Let's Het

Het was the project of two ex-Furious Pig members, Dominic Weeks and Cass Davies. Their 1984 LP, Let's Het, remains one of the strangest avant-garde items to come out of England during the '80s. Their music is largely based on martial percussion ensembles, with very precise scores. This percussive drive generally evokes the climate of industrial music, but when vocals kick in, like the choir in "Rain," the ghost of Harry Partch hits you in the face like a ton of bricks. The Residents are not far away and either are Frank Zappa's orchestral works, yet in the end Het's music remains utterly unique and unclassifiable. Let's Het is admirably focused. If a couple of tracks run slightly too long ("The Unmoved Mover," in particular), there are no throwaways. Opening and closing the album, "Throw Out That Rag" and "Ha Stop" sum up the whole Het experience: thundering percussion, multi-voiced vocal interjections, disembodied guitar — clever madness. "Penis" and "Rain" feature a large cast of singers, which results in a slightly different musical form, somewhere between a trash opera and Partch's "The Bewitched." Catherine Jauniaux contributes her unmistakable vocal charm to "Poisons." This album bears the mark of the early '80s. It seems to share the spirit (but not the style) of Glenn Branca's first electric guitar symphonies, the dry pop deconstructivism of Wondeur Brass, the industrial leanings of European alternative music. But the actual music is unlike anything else and remains as much an incongruity today as it was back then. Each listen brings out new rhythmic patterns, new compositional complexities, new oddities, and yet the music makes sense — a lot of sense — right from the first listen. A treasure. ~ François Couture, Rovi