The tread about how awesome Chrome's "Half Machine Lip Moves" is
 

Did a search and couldn't find a thread for this album, so here it is.




YES!!!

I've been kind of obsessed with this since someone mentioned it in the trip albums thread and I decided to dig it out for the first time in a while. So unbelievably fantastic! I've tried a few times now to articulate in this post exactly why this is amazing, but mostly I've just ended up making retarded screeching slow motion guitar solos with my mouth. The best I could come up with is this:

"Julian Cope once described Comets on Fire's "Field Recordings from the Sun", with his usual hyperbole, as being like "like the Stooges gotta deal with the U.S.S.A.F". Well if that's the case, then Half Machine Lip Moves is like the Stooges were forced to conduct a guerrilla war on the States by sending out negative propaganda attacks without warning through it's radio stations..."

But to be honest that is a pretty poor description of the album, and reeks of bad pretentious rock journalism to boot, but I can't be bothered to try and think of something better right now. Suffice to say that this album completely rocks, it's unlike anything else I've heard, it's totally fucked up, massively riffing, every Sonic Youth fan simply has to hear it, and the fact that it was recorded in 1979 completely confounds me every time I remember it.

If someone thinks they can add something better then, please, BRING THE LOVE!

Chrome really did make some amazing LPs.
Their blend of punk, new wave, psychedelia and a DIY ethic are pretty astounding when you think about the time they started and the relative isolation they worked in to begin with.

One of the best ever. Blew my mind, someone played this for me when I was 14, haven't been the same since.

Nothing to add except that I agree with everything said in this thread so far.

I needta hear this.

Helios Creed is going to beat your ass for posting that picture.

You really, really do.

Heard Chrome mentioned before, will urgently need to check this shit out now though, thanx for posting

Honestly, I recommend virtually anything from the Creed/Edge era, but especially:
Half Machine Lip Moves
The Visitation
3rd From The Sun
Alien Soundtracks

I checked out the band's MySpace page. What I heard didn't appeal to me. In 1979 Gary Numan released "Replicas"(with Tubeway Army) and "The Pleasure Principle". You could arguably lump Chrome and Gary Numan together as they both mixed synths and guitars into their sounds. Plus they both had a fascination with science fiction.

Chrome, to me, are decidedly more psychedelic in their approach, and certainly more raw. They also started in the mid-1970s, working in a near-vacuum. I don't see them as a "new wave" band, really.
(I do love Tubeway Army, though)

Chrome rule. There's very few bands that did what they did.. only ones coming close were six Finger Satellite and (((Microwaves)))...

No matter how hard I try, I don't see much in common between Chrome and Gary Numan, apart from the use of electronic instruments. For a start, gary numan's approach to synths is much mork stark and precise than Chrome's, which makes his records more conventional-sounding, and less loose in sound. Perhaps another way to put it is that Chrome sound ''spaced-out", whereas at best Numan sounds merely ''spacey''.

six finger satellite were a mediocre band, let alone heirs to chrome's throne.

It was a poor comparison on my part as it's the first time I've heard Chrome.

no problem at all. Glad you're enjoying them, they're one of the best.

Gary Numan? I thought of Corey Feldmen the first time I heard Chrome.

What have you heard?!

"DO THE SUICIDE" is amazing.

It should be noted that Chrome's post Helios Creed material is pretty sucky new-wavey stuff, and I don't know there new stuff at all, so I'd be careful when judging them by their myspace tracks (don't actually know what they have on there). The Chrome everyone's geeking out over here is the Chrome who recorded this, and this. With that in mind, comparing them to Gary Numan is... well just don't OK?

At various point i owned/sold the split they did with green magnet school, the human operator single, machine cuisine, severe exposure, and law of ruins, none of which i enjoyed much. Same with brainiac, a band i often read where kind of similar to them, but left me cold.

Law of Ruins is definitely one of my favorite albums ever. Interesting.

Well if it makes you feel better, I did give them a go on several occasions. I hope this wont be one extra reason that will appear on your suicide letter, if what you wrote on that other thread turns out to be true.

Touch and Go did a cd of Half Machine and Alien Soundtracks together. Easily their two best albums, so well worth grabbing if found. Half Machine was definitely one of the first wave of life changing albums for me in the mid '80s along with Bad Moon Rising and Gone Fishin' by Flipper. "TV As Eyes" is such a cool update of the Stooges song with appropriate Reagan era paranoia-psych thrown in. A shame Creed and Edge had the falling out that led to each of them taking the Chrome name to places that don't measure in the slightest to where they went together.

I googled around to see if anyone else on the net mentioned Chrome and Gary Numan in the same breath, and sure enough, I found this:

"Chrome worked from a similar Weltanschauung to Gary Numan's Tubeway Army days -- future horror bio-techno nightmare machine sex robot genocide sci-fi mind control corporate cult ecstacy doom atrocity exhibition Philip K.Dick William S. Burroughs Theodore Sturgeon Clockwork Orange Brave New World ad nauseum -- but musically they spelled it out in a much hollower-sounding, processed guitar-laden, fuzz-mired lower-fi way, which only adds to the sinisteria of it -- like receiving radio broadcasts from that same horrorshow future through an old, cracked, not particularly reliable radio. Tubeway Army meets Hawkind circa "Space Ritual" meets Simply Saucer meets "Hotwire My Heart"-era Crime. But entirely original and their own all the same"

And someone else is quoted as saying: "I was a big fan of Tubeway Army (Gary Numan) at the time,which is a good reference point,but Chrome were like their cooler,weirder,older brothers".

OK, you've caught me out there I guess. Admittedly, the only Gary Numan I know, and thus the reference point I was using, is Cars.

It's amazing to think a bunch of guys in San Francisco, California, had roughly the same ideas for a sound and were highly influenced by stuff to that of a guy in Hammersmith, London. :)

Well I don't know about influenced, considering they released their debuts in the same year. If Gary's early stuff does have the same sound though then that would be a remarkable coincidence.

Numan is much more clinical and reserved in his approach...Edge and Creed were way more visceral, and got to that turf a few years before Numan did anyway.

According to Chrome's Wikipedia entry, they were inspired by mid-70s punk rock, Hawkwind and Black Sabbath. One could pedantically argue Hawkwind beat them to it by seven years.

i can't say that i'm too familiar w/ Hawkwind's stuff (yeah, I've heard "silver machine" a billion times but not much else), but to my ears Chrome is a lot edgier than anything Hawkwind did.

mid-70s punk rock eh? wiki needs to get better editors.

Wikipedia does have a habit of misleading people.

I hadnt heard the record in years since hearing that the butthole surfers looked to them as idols. No im remembering all the craziness and i like the taste! This record really is right up the alley for any SY fan, it should just be a given that everyone here knows them.

That's all fine and dandy, but the Chrome records I was referring to still don't sound like Gary Numan.

z-z-Z-Z-ZZZZOMBIES!

Just listened to my entire Chrome collection this week. Gotta love them. I was playing Plants vs. Zombies while listening to them and it was the most suitable

thre isnt one chroe or helios record i dont like/love, wierd ass space punk with actually amazing musicianship for the most part, a rarity. one of my long tme favorit bands.