Wicked Witch LP 1978-86 rare soul funk dance psych rock

$

25

Wicked Witch  - Chaos 1978-86.   rare original issue LP - now out of print (OOP) -- and collectible.  Honest Jon's Records import.  like new copy.

• CD: Fancy Dancer
• / Erratic Behaviour
• / X Rated
• / Vera's Back
• / Electric War (Instrumental)
• / Electric War (Vocal)
• / Fancy Dancer (previously unreleased re-mix)
•  

• LP: Fancy Dancer
• / Erratic Behaviour (previously unreleased remix)
• / Under Your Spell (previously unreleased)
• / Electric War (Instrumental)
• / X Rated (previously unreleased mix)
• / Vera's Back

"D.C.’s Wicked Witch was essentially one Richard Simms, the leather-garbed fellow on the album cover.  Simms supplied the rubbery bass and the wildly erratic vocal stylings, and at least three of these seven tracks are his work exclusively.  On this succinct teaser of an anthology, Simms emerges not just as an eclectic, overlooked eccentric, but as an extraordinary seer, a brand-of-one crackpot who updated disco, P-Funk and Sun Ra, and somehow anticipated everything from Prince to Chrome to Ariel Pink. Wicked Witch might’ve been a missing link, had anyone heard this stuff.

WW’s default mode is ramshackle, adults-only electro funk. The guitar lays a thick foundation of sludge and occasionally busts out Hendrix acrobatics (most notably on “Fancy Dancer”). The thin, squelchy synths produce a head-spinning muddle of special effects. The vox range from an inscrutable falsetto (“Rated X,” the most obvious Controversy soundalike) to an off-kilter R&B wail (“Electric War”) to submerged whooping and hollering (the peculiar, hypnotic “Erratic Behaviour”) to declarative incantations (the violin-laced “Vera’s Back,” the album’s earliest cut, which resembles nothing so much as an extended meditation on the Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today” as sifted through Yes’s “Heart of the Sunrise.”)

To varying degrees, the production sounds muffled, wobbly, aquatic… which may bespeak nothing more than technical limitations, but which does enhance Wicked Witch’s otherworldly aura.  As openly referential as it can be, the Witch seems to exist in some decadent ether outside any recognized decade or community.  No sooner has Simms picked up a funk or rock convention than he’s warped it considerably, occasionally (on “Erratic Behaviour”) to the point where it hardly sounds like pop at all. It’s tempting to contemplate the hedonistic psych-funk avant-garde he might’ve spearheaded, under different aspects.

Chaos is all the more fascinating for its apparent stinginess. One track is an “instrumental version” of another. Another is a “remix” of another. The disc wraps up after a scant 40 minutes. The vinyl version boasts a slightly different track list, including two remixes and an exclusive. The packaging provides little in the way of history. Maybe this was all that remains of Wicked Witch. (From the sound of it, salvaging this material alone was a big-enough pain.) But it’s easier to imagine it as the tip of one weird iceberg." -Emerson Dameron

"Comentários: Unless Sun Ra's most out there moments, one of many behavioral components from Chaos 1978-86, were beamed alongside televised presidential messages for years, or the ravenous fire from Jimi Hendrix's burning guitar had a heated soundtrack of its own on the Billboard charts, it's hard to imagine anyone being ready for this crazy stuff in the early 80s.  The appropriately named Wicked Witch, a richly decadent and spooky avant-garde affair of off-kilter rhythm and blues-based x-spunk, was the mastermind of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Richard Simms— a somewhat frightening dude, at least in appearance, photographed in a full leather get-up, and once part of a late 70s outfit called Paradiagm.  Although devoid of any significant pop caché, or any kind of relative musical easy listening, Chaos 1978-86 is a treasure of eccentricity and dysfunctional sound art.  Take my word, this is 30 degrees colder than any kind of Prince-like angularity.  Its self-indulgent machine-funk brilliance— not to mention the impressive violins on "Vera's Back", the ESG-like dance of "Electric War (Instrumental)", and the nutso keyboard fuzz from "Fancy Dancer"— still sounds years ahead of its time (and probably still locked in an underground cell somewhere).  In fact, apart from experimental seekers, I wonder if many are ready for its dissonant elements, even today.  Reason enough to jump on the psycho train, don't you think?"

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