You know what this page hasn’t featured in a long time? A genre-melding rock band from Chicago. Frontier (guitarist Steven Wessley, bassist Kevin Ireland, drummer Michael Tsouios) formed in the early nineties, and quickly garnered buzz for their intense live performances, which would include a blinding light show followed by the trio’s choking out everyone in the room with liberal use of smoke machines. Never underestimate the power of a smoke machine at a rock show. When attempting to bring an audience into your world of dub-infused, feedback-drenched postmodern rock music, I suppose there’s no better way to achieve your goal than to subdue your audience before dragging them into whatever aural chasm you’ve created on stage. Frontier featured a killer rhythm section, upon which some amazing ambient, textural guitar parts were spread. Pull out any of the band’s work from their 1995 self-titled LP to their live recordings from The Empty Bottle, and you’ll swear you are listening to two distinct albums layered on top of each other, two parts experimental guitar noise with lots of time-delay effects, and one part drums ‘n bass.
In 1997, the band recorded Heater with Steve Albini. Not to be confused with the album of same name recorded by Louisville underground legends Crain three years earlier (bonus cool points if you knew that album was also recorded by Albini!). Spaced-out, abstract guitar feedback ensued. The sound of Heater — if one were to disregard the bass and drums — is what it must feel like to be sucked into a vortex. It is so very far out there. Some call it a mixture of Pink Floyd, Brian Eno and Kraftwerk. I just prefer to call it wild. They would have made a perfect twin-billing with The Complex. Long live The Complex.
Frontier
Heater
MediaFire DL Link
Tracklist:
01. Heatstream
02. Now
03. Space Invaders
04. Automatic
05. Manual
06. G.F.A.
07. Lakewood
08. Rival
09. Dualflame
10. Bundesbahn
