Thirty miles north of Washington there is a town called Columbia, one of the first planned-communities built in the US, and in retrospect, the perfect birthplace for a band as completely chaotic as Void. Their DC debut was in 1980 at the first Wilson Center show, a marathon 15-band affair largely organized by the Bad Brains. When Void started a song it was as if each member was playing his own parts as fast as humanly possible, but not necessarily together. Unlike most bands, whose performances become predictable, Void shows became increasingly discombobulated and ever more fraught with disaster. The live chaos remained present even as they started to embrace a metal image and sound towards the end of their three-year existence. While to some it may have seemed like complete cacophony, to those in the know it was music on a higher level.
While organizing the Dischord archive, we came across the 4-track of Void's first recording session. This was done with Steve Carr at Hit and Run Studios in November '81 and never released (though there has been at least one bootleg made from a cassette of the original mix). The master tape was nowhere to be found, so the tape was remixed by Ian MacKaye and Don Zientara at Inner Ear earlier this year. It was like digging through a treasure chest! Hearing embryonic versions of what would become Void classics as well as songs that didn't make the cut made it clear just how driven this band was to capture their own sound.
