The Beakers - Four Steps Toward a Cultural Revolution (2004)

If the Beakers had been in New York, they would have been hobnobbing with Liquid Liquid and the Contortions; put them across the water in the U.K. and Martin Hannett would have been producing their Factory single while A Certain Ratio tried to steal their drummer. Though cut from the same nervous, funky post-punk cloth as those contemporaries, the Beakers were from Seattle, which in 1980 wasn't the buzzing music haven that grunge would make it ten years later. Isolation may have stopped them from reaching most folks, but with a superb rhythm section in drummer George Romansic and bass player Francesca Sundsten and off-kilter sax from Jim Anderson backing up Mark H. Smith's arty enigmatic lyrics and jerky guitar, they can at least now be heard as spiritual forefathers to the Rapture, Erase Errata, and other mid-2000s danceable rockers mining those same sonic fields. Various appearances on collections, including one of the early Sub Pop tapes, unreleased recordings, and a handful of live dates are collected on Four Steps Toward a Cultural Revolution, putting the Beakers back in the starry firmament where they should have been all along.