No Wave exploded threw the art spaces of lower east side Manhattan in the late 70s, and, as most explosions, died as quickly as it started with the bands disappearing before the smoke could settle. With an influence that still resonates today, it was the ultimate anti-movement. Drawing on primitivism, nihilism and destruction, No Wave gave host to Art school graduates, teenage runaways, performance artists, writers and filmmakers. With this not only came one of the most aggressive and abrasive genres to come out of New York but also a film style, which gave birth to new ideas on guerrilla cinema leading to the Cinema Of Transgression and influencing the likes of Jim Jarmusch, Steve Buscemi and Vincent Gallo.
Marc Masters gives us a book that follows the anti-movement from its forefathers of Suicide and Richard Hell through its primary four bands, which featured on Brian Eno’s 1981 ‘No New York’ compilation (James Chance and The Contortions, Teenage Jesus and The Jerks, DNA and Mars) and well as focusing on some of the many forgotten bands of the era (Red Transistor, 8-Eyed Spy, Theoretical Girls etc.) and then to it’s aftermath in the forms of Sonic Youth and Swans, who bought the ideas of No Wave to international fame. Marc Masters brings to live this short period of time through a selection of the photos taken from the time of it’s main hero’s (or anti-hero’s) as well taking extracts from media and the stories of the people who were there and the band members who sculted the sounds and ideas of the anti-movement. Towards the end of the book he establishes the importance of the heavily related No Wave Film movement that went hand in hand with the genre and Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party. Masters also includes a chapter on No Magazine and Tape 1, the leading zines of the genre, which gives us a full sense of the genre.
Along with the release of Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore’s book of the same name it seems No Wave is finally getting the notice it deserves and this book is a great way to introduce yourself to one of the most powerfully short lived genres of the last fifty years.
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