Heaven 17 Remix for brain-melting video
Devo’s co-founder Gerald Casale has a new record out for the Black Friday Record Store Day beano. ‘The Invisible Man’ is a six-track 12-inch EP on clear (“invisible”) vinyl. It will also be available on very visible CD and cassette formats, and on digital platforms. There’s a mix by Heaven 17’s Martyn Ware, which soundtracks the plasticised cartoonish video, in which Mr Casale is assailed by the Invisible Man himself who – wait, is he a penis? – is then beaten and wrestled to the ground by two female assassins. All this takes place on a yellow brick road under a Tellytubbies sun with digital Van Gogh swirling vegetation. Casale’s vivid aesthetic remains as urgent and peculiar as ever.
Alongside three mixes of the title track, there are a further three lounge/EZ listening mixes of 2021’s ‘I’m Going To Pay You Back’, which featured on the album ‘Devo’s Gerald V. Casale AKA Jihad Jerry & The Evildoers’. It’s all very soothing, in a typically Devo way, which of course tends towards to unsettling and strange.
The new track features Steve Bartek of Oingo Boingo and drum legend Josh Freese, who has been Devo’s main drummer for several decades, as well as providing beats for NIN and many others.
Devo played several high profile shows last year in the USA. We asked Jerry back then whether we might see them come to the UK.
“You know, given the randomness of Devo reality, I would never posit that. But I would like to think so,” he told us. “I’m the guy that’s never dropped the Devo torch and have always been Devo, and always tried to keep the spirit of Devo alive. That’s what I tried to do with this new song [‘I’m Going To Pay You Back’], just keep the spirit of Devo alive, with something that was edgy, controversial, a video that had a new look, a look that Devo would use if Devo was doing anything, right?”