The Units’ Digital Stimulation is synthpunk perfection

The Units are a band I discovered in part thanks to No Dogs in Space. During their miniseries on The Screamers (another incredible band worth checking out), they mention synthpunk.org as one of their sources. And there’s no better way to get my attention than to combine two of my favorite things — punk rock and synthesizers. The site was down that day (it appears to be back up now), but I was able to access a version from July through the Wayback Machine. What greeted me was a bare-bones site with links for six bands, including The Screamers. But at the top was The Units, a band I’d never heard of and, after tracking down their 1980 record Digital Stimulation, I fell in love.

The production, especially on the Devo-esque vocals, feels distinctly of its time. But the sound palette and arrangements are more aggressive, dancier, and generally just more modern-sounding. Ignoring the vocals, album opener “High Pressure” could pass as an MSPAINT song. The title track, with its sped-up disco stomp, could have been released by DFA in 2003. And many of the later tracks would be at home on a Single Frame record.

The Units weren’t the first punk band to dabble with synths. Nor were they the first act to largely replace guitars with keyboards and lean into technology as a core theme of their songwriting. The Talking Heads offered a cleaner, artier take on punk, incorporating keyboards, non-Western percussion, and even tape loops. Devo’s first single, “Mongoloid,” has a distinctly punk edge that would have been right at home alongside The Units. But the band still leaned heavily on traditional guitar and bass, and always felt more at home in the art-rock and new wave scenes.

Husband-and-wife duo Scott Ryser and Rachel Webber, the primary songwriters of The Units, had a sharper edge to their sound. They were firmly grounded in the West Coast punk scene that made its DIY ethos a core part of its identity. Their contemporaries were the Dead Kennedys, The Mutants, and The Avengers. You can hear it in the lean arrangements that prioritize raw energy over perfection. That’s not to say songs like “Cannibals” and “Bugboy” are simplistic. Their bleak, slightly humorous critiques of an uncaring world are models of efficiency — unfussy and infectious.

Like a lot of Bay Area punk bands, there’s a melodicism to The Units’ work that is hard to shake. “Warm Moving Bodies” feels like a dancefloor anthem waiting to happen, and “High Pressure” is an undeniable earworm.

The band did record a second album in 1981, Animals They Dream About, but it remained unreleased until 2016. It’s also an excellent document of the under-represented synthpunk scene of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Though, it is far more polished and leans into poppier new wave arrangements that are a step removed from their bootstrapped punk roots.