KEVIN DUNN
NO GREAT LOST: SONGS, 1979 - 1985
Casa Nueva Industries
If the name Kevin Dunn rings any bells, it’s likely as an album credit on works by the B-52s (he co-produced the seminal “Rock Lobster/52 Girls’’ single) or Pylon (he co-produced their debut album, “Gyrate’’). But Dunn, one of the taste-making movers and shakers of the underground Southern New Wave scene, was also a singular singer-songwriter whose 1981 debut, “The Judgement of Paris,’’ was as lauded as it’s been forgotten in the three decades since its release. That’s where the local label Casa Nueva Industries, founded by Brad San Martin (of Boston twee-popsters One Happy Island), comes in. Together with local engineering whiz Pete Weiss, who painstakingly reconstructed the original mixes of “Paris’’ from the existing master tapes (unfortunately, the original mixes were destroyed by a fire), Casa Nueva has finally made Dunn’s debut available again — along with a treasure trove of rare and essential single and EP tracks. The result is an eclectic 21-track anthology that offers a simultaneously panoramic and claustrophobically crammed view of Dunn’s skewed vision and cracked perspective. The Clean-esque opener, “911,’’ bristles and buzzes with hi-fi energy and lo-fi production values. Proto-electro-infused jabs like “Tootsie 2’’ and “Saturn’’ sound like Devo-meets-Wire mash-ups, with maybe a sardonic dash of late-’70s Alex Chilton. Even standards like Bo Diddley’s “Mona’’ and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow’’ are pushed sideways or upended altogether. It all makes for a package that’s as weirdly compelling as it is compellingly weird.
