Max Headroom needs a comeback. Not as some cynical, commercial opportunity in the stagnant climate of tiresome irony or retro derivativity, but because the computer-generated V.J.’s stuttering commentary and glitchy witticisms have never felt so apt to cover the explosion of eggpunk infecting Sydney and Melbourne. Miscreants like Research Reactor Corp., Gee Tee, Billiam, and a whole family of bands polluting Down Under with a nasty rash of lo-fi, synth-soaked garage rock surely can only be given an authoritative report by an A.I.’s burbled, digital jest.
A pillar of the new wave of munt is Ishka Edmeades. Going by the alias Tee Vee Repairman, Edmeades hops between a plethora of different weirdo rock projects while managing mutant record label Warttmann Inc. and donning a devil mask for RnR outfit Satanic Togas. His strangest cuts however come under the moniker Set-Top Box, a scrambled fuzz of electrical ooze that slimes out of an old CRT TV set, clammy with chewed-up tape experiments, rubbery keyboards, wiry guitar and choppy drum machines. With a slew of tapes and records behind him, Set-Top Box belches another blast of detuned, alien sludge. Flickering static that channel surfs on its own accord between rancid porno, shopping network hell and Sesame Street on acid.
Max Headroom distils the disparate tentacles of noise, punk and skewed cable samples as heard on prior releases into a tight, stinging gob of psyche-gristle and sinewy discolouration. EP opener ‘Nothin’ At All’ is exemplary Tee Vee, jagged devocore guitar jerks and struts with an atonal synth that all jumble and contort together with satisfying disharmony, Eadmeades’ acrid shrieks raise the aural anguish to burning levels of smouldering causticity. ‘Climb The Ladder’ takes a more jaunty route, less corrosion and more bastard child of Kraftwerk’s ‘Pocket Calculator’ and The Cars, while not-quite-title-track ‘Maxx Headroom’ tacks a squirt of sped-up gibberish on its malfunctioning, Chuck E. Cheese robot lips recounting the “loss of Dr. Who“, all scored with keyboard fizz and a subtle demonstration of Edmeades’ expert guitar solo skills, before ‘DNA’ ends the EP on a note of urgent, pungent, and thoroughly blistering synthpop.
Just like every other Set-Top Box offering, one listen to Max Headroom makes you realise that the only suitable pundit to dissect Tee Vee’s latest broken transmission is the notorious Chicago signal hijacker masked in a cheap, Max Headroom costume. Invasive, distorted, Edmeades’ delivers another slice of brain-fried, molten intrusion. One giant video joke that interrupts tonight’s bland, polite, conservative TV schedule with a synthpunk regurgitation of liberating transgression and a massive spike of skittish fun.
DO NOT ADJUST YOUR TV SET!!!