CHROME

I'm sure a lot of you might be familiar with the name Helios Creed or Chrome's subsequent albums, but probably not the two tracks below (Jack Duckworth being an exception, of course). Chrome were founded by Damon Edge and Gary Spain in 1976, went out to release a ton of albums and only played two shows in their earlier days - the first in Italy at the request of eager and enthusiastic fans and the second in San Francisco, their hometown, both in August of 1981, after which Damon split the group and moved to Berlin to reform Chrome, while Helios formed his own group, releasing a string of albums, the later ones more dismal than the earlier. Damon died in 1995, his body remaining in his apartment for a month before being discovered... In 1996 Helios reformed Chrome, and toured in 1998 and briefly in 2000.

The first track is remarkably straight-ahead for Chrome, and one can imagine that The Calculators must have been taking notes before recording Circuit Breaking Silence. It's from the Moebius Tapes release.

Chrome - Something Rhythmic.mp3

This track is from their first album, The Visitaton which was recorded prior to Helios Creed joining the band. There are very heavy Television-like moments in this (unlike a band like the Strokes, who at one point were erroneously marked as sounding like Television by a lazy critic), not only in the vocals but the guitar theatrics as well. John Lambdin was in a Japanese psych band earlier in the 70s called The Flower Travellin' Band which could possibly account for some of the group's ability to transcend the caustic proto-punk and float about in the clouds. The very Eno-esque vocal-fadeout is nice, too.

Chrome - How Many Years Too Soon?.mp3