This Heat - This Heat

Originally released in 1979, the self-titled debut by This Heat is one of the most radical records to emerge from the British post-punk moment. Recorded over two years by the London trio of Charles Bullen, Charles Hayward and Gareth Williams, it fuses the rigor of krautrock, the shock of musique concrète and the raw urgency of punk into something genuinely unclassifiable.

Built from tape loops, prepared instruments and abrupt cut-and-paste editing, the album swings from the churning motorik of "Horizontal Hold" to the eerie stillness of "Not Waving" and the harrowing sound collage "The Fall of Saigon." The looping "24 Track Loop" points directly toward the sample-based music of decades to come. Little on it sounds tied to any single era.

Decades later it remains a touchstone for experimental and post-punk musicians alike, a foundational document of what studio-as-instrument rock could be.

This Superior Viaduct edition returns a long-out-of-print landmark to vinyl (SV219).