Received a 7.3 rating from Pitchfork. Thirty miles north of Washington, there is a town in Maryland called Columbia, one of the first planned-communities built in the US, and in retrospect, the perfect birthplace for a band as completely chaotic as Void. Their DC debut was in 1980 at the first Wilson Center show, a marathon fifteen-band affair largely organized by the Bad Brains. When Void started a song it was as if each member was playing his own parts as fast as humanly possible, but not necessarily together. Unlike most bands, whose performances become predictable, Void shows became increasingly discombobulated and ever more fraught with disaster. The live chaos remained even as they started to embrace a metal image and sound towards the end of their three-year existence. While to some it may have seemed like complete cacophony, to those in the know it was music on a higher level. While organizing their archive, Dischord came across the four-track of Void’s first recording session. It was done with Steve Carr at Hit and Run Studios in November ’81 and never officially released. The tape was remixed by Ian MacKaye and Don Zientara at Inner Ear earlier this year. These embryonic versions of what would become Void classics as well as songs that didn’t make the cut prove just how driven this band was to capture their own sound. Sessions 1981-83 features the entire Hit and Run session along with the first Inner Ear demo (including the Flex Your Head cuts and the songs that ended up on the Condensed Flesh 7-inch), two outtakes from their second Inner Ear session (that spawned their legendary split LP with Faith), and a couple of live recordings including one that is almost certainly the last song they ever played.
