Mars

Mars formed in 1978 in New York within the context of the “no wave” movement, which challenged the very concept of rock harmony. The lineup included Mark Cunningham, singer and bassist who also played the horn in a “negative” way, Sumner Crane, a destructive guitarist, neurotic singer and lyricist (his “lyrics” often little more than screams), Lucy “China Burg” Hamilton, second guitarist, and Nancy Arlen on percussion. Their project of sonic provocation was immediately unmistakable: to translate into rock the most acoustically unbearable repertoire of the avant-garde. Mars thus became spokespeople for a “nervous” sound, in which instruments sound alienated, rhythm is either slowed down or pushed to extremes, and the voice becomes the drool of a madman. They distort, dissonate, improvise.

3E and 11000 are their first recordings, disjointed ruminations on the electronic civilization of information. Then came the four post-apocalyptic gasps on the compilation No New York (Antilles, 1978), which made them a myth of no wave: Tunnel (a terrifying minute of nuclear radiation, torn apart by the singer’s vomit-like scat), Hairwaves (a hypnotic, narcotic chant, random detuned guitars and hypochondriac scraping bass), Helen Fosdale (bursts of plucked guitar, a psychotic monotone verse repeated endlessly with animal frenzy, tribal rhythm), and Portorican Ghost.

The group’s last document is the EP Mars (Lust, 1980), which contains five terrifying masterpieces of harmonic destruction. NN End is another atomic explosion, a violently disjointed noise of saws and drills sustained by epileptic bursts of guitar distortion and a horrific drumbeat. Scorn instead employs metallurgical rhythms and noises, adding the moan of a horn. Outside Africa is an unintelligible prayer recited by a dying female voice over chaos of detuning and random beats. Monopoly is even a duet between male and female voices—one more horrible than the other—while the guitar delivers its most extreme distortion. Immediate Stages Of Erotic, the “suite” for torn voices and exasperated instruments on the second side, sinks its claws into the erotic subconscious (the implicit reference of all their convulsions), but does not significantly alter the musical coordinates: the voices ejaculate bursts of sonic matter (coughs, whimpers, stretched vowels, and atrocious spasms), the guitars hiss at extreme frequencies, the tam-tam drives a frantic dance—everything circulates and returns, erupts and consumes itself in a grotesque pantomime of sexual impulse.

Over time, and with the departure of the two women, the group tended to become a duo relying on occasional collaborations with musicians from the “no” scene, such as cousins DNA or Teenage Jesus. Cunningham specialized in horns, while Crane—one of the most awkward singers imaginable—learned to play piano and percussion as well. The sound, originally based on three voices (the third, and shrillest, that of China Burg) and distortion, became a bacchanal of untamed horns and percussion.

John Gavanti (Hyrax, 1980 - Atavistic, 1998), featuring also Arto Lindsay and Ikue Mori, is the first and only album of this new phase: an episodic rock operetta composed by Crane which, freely paraphrasing Don Giovanni, presents itself as a small “negative” Odyssey. It narrates the fantastical and heroic-comic adventures of the eponymous youth, a parody of the parody of Coati Mundi (the “disco-rap” hero of Kid Creole) traveling around the world. Less cacophonous but equally chaotic, the music moves toward free jazz, always allowing ample space for improvisation. The declaimed, half-jocular vocal delivery forces its way through the tumultuous and incoherent accompaniment. In reality, the piece simply transfers their anarchic primitivism into the symphonic field: the overture is “played” by an ensemble tuning their instruments; in the first vignette guitar, cello and horn emit more or less coherent sounds to accompany the “tragic climax” of the story; the third panel (“aboard the ship,” says the caption) is a hushed chatter of free-jazz winds; then come a ramshackle salsa in a grotesque accumulation of off-key sounds; a drunken folk-blues; a micro-concerto for piano clusters; a lied for piano and violin; a fanfare as epic as it is out of time; and so on.

Mark Cunningham (horn) and Lucy Hamilton (clarinet) later launched Don King (Doublevision, 1984 - Atavistic, 1997), a sui generis trio with Arto Lindsay on guitar. The album contains the long Revelry, exemplary of their savage crossover of folk, dub, jazz, rhythm and blues.

Among the posthumous releases that attempted to shed light on one of the most irregular stories in rock history, at least Mars Live (Disques du Soleil et de l'Acier, 1993) should be mentioned, featuring a sprawling version of NN End. Mars 78+ (Atavistic) contains all the official recordings.

The music of Mars evoked apocalyptic scenarios: Charon-like processions of the damned marching from one shore to another in the perpetual darkness of the subway; crowds of mutilated and disfigured dying people agonizing in the circles of an infernal metropolis; ruins of a technological jungle in which primitive beings stagger, ferocious and desperate, corroded by radioactive miasmas. It is music that lives on rhythmic collapses, guttural screams lasting only a few seconds, continua of spasms and lacerations of guitar, high-frequency cosmic buzzes, barbaric and primordial pulsations, rapidly expanding dissonances. In strict adherence to the bleakest principles of Cagean chance, randomness governs the movement of sounds.

Mars were the wildest and most transgressive act of the no wave scene. Nothing like it had ever been attempted in the annals of music. And yet none of it was worthy of being called “music.”

Revisiting free jazz through the catastrophic and industrial lens of Neu!, and replacing their Wagnerian drive with the practices of the theater of the absurd and the vulgar spirit of punk, Mars imparted a decisive acceleration to the didactic tradition of machine music that had begun with Ionisation by Edgar Varèse.

Mark Cunningham would later resume his career as a musician after moving to Spain, with experimental albums such as Blood River Dusk (1997), followed by Odd Songs (2020). • Cunningham Volt Serra recorded Dionaea Crossroads (2020) and Ad Hoc (2023). Cunningham returned with Blue Mystery (2023), followed by Infini 92024), a collaboration with• Marc Hurtado.

The Complete Studio Recordings (Important, 2005) compiles all 32 minutes of music that they recorded.