Sexa

Along with Belgrade's Disciplina Kicme and Sarajevo's SCH, SexA was the most striking creature to prowl the Yugoslav underground of the 1980s. But unlike the aforementioned ruffians, this art-damaged troupe from Zagreb released zero CDs and only two slabs of vinyl: 1990's noise rock classic 'No Sleep Till Pussy'/'Fuck Piction' as well as a subsequent single-over its decade-plus run. In hopes of enlisting avowed fan Steve Albini to engineer a sophomore album, the band decamped to the Netherlands just as political and ethnic unrest began tearing apart the Balkans. The change of scenery led to an altogether different struggle: Having weathered the collapse of communism and the prelude to war in their native country, these outspoken expats had to survive sans the cultural and social frameworks that originally nourished their creativity. Worn down by this and other tensions, they played their final gig in December 1992. Approximately 20 years later, Ines Pletikos fashioned the story into the documentary film 'Kako Smo Usli U Europu-Slucaj SexA' (aka How We Entered Europe-The SexA Case). From a purely musical perspective, though, the group's evolution had barely been chronicled. A slew of pivotal songs remained buried beneath the rubble, either confined to homemade cassettes or never issued at all. Now, Ektro's Full Contact imprint has excerpted hours of largely unheard demos and concert tapes to compile a definitive retrospective. Titled for the English translation of 'Sedatives Ex Apoteka' -for which the name SexA is a contraction- 'Sedatives From The Pharmacy' beautifully summarizes the three idiosyncratic phases of the project's existence. For the earliest chapter, 1980 through 1984, guitarist Darko Kordovan masterminded the material, which frantically amalgamates such disparate elements as rousing drinkers' choruses, Croatian folk rhythms, Dadaist absurdity, no wave destruction, and bizarrely angular interpretations of funk and ska. After his departure, the style mutated into a slower, less kinetic strain of al...