Martin Rev

Beside fellow Brooklynite Alan Vega as Suicide, keyboardist Martin Rev has inspired a legion of musicians including fellow warehouse-dwelling experimentalists (Throbbing Gristle, D.A.F.), chart-topping synth pop acts (Depeche Mode, Soft Cell), mainstream rock artists (Bruce Springsteen, collaborator Ric Ocasek), and producers of techno and house (Aphex Twin, Daft Punk). Rev is known most for the minimalist and alternately brutal and sweet playing that graces the revered albums he and Vega released in 1977 and 1980, but he has recorded periodically on his own and in various forms with and without his legendary original partner, who died in 2016. Rev's first solo album, Martin Rev (1980), featured unsettling ambient pieces, Harmonia-like melodic structures, and battering racket among its approaches. Throughout the next couple decades, a new and distinctive Rev album arrived every few years, such as the muscular Clouds of Glory (1985) and the skeletal bubblegum pop affair See Me Ridin' (1995). To Live (2003), which holds some of his most bracing work, and Stigmata (2009), an elegant set dedicated to his late wife, highlighted the solo output during the decade that followed. Well into the late 2010s, as Rev remained active, reverent Suicide covers piled so high that the originals -- "Dream Baby Dream" and "Ghost Rider" especially -- might as well be considered underground standards. ~ Andy Kellman