Sardy’s youthful vocals also not as sneering as they’d later be. After sticking to a similar script through opener Ten Convictions on the B-side – a contender for one of the album’s best, most focused tracks – Godhouse derails pretty mightily, going deep on sound explorations, until reemerging with that Cale cover.

As we’d witness Barkmarket streamline and amplify their sound more and more, the way Sardy darts in and out of truly catchy melodies on this recording suggests a denial of that ability, though this ’88, 4-track recording already captures his appreciation for a solid low end, and overall punchiness of sound. It’s just constructed in true art rock fashion, kind of challenging you to dig out the music instead of going all in. The net vibe is undeniably interesting, with some standout riffs and choruses, but it’s also not quite chaotic enough to necessarily have made a bigger mark in the noise scene (than it did, anyway).