An Aspiring Nerd's Guide to No Wave

CLICK FOR ALBUM STREAMS BASED ON NERD LEVEL YOU WISH TO ATTAIN

Two books, documentaries, and a slate of unlikely reunions later, NYC’s late-70s No Wave movement remains as elusive as ever. Critic Aaron Leitko describes the short-lived Lower East Side scene succinctly, saying “Obsessed with defilement and negation, their music was like a schizophrenic vagrant in a life-or-death fight with a dumpster — irrational, erratic, uncompromising, and bizarrely dissonant.”

Of course, he could have added anti-anthemic, and in the case of the Contortions, disturbingly danceable. Springing up in late-’70s New York in the wake of punk’s flagging rebellion, No Wave cast aside the conventions and relative structure of the hawk-hawking crowd, encouraging a series of aesthetically unrelated artists to create music that was as unflinchingly abrasive as punk’s supposedly anti-establishment ethos.

The results range from the Contortion’s sax-driven dance-punk and Teenage Jesus’ barrel-banging sludgery to the avant-garde theatrics of Glenn Branca and the stunningly mathematical freak-outs of DNA.
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VA – No New York 
Fashioned by Brian Eno and featuring four of the emergent scene’s early stand-outs, No New York is perhaps the most resonant and important document of the movement.



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James Chance & the Contortions – Buy 
The scene’s most accessible record — it’s relative, remember — Buy drops punk speed and saxophone swing over a set of hip-shaking grooves and disaffected grunts.



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Teenage Jesus and the Jerks – Everything 
As painful to hear as they are to endorse, Teenage Jesus are the ultimate in sensory deprivation, a sludgy, full-body thrashing capped by the legendary Lydia Lunch.


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DNA – DNA on DNA 
Complex beyond compare, DNA’s disjointed guitars at first appear mere racket, until you realize that they could be perfectly reproduced at any point.


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