Ecstasy & Vendetta Over New York

AMG Review of Ecstasy & Vendetta Over New York

Ned Raggett
All Music Guide

Floridly titled but perfectly apt nonetheless, this live album -- originally released on tape via ROIR then re-released on CD a decade later with a couple of slightly murkier-sounding tracks -- captures the original partnership of Dave Roberts and Andi Sexgang on what turned out to be their penultimate show together. Given that it was this connection more than any other that made Sex Gang Children such a striking band, Ecstasy & Vendetta has a place of historical interest readily balanced out by the sharp, dramatic performance from the quartet. Guitarist Terry MacLeay -- notable for his odd, spiralling riffs that always seemed to embellish rather than dominate Roberts' bass playing -- and newly recruited drummer Raymondo fleshed out this particular lineup, caught at the end of an extensive late-1983 American tour. The set list is practically a greatest-hits list, with "Beasts" and "Shout and Scream" the only notable exceptions -- "Dieche," "Sebastiane," "Song and Legend," and "Mauritia Meyer" all take bows, among many others. The nearly overripe complexities of the group's music might seem hard to carry through live, but this lineup of the band was more than up to the challenge, executing the sudden stop-start shifts of their music -- caught somewhere between prog's love of changing tempos and 1990s math rock in a Gravity Records style -- with aplomb. Sexgang himself sometimes sounds a touch short of breath but not by much, and overall this is a band clearly on top of its game -- barely any mistakes (if any at all), just-controlled-enough mania musically and vocally, and a great sense of play and show. There's little audience banter and barely any audible audience for that matter -- they're there but this is a recording that favors the band rather than needing live noise for atmosphere.