Tina Turner and the techno track from Terminator—Linn Van Hek’s “Intimacy”—team up for most of the sounds made by San Francisco’s Von Iva, who wear custom clothes and play custom drums crafted out of junk and who recorded their last bionic pop record through the same mixing board once used to de-overdrive Led Zeppelin and ultra-smooth Bob Marley. Our Own Island (released last year on Ruby Tower) follows the amiable departure of founding Von Iva bassist Elizabeth Davis Simpson (once of 7 Year Bitch) with (slightly) the sort of synth-disco that bands like Glass Candy and Gossip also eventually trended toward, as well as a semi-similar transition from grawge to gloss. New Von Iva album preserves singer Jillian Iva’s coaly soul vocals—the Tina Thunderdome moan—but uses overcranked synth melody (Rebecca Kupersmith) and a Moe Tucker take on Devo drums (Kelly Harris) as revamped combat chassis. Signature “Lala” tracks the path abandoned by X’s “Los Angeles”—the girl who never had to leave the party—and “Birds of Prey” trims Giorgio Moroder’s “Mission” into a pulsebeat downer about the lady leaving her lover and/or herself. (“You don’t own me . . . / Can’t control me . . . ” says Iva, echoing Tina.) Island over-all chomps close to the center of the raw disco-not-disco beats Mick Collins was listening to in the car on the way to Gories shows (unrelated: Mick Collins’ techno 12” Plasmaphon to finally see release this year!) and though this is two and four decades from the different kinds of rust-belt afterhours music that kicked together for inspiration, Von Iva will still kick you around a little.

Tags: alex's bar, Music, terminator, tina turner, von iva