Suicide

post-punk

Suicide was an American electronic proto-punk musical duo, intermittently active between 1970 and 2016 and composed of vocalist Alan Vega and Martin Rev on synthesizers and drum machines. They were an early synthesizer/vocal musical duo. Never widely popular amongst the general public, Suicide are highly influential: critic Wilson Neate argues that Suicide would prove as influential as The Clash. Listening to their self-titled 1977 debut from the vantage point of late 2002, it's all so obvious: The synthpop, techno, and industrial dance sounds of the '80s and '90s, and now the new New Wave of electroclash, all gesture back to that foundational album. In a November 1970 flyer the band was the first ever to use the phrase punk music to advertise a concert. Suicide took their name from the title of a Ghost Rider comic book titled Satan Suicide, a favorite of Alan Vega. Rev's simple keyboard riffs, (initially played on a battered Farfisa organ combined with effects units, before changing to a synthesizer), were accompanied by primitive drum machines, providing a pulsing, minimalistic, electronic backdrop for Vega's murmuring and nervy vocals. They were the first band to use the term punk to describe themselves, which they had adopted from an article by Lester Bangs. Some of their earliest posters use the terms punk music and punk music mass. Suicide emerged alongside the early glam punk scene in New York, with a reputation for their confrontational live shows. Many of their early...