ALBUM starts from a basic concept that is as simple as it is rigorous: choreograph an entire album by a rock band as if it were music for a ballet, a Swan Lake whose sound material is, in this case, a work by Suicide, a 1970s New York punk duo. The needle of an old record player covers the entire A-side, then the B-side.
The record player is the relentless force that drives the body through the seven tracks of the album: seven environments, seven rooms that portray a hypnotic and inescapable universe. The heart of the work, track n. 6 Frankie Teardrop, has been defined as one of the most chilling songs of the history of rock: […] Vega’s crazed voice narrates, through murmurs and piercing screams, the story of Frankie, the factory worker who explodes at a certain point, killing his wife and child before committing suicide. It’s an accusation against the consumption society that destroys the individual, as well as one of the most harrowing songs of the entire history of rock. […] Oblique Strategies, a system of cards invented by Brian Eno in the 1970s to guide the creation of a work of art, also contributed to the creation of Album.
The first card drawn was: be dirty.