The tread about how awesome Chrome's "Half Machine Lip Moves" is
 

Did a search and couldn't find a thread for this album, so here it is.




YES!!!

I've been kind of obsessed with this since someone mentioned it in the trip albums thread and I decided to dig it out for the first time in a while. So unbelievably fantastic! I've tried a few times now to articulate in this post exactly why this is amazing, but mostly I've just ended up making retarded screeching slow motion guitar solos with my mouth. The best I could come up with is this:

"Julian Cope once described Comets on Fire's "Field Recordings from the Sun", with his usual hyperbole, as being like "like the Stooges gotta deal with the U.S.S.A.F". Well if that's the case, then Half Machine Lip Moves is like the Stooges were forced to conduct a guerrilla war on the States by sending out negative propaganda attacks without warning through it's radio stations..."

But to be honest that is a pretty poor description of the album, and reeks of bad pretentious rock journalism to boot, but I can't be bothered to try and think of something better right now. Suffice to say that this album completely rocks, it's unlike anything else I've heard, it's totally fucked up, massively riffing, every Sonic Youth fan simply has to hear it, and the fact that it was recorded in 1979 completely confounds me every time I remember it.

If someone thinks they can add something better then, please, BRING THE LOVE!

Chrome really did make some amazing LPs.
Their blend of punk, new wave, psychedelia and a DIY ethic are pretty astounding when you think about the time they started and the relative isolation they worked in to begin with.

One of the best ever. Blew my mind, someone played this for me when I was 14, haven't been the same since.

Nothing to add except that I agree with everything said in this thread so far.

I needta hear this.

Helios Creed is going to beat your ass for posting that picture.

You really, really do.

Heard Chrome mentioned before, will urgently need to check this shit out now though, thanx for posting

Honestly, I recommend virtually anything from the Creed/Edge era, but especially:
Half Machine Lip Moves
The Visitation
3rd From The Sun
Alien Soundtracks

I checked out the band's MySpace page. What I heard didn't appeal to me. In 1979 Gary Numan released "Replicas"(with Tubeway Army) and "The Pleasure Principle". You could arguably lump Chrome and Gary Numan together as they both mixed synths and guitars into their sounds. Plus they both had a fascination with science fiction.

Chrome, to me, are decidedly more psychedelic in their approach, and certainly more raw. They also started in the mid-1970s, working in a near-vacuum. I don't see them as a "new wave" band, really.
(I do love Tubeway Army, though)

Chrome rule. There's very few bands that did what they did.. only ones coming close were six Finger Satellite and (((Microwaves)))...

No matter how hard I try, I don't see much in common between Chrome and Gary Numan, apart from the use of electronic instruments. For a start, gary numan's approach to synths is much mork stark and precise than Chrome's, which makes his records more conventional-sounding, and less loose in sound. Perhaps another way to put it is that Chrome sound ''spaced-out", whereas at best Numan sounds merely ''spacey''.

six finger satellite were a mediocre band, let alone heirs to chrome's throne.

It was a poor comparison on my part as it's the first time I've heard Chrome.

no problem at all. Glad you're enjoying them, they're one of the best.

Gary Numan? I thought of Corey Feldmen the first time I heard Chrome.

What have you heard?!

"DO THE SUICIDE" is amazing.

It should be noted that Chrome's post Helios Creed material is pretty sucky new-wavey stuff, and I don't know there new stuff at all, so I'd be careful when judging them by their myspace tracks (don't actually know what they have on there). The Chrome everyone's geeking out over here is the Chrome who recorded this, and this. With that in mind, comparing them to Gary Numan is... well just don't OK?

At various point i owned/sold the split they did with green magnet school, the human operator single, machine cuisine, severe exposure, and law of ruins, none of which i enjoyed much. Same with brainiac, a band i often read where kind of similar to them, but left me cold.