Vertical Slit

Vertical Slit was spearheaded from the prolific and uncompromising Columbus, OH-based singer/guitarist Jim Shepard, later on known for fronting the band V-3. Shaped during the middle-’70s, the loosely built Vertical Slit got its cues from Shepard’s piercing, feedback-intensive acoustic guitar and corrosive lyrical perspective, first documented within the hardly released 1977 cassette Slit and Pre-Slit. Some releases adopted — 1980’s The Live EP and 1981’s Smudge 7″ included in this — all hardly heard or recognized beyond the Ohio underground community. Though documented an excellent five or six years previously, the live Beneath the Bloodstream Red Lava Light cassette proceeded to go unreleased until 1986, adopted a year later on by Cellar 2115; just a following feature in Pressured Exposure journal brought Shepard and Vertical Slit almost any national interest, prompting collectors to begin with futilely scouring bins for the band’s long-out-of-print produces. 1990’s Vertical Slit and Beyond set up highlights in the group’s catalog, but excepting the 1991 cassette YOUR LADY Is normally Licking My Strobe Light and Grinning, Shepard today focused practically all of his energies into his brand-new outfit, V-3, acquiring period off upon completing 1992’s Negotiate Nothing at all after nearly shedding his submit an industrial incident. When V-3 resurfaced in 1996 with Photo Burns, remarkably more than enough, they’d arrived on a significant label, American’s short-lived Onion imprint. Unfortunately, Shepard dedicated suicide on Oct 16, 1998; he was simply 40 years previous.