Music Outpost

Thinking Plague - (USA)

    Thinking Plague is a Colorado-based ensemble that explores the frontier where punk and progressive rock, world music, jazz and contemporary classical music meet. Journal Wired called its sound "a genre of music unto itself, eclectically derivative in a bold way and spectacularly innovative in the old-fashioned sense of genuine originality."

   The band grew out of the basement recording experiments of Mike Johnson, the band’s guitarist and main composer, and bassist/drummer Bob Drake. They soon began producing and recording its first album, …A Thinking Plague, “an excruciating process because we were using borrowed time at a friend’s little eight-track recording studio out there in the slaughterhouse region [of Denver], called The Packing House.” Self-released in 1984 as a limited edition lp of 500 copies, with hand painted album covers by Bob Drake, it featured members Sharon and Mark Bradford, Mark Fuller and Harry Fleishman in addition to Johnson and Drake. “Recommended” by Spin and Sound Choice, “Thinking Plague are on to something… Good, fun… experimental music.” It also captured the attention of Chris Cutler, whose ReR/Recommended would help distribute the band’s first two releases and release its 3rd, In This Life.

   Thinking Plague’s second album, Moonsongs, was released as a cassette in 1986 on the band’s Endemic label and, in 1987, reissued on lp by Dead Man's Curve, a subsidiary of Red Rhino in London. Called "stunning" by Option and “spell-binding” by CMJ, the lp was the band’s first with singer/songwriter Susanne Lewis, of whom CMJ observed: “Astonishing vocals: Susanne Lewis… is equal parts snarling Lydia Lunch and angelic Liz Frazier.” In addition to Lewis, Johnson and Drake, the lp also featured band members Mark Fuller, Eric Moon, Marc McGoin.

Thinking Plague - "Malthusian Dances (Excerpt #1)"- full track= 6:39

Cross-rhythms in unusual time signatures crash across the core of the track like a series of waves breaking on a beach, while staccato bursts from guitar, piano, and clarinet carry on a conversation that shifts from dramatic to cartoonish and back again at the drop of a hat, and an oddly calm-sounding female voice floats through it all. [Tempo: Mid-tempo]

Thinking Plague - "I Cannot Fly (Excerpt #1)"- full track= 8:34

A thumping bass line bangs out complex rhythms beneath an interlocking labyrinth of angular guitars and reeds while a female voice shifts between coolly delivered lyrics and wordless interjections. [Tempo: Mid-tempo]

Thinking Plague - "I Cannot Fly (Excerpt #2)"- full track= 8:34

Thinking Plague - "Sleeper Cell Anthem (Excerpt #1)"- full track= 6:10

Knotty riffs and off-kilter rhythms dart in and out of earshot while female vocals play it straight and the tension mounts in what could be the musical equivalent of the onset of a nervous breakdown. [Tempo: Mid-tempo]

Thinking Plague - "Sleeper Cell Anthem (Excerpt #2)"- full track= 6:10

Thinking Plague - "A Virtuous Man (Excerpt #1)"- full track= 11:45

Guitar and keyboard arpeggios bounce off of each other as the dynamic shifts sharply from moody and contemplative to urgent and aggressive, while female vocals make striking melodic leaps across the constantly shifting musical terrain. [Tempo: no fixed tempo]

Thinking Plague - "A Virtuous Man (Excerpt #3)"- full track= 11:53

Thinking Plague - "The Gyre (Excerpt #1)"- full track= 4:42

Avant-garde jazz meets progressive rock as painterly shards of piano are tossed together with reed stabs and razor-like guitar riffs in a complex piece shifting through several moods and modes. [Tempo: no fixed tempo]

Thinking Plague - "The Gyre (Excerpt #2)"- full track= 4:42

Thinking Plague - "Climbing The Mountain (Excerpt #1)"- full track= 8:34

An insistent, offbeat rhythm guitar pattern is the initial fulcrum for this far-ranging piece, where everything from orchestral keyboard washes to fearsome six-string storms, calmly intoned female vocals, and bone-crushing bass lines enters the fray. [Tempo: no fixed tempo]

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