It’s a little known fact that, for all his “wake up America, you’re dead!” proclamations, Anthony H. Wilson looked at a certain faction of the ‘90s American indie-rock scene with a great deal of paternal affection. How could he not? Just look at Sub Pop’s aping of Wilson’s hype machine, or the whole Unrest/Teen Beat scene and their Factory-worshiping record sleeves. It was a dark day in Virginia when Unrest had to sate their rampant Anglophilia by cutting a deal with 4AD. Truth is, when the ‘80s became the ‘90s, Wilson doggedly clung to his dreams of running a label that held a mirror up to the unwashed faces of E-addled British youth, meaning he had to hurriedly cram his box of rare Simple Machines seven-inches underneath Factory’s overpriced boardroom table whenever Keith Allen or Alan Erasmus were around.
Wilson's label officially went bankrupt towards the end of 1992, just before Unwound released their first album,
Fake Train, making them the great Factory band that never was. Unwound's career-long tenure on the indier-than-thou Kill Rock Stars might make them unlikely Factory fodder, but they tick a surprisingly high number of Wilson-esque boxes.
New Plastic Ideas just
sounds like a Factory album title, and the songs would have looked wonderful peering out from a typically enigmatic Peter Saville sleeve. Also, their influences were far artier than many of their contemporaries on KRS. "Mkultra" manages to stir in a little Devo or Polvo-esque robo-rock; the 1997 KRS twelve-inch "The Light at the End of a Tunnel is a Train" is a fleeting dalliance with dance music; the heathen-like sounds of a synthesizer can be heard on 1996's
Repetition; and Tony Wilson would have put some wonderful spin behind singer Justin Trosper's arcane lyrics. But that's not all. Just check out the constructivist sleeve design on 1995's
The Future of What, or Trosper's krautrock-meets-musique-concrete side project, Replikants. In an ideal world Unwound would have taken all these elements and fed them into Wilson's hype machine, becoming (along with ESG) Factory's great American signings. As it is, we have a smattering of great records and some dreams of what could have been, and for any newcomers, "Mkultra" is as good a place to start as any.
It’s a little known fact that, for all his “wake up America, you’re dead!” proclamations, Anthony H. Wilson looked at a certain faction of the ‘90s American indie-rock scene with a great deal of paternal affection. How could he not? Just look at Sub Pop’s aping of Wilson’s hype machine, or the whole Unrest/Teen Beat scene and their Factory-worshiping record sleeves. It was a dark day in Virginia when Unrest had to sate their rampant Anglophilia by cutting a deal with 4AD. Truth is, when the ‘80s became the ‘90s, Wilson doggedly clung to his dreams of running a label that held a mirror up to the unwashed faces of E-addled British youth, meaning he had to hurriedly cram his box of rare Simple Machines seven-inches underneath Factory’s overpriced boardroom table whenever Keith Allen or Alan Erasmus were around.
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