Speed by Crain

Crain formed in early 1989 from the ashes of Cerebellum, an art-punk ensemble that featured a then-teenaged Drew Daniel (Matmos, Soft Pink Truth) on vocals. Picking up where the nervy Cerebellum had left off, Crain made frantic, impassioned music that resonated for audiences who were otherwised bemused by contemporary punk rock. Twelve years after its original LP-only release, we are reissuing Speed on CD for the first time, with four bonus tracks of rare and unreleased material. Recorded by Steve Albini in 1991 on an eight-track in his basement - and remastered from the original tapes by John Golden in 2004 - Speed fits somewhere between the positive punk anthems of Fugazi and the gritty wall-of-noise melodicism of Nirvana. Throw in the occasional spoken-word vocals a la The Minutemen, and you have a record that was every bit as important as Slint's "Spiderland" in directing the quick evolution of underground American rock music. Crain's influence is wide-reaching and evident on countless records by everyone from James Murphy's now-defunct pre-DFA projects (Pony, Speedking) to widely popular and hugely influential acts like Shellac and Helmet. To call this Speed reissue "long-overdue" is quite an understatement.