More an amalgamation of various NYC No-wave scenesters in the early 1980s, Aural Exciters were an interesting side note to that chapter in music history. Bob Blank is a producer/engineer who released one of the first disco 12"s (Jimmy Sabater, "To Be With You") back in 1975. He owned a studio in Manhattan, Blank Tapes Studios, that produced a lot of hit records in the late 70's and early 1980's. He worked on records by tons of artists (including Talking Heads, Kid Creole & the Coconuts, Lydia Lunch, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, and more -not to exclude Donna Summer, Sting, and Patti Smith). Some of the scenes in the movie "Downtown 81" (2000) were filmed at this studio.

The Aural Exciters was a sort of after hours project that he started around 1980. After the sessions finished Bob used to ask many of his clients if they would play on some of his own recordings. He used a variety of these brilliant artists and musicians, earmarking anyone he could get to play. August Darnel and Andy "Coati Mundi" Hernandez from Kid Creole & the Coconuts wrote almost all the songs, helped with & Adriana Kaegi from the Coconuts." The title cut "Spooks In Space" was written by Ronnie Rogers, a regular at Blank Tapes Studios. Rogers later wrote "Deputy Of Love" for Fonda Rae. Some notable musicians are James Chance from The Contortions on sax, Pat Place on guitar, Fonda Rae, Ronnie Rogers on piano, drums, vocals, and many others.

These were pretty rare albums for many years, but the ZE re-release captures most of the best tunes from this little known project.

Check out "Emile (Night Rate)", "Maladie D'Amour", or "Spooks In Space" on the ZE Records release. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.