Where There's Smoke There's Phycus

Ain't never too late to bring a slightly outmoded 20th century concept into the 21st. So with great aplomb Damage has gifted us with a Phycus Myspace page. Only the nascent days of Canadian college radio and the tentacles of 80's mail art/cassette culture could have brought industrial music to Sidney, Nova Scotia, although you'd be hard pressed to find a place more reminiscent of Hull or Sheffield. In fact, from videos I've seen, you straight walk out the front door of Damage's childhood home you're more or less immediately ankle deep in the Sydney Tar Ponds and your chances of getting cancer skyrocket to a cool 3-1. A childhood listening to Nash the Slash helped as well, 'natch. So it all makes perfect sense that Phycus was birthed here. If you aren't chasing after deeply lost cassettes with names like Bring Me The Brain of Kurt Cobain ect, you may likely find a copy of X, a 3xlp retrospective that teems at the edges, some clunk 90's industrial in there you might chose to avoid (I don't), but mostly a killer range of qual ZGA-like Eastern Euro style noise, Laibach inspired symph-industrial and some lo-fi techno-pop with totally killer arrangements mostly by Damage himself, brewed in whatever bunker living sitch he found himself in; be it Sydney, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa or Montreal again, throughout the years '88-'99. List of contributors on this shit goes on forevs and the crew is mot: a to-remain-unnamed Thee Outernet contributing editor, a Governor Generals Art Award winner, a convict, a surrealist librarian, the big guy Corpusse Himself, a canadian noise legend, Anton Levay's daughter and so on...Total Zero might still have copies of X booting around. The mypsace page has some vids, one edited by Ontario art brat Jubal Brown, a bunch of killer jams (check out Destroy the Earth, a personal fav) and best of all vid of a live outdoor date from a Warehouse/abandoned industrial site gig in Toronto circa nine nine. Bonus from Damage, some words of wisdom to old koots hoping to revive since buried projects: Their will be no reunion tour, there is no new material.