Minimal Compact – Minimal Compact

Minimal Compact – Minimal Compact – Statik Dancin’, Creation Is Perfect (I Am A Camera), Ready-Made Diary // To Get Inside, Happy Babouge (Crammed Discs) 1981. The first Minimal Compact EP immediately maps out the two distinct personalities of the band. On one side, Minimal Compact were a classic European (by way of Israel) cold-wave band as represented by Creation is Perfect and To Get Inside. Both of these songs could easily be Joy Division outtakes or something. I would imagine for a lot of people these two songs are probably their favourites but cold-wave leaves me kinda, er….cold. So if Minimal Compact were just a cold-wave band I doubt they would be on Last Days. It’s the other personality of the band that impresses me a lot. The “No-Wave Euro-Funk with Middle Eastern overtones” side of the band is a hell of a lot more fascinating to me and the other three songs on this great EP point that direction. The most well-known song of the lot is Statik Dancin‘ which was a minor new wave club hit (somewhere in the world far removed from Midwestern Missouri) but Happy Babouge is probably the most impressive in its meshing of all the different influences running through Minimal Compact’s music. It points to songs like Babylonian Tower on the subsequent One By One LP that rival early A Certain Ratio in their ability to be exotic, cold and funky; three traits that seem to contradict themselves.