ARKANSAW MAN - Arkansaw Man

Here is the unlikely CD debut of Arkansaw Man, a wildly obscure San Francisco art-punk band that flickered to life all so briefly in 1981. 25 minutes of music, 25 years ago -- and sayonara. Still, the best things in life -- in the life of music, anyway -- often are tucked away where they are hard to find. With a brilliant economy of means and a sparseness reminiscent of dub, the band got an amazing jump start on post-rock. It revels in terse and choppy guitar, the languid, sour leakage of keyboards and horns, and occasional lyrics sung as ironic disclaimer, while the spare yet vaguely ominous bass lines recall Gang of Four played back at 4 RPM. A quarter of a century ago, the spindly funk machinery and discordant scraping guitars of Arkansaw Man failed to give the world much to latch onto, so its music got lost, abandoned in a locker at pop cultures bus depot, the key left floating in a gutter somewhere one day to be scavenged. Theres no better place to find a glimmer of artistic gold. - Table Of The Elements.