Skinny Puppy: Remission [NETTWERK]

Why you'll love it

This Nettwerk reissue presents Remission as a 12-inch EP cut at 45 RPM. It was the Vancouver band's label debut and the first record on Nettwerk, and it went gold in Canada.

This edition

• 12-inch EP
• Cut at 45 RPM
• Pressed in the Czech Republic

About the album

Every scene needs a starting point, and for Canadian electro-industrial music a good case can be made for this one. Skinny Puppy's earlier Back & Forth tape ran to 35 home-printed copies, so when Remission arrived in December 1984 it was, for most listeners, the very first they'd heard of cEvin Key and Nivek Ogre.

Key and Dave Ogilvie produced and engineered it at Mushroom Studios, and it came before Dwayne Goettel joined in 1986 and hardened the band's sound, so there's more synthpop and electro in the mix than later records would allow. It's also one of the first known commercial records to use a Roland TR-909 drum machine. "Smothered Hope" is the classic, a slow, creeping, menacing groove that still fills dancefloors, "Glass Houses" and "Far Too Frail" pulse and twitch, and "Solvent" and "Sleeping Beast" lurk in the shadows before "Brap" closes things with a burst of noise.

A year later the cassette added five more songs and turned it into a full album, but this is the original six-song 12-inch. Next to a tape run of 35 copies, it was practically a stadium tour.

Also at Kops: more Skinny Puppy on vinyl · browse CDN Pop / Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Nettwerk, a reissue of the 1984 EP.