Iron Curtain by way of Wax Trax! act Big Debbie – LA based, but fuck sunshine – explodes like hastily crafted nailbombs inside each tube amp on the assembly line. Shocking, yes, but transgressive in all the appropriate ways – heck, Big Debbie’s shared the stage with Pussy Riot collaborators, so let’s read a little bit of politics into this, shall we? I mean, Big Debbie’s father, “who doubled as a Soviet navy officer and a media smuggler,” introduced “forbidden pop music” into their family’s life, for crying out loud, so adding that piece to the puzzle gives an even more complete picture. Let’s just assume he smuggled in some Chrome, some Flipper, some Suicide – maybe some of that sweet, sweet mid-1980s Ministry. Who knows for sure.
Forbidden – what a great word for Big Debbie, as if everything that is “allowed” is turned on its head on AB RA CA DEB RA (2013; pressed to vinyl for the first time by Ratskin Records in 2018), where ideas lurk in shadows until they lash out at the flashlight beams poking around their dark spaces. In these tracks you can hear adolescent Big Debbie insatiably ingesting inspiration, then spitting it back out in a cartoon-machine-gun maelstrom of newly formed ideas. It’s still all industrial/electro/post-punk shrapnel, each serrated drum-machine beat and distorted synth stab a twisted and heat-damaged shard of distilled anger whistling through the emotional battlefield. Forbidden-feelings-made-sound made physical projectiles intent on damage.
Big Debbie’s dark heart beats cold and mechanical, each pulse sending black blood to distant parts of the body. The cover key unlocks the secret chamber and unleashes the gushing tide, the mad rush of poisoned energy without target or future. This Cold War–flavored chaos sneers through clenched teeth and recruits the dissatisfied and disenchanted. AB RA CA DEB RA the tool, the statement, the power enacts its will upon us all.
criticalmassesmedia1.wordpress.com 