Vibing Up the Senile Man (Part One) is the second studio album by English rock band Alternative TV.[1] It was released in March 1979 by record label Deptford Fun City.[2] The band followed a more experimental and avant-garde approach than on The Image Has Cracked (1978).[3]
Recording
The album's tracks were all reportedly recorded in a single take.[4]
Musical style
Regarding its musical style, Alternative TV frontman Mark Perry recalled: "There are free jazz influences; I'd got into the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sun Ra [...] I'd moved into this house with an amazing music room – pianos, clarinets, you name it – and we'd always be picking up stuff from junk shops."[4]
In his retrospective review of the album, Dean McFarlane of AllMusic noted that "... Mark Perry and friends did to punk exactly what the movement had intended for the establishment", asking, "... who would have expected a follow-up [to The Image Has Cracked] as avant-garde abstraction ...?" He goes on to state that "Vibing Up the Senile Man became closer to free improvisation and avant-garde jazz without a punk anthem in sight ..." and continuing that what it "... represents two decades later is a door opening on multi-faceted post-rock music -- which draws on avant-garde, noise, and jazz and arguably makes more sense in the context of year 2000 as a musical treasure much more than in 1980 ...".[5]
Legacy
Paul Hegarty, in Noise Music: A History, described the album as "forming the bridge into industrial music".[8]
The record was placed at number 19 on Mojo's list of readers' choice of 50 "Weirdest Albums".[9]
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