Private/Public

Flux's music is schizophrenic in the extreme, with violent dynamic schisms, bizarre, angular rhythms (but incredibly funky at times), and bursts of noise and violence that abruptly shift into weird, brief passages of cerebral, vaguely menacing soundscapes. The vocals are cryptic, sometimes lurid consumer slogans shouted or chanted over the heaving maelstrom. Their abstracted sense of refined Las Vegas show biz, coupled with their crude, brazen energy reminds me of when I first moved to NYC in 1979 and saw the Contortions at Max's Kansas City. Also a faint thread of early Devo runs through them somewhere, but they don't sound at all like either of these groups. Maybe it's just that their performance is so maniacal and at the same time so strictly empirical. They use samples and short sequences, but they're emphatically played live with percussive, methodical frenzy by the keyboardist, Sebastien, who could actually be considered a second drummer, in a sense.