Microminiature Love

The explosion of underground psych music in the late ‘60s produced dozens of astounding undiscovered bands, but no record from the period is as feral and disaffected as Michael Yonkers’ Microminiature Love. A Minneapolis teen reared on the local surf rock of the Trashmen, Yonkers was an electronics wizard who dismantled and refashioned his own guitars and effects pedals in a search to discover sounds volatile and unnerving beyond every imaginable standard. The tracks that comprise this compilation were recorded in 1968/1969, at a small Minnesota studio and in the self-made laboratory Yonkers set up for himself in his parents’ basement. Outside the Stooges (who were born of a similarly dreary Midwestern landscape), rock ’n’ roll never sounded so ferociously confrontational. Fuzz guitar and primordial drums provide the background for Yonkers to vent his frustrations in an unsteady, unpredictable howl. “Kill the Enemy” is as frightening and true as anti-war songs get, while “Microminiature Love” expresses the kind of alienation and aggravation that could only have come from the frozen basements of mid-winter Minneapolis.