December 25, 2024

Skylight Webzine

Online since 2000

New live album for DEVO


Spuds rejoice, for the Miracle Witness Hour is at hand! In 1977 DEVO played an intimate show to an eager handful at biker bar turned total dive The Eagle Street Saloon in Cleveland, Ohio. Unbeknown to those canny onlookers, they were to testify to the healing power of DEVO! But what of us now? Beautiful mutants fear not, FUTURISMO are here to rectify your late party syndrome. Televised through the antennas of time we give you DEVO’s most intimate unreleased live record ever – Miracle Witness Hour!

Released for the first time on any format, this remastered document of de-evolution is finally given the attention it truly deserves. A rare glimpse into the embryonic stages of the groundbreaking band way before the masses knew how to ‘whip-it good’, the Miracle Witness Hour boasts primal versions of the bands most recalled avant-pop songs such as ‘Jocko Homo’ and ‘Mongoloid’ moments before Brian Eno got his hands on them, juxtaposed against some of their rarer experimental gems. Seemingly fitting for the kind of off the wall experience that would have DEVO’s dehumanised art house sci-fi set against the backdrop of Eagle Streets’ dingy and ruptured old world interior.

Synonymous with innovative ideology, it was only a few months later that David Bowie would declare them “the band of the future!” but it was at the Miracle Witness Hour that DEVO were already proving that the future was already happening. Like surrealist preachers transmitting a challenge to the preconceptions of pop music, it’s the playful live imperfections in this recording that genuinely make the Miracle Witness Hour an original and intimate experience – so intimate that you can make out individual handclaps of the sparse crowd.

This FUTURISMO release revitalises this event with exciting artwork and packaging that enforces the bands forward thinking approach to the aesthetics that shaped the following decade. The outer sleeve comes die-cut revealing the box-fold reversible cover inner sleeve, containing a second sleeve and housing rare images as well as brand new liner notes by DEVO founding member Gerald Casale. The vinyl comes on heavyweight 180g coloured vinyl with free download, and the record is also available on Die-cut Digipak CD format.

Source:
www.clubdevo.com