The Units Make Me Roll My Eyes Back In My Head and Purr…
The Units are a defunct synthpunk band from San Francisco active during 1978-1984. In their time they were very popular in the SF punk and performance art scene. They put on multimedia shows and had their own projectionist. They opened for better known bands such as Soft Cell, Gary Numan, Ultravox, XTC, Bow Wow Wow, the Psychedelic Furs, the Police, Iggy Pop, Dead Kennedys, Sparks and supported Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark in their US tour. They along with the Screamers are considered to be the first “synthpunk” bands. Synthpunk is a form of post punk that used synthesizers in place of guitars and whose songs followed in the footsteps of punk with themes condemning cultural conformity and consumerism. The songs also express a simultaneous yearning and fear of the future. The Units’ songs range from silly, bopping pop to poetic spoken word electronic bebop lullaby, to new romantic style ballad, to experimental analog space synth jam. I love this band so much!
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mp3 The Units- “Cannibals” 1979
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mp3 The Units- “Digital Stimulation” 1980
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Straight Lines is something special.
This is brilliant.
I wanna take your red out dancing.
Man, that’s right.
Awesome!
Wow, good stuff. Love the diversity from the proto-trance Red, through the punkish Cannibals to the synth-poping Straight Lines.