DEVO レコード& CD

Review: Bands often work so hard to get the right producer and sound as slick as possible. But sometimes those initial ideas with fewer cooks in the kitchen sound a lot more exciting. This collection of Devo studio demos and unreleased tracks culled from cassettes, reel-to-reel tapes, multi-tracks and DATs - spanning their independent label era - is no exception. It's raw, rough and ready in a way that takes you back to the 70s and makes you want to dig out some double denim. Re-recorded in a state-of-the-art studio you'd probably feel very much in the present. It's a mammoth collection with over two-and-a-half hours of material and was originally released in 2000, but this four LP deluxe version is the most eye-catching way to spend time digging through the New Wave icons' stuff and understand why they were admired by the likes of David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Neil Young at this early stage of their career.