Customer Reviews

PKD/Simulacra

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4 star:		(2)
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Bunnydrums were a four piece from Philadelphia who were around from about 1980 to 1986. They made post-punk music, incorporating the usual set-up of guitar, bass, drums, electronics and some saxophone.

They clearly grew up making music in the underground and therefore never really broke out into the mainstream, which is cool in my view! Their music is angry and paranoid sounding, not surprising when you hear that the main songwriter was influenced by the novels of noted SF writer Philip K. Dick (of Blade Runner and Total Recall fame)!

This collection of their best work has come out on the fantastic METROPOLIS record label based in Philadelphia.

I had actually never heard anything by the group until recently hearing a sound sample and I was so impressed with what I heard that I ordered it straight away.

The CD itself is very good, though there are some poor tracks, like 'Shiver' and 'Ugh' (mainly when the lead singer starts wailing like Johnny Rotten!), though they are in the minority. Their music can be summed up as sounding a bit like PIL, and a cross between the Gang of Four, Magazine, The Clash, Talking Heads, and a bit of the Cabaret Voltaire.

It retains strong electronic elements, though it's mainly a solid guitar, bass, drums, and vocal outfit. The playing is very good, and the bass player stands out, along with the drummer.

For those of you looking to explore something new then you could do much worse than this. I took a chance on it and I'm glad I did, some of the tracks on the CD are great, particularly 'Sleeping', 'Holy Moly', 'Win' and 'Little Room' and the instrumentals 'Crawl' and 'YBB'.

Finally something from Philadelphia's Bunnydrums on CD! This disk combines all the tracks from their 1983 album "PKD" and some tracks from the follow-up "Holy Moly." Most of "PKD" I'd describe as tense and driving guitar rock with dark, echoey vocals. A couple of way cool instrumentals in here too. "Holy Moly" continued in a similar vein, but introduced a bizarre sort of apocalyptic cowboy twang in some of the material. I'd had given this release another star if they'd included "Boundaries," the best song from "Holy Moly," maybe in lieu of "Too Much Time" which is a long and repetitive track consisting mostly of drum-machine and hollering vocalist. Man, I really loved these guys, they were freakin excellent when I saw them in '84 at the I-Beam in San Francisco. Good times.

The suspicions of the reviewer above are real. I own the vinyl, and yes the mastering is done at slower speeds. That said, these guys possessed an original voice in the early eighties. Featuring a nice blend of drone synth and funky bass, Gang-of-Fourish guitars and the requisitie angst-ridden vocals, Bunnydrums succeeds on all counts. More impotantly, this music has aged very well--nothing outdated or moldy here. An excellent specimen of the species--dark, powerful urban nihilism done with taste.

honestly said , I wish I would have said that this album is the perfect testimony of what the bunnydrums were in the 80's, that is a pioneer of experimental paranoid claustrophobic weirdo danceable music...I've been waiting for the Bunnydrums on CD for 20 years, and I was very excited waiting for it after having ordered it thru amazon. after having listened to it once , I began to realize there was something wrong. the first song "smithson" which was exploding on vinyl seemed apathic on CD, and after searchin, I came to to the conclusion that some songs are mastered at a lower speed than the original...."smitson" at a speed of 95 %, "magazine" at 95 % , "stop" at 97.5%.
furthermore, they included a new version of "holy moly", largely inferior to the original, they didn't include " boundaries",so my advise, buy a good program for masteringyour vinyls and make by yourself the perfect CD of one of the best american groups of the 80's.