Alien she: Emerald, Sapphire and Gold

MUSIC Even the strangest sounds tend to lose their unfamiliar aura after a few listens. But no matter how many times I spin ESG's "UFO," I find myself utterly incapable of identifying that synthetic warbling that meanders through the minimal groove. Is it water gurgling in old gas pipes, a whirling police siren, the ferocious grumbling of a subway train? Or something more disturbing: Clanging echoes of gunfire, successive bursts of city noise filtered through apartment hallways?

It's as if the song prompts a flux of associations that never find a place to rest. But as much as the song prompts a heavy dose of uneasiness, it works a curative spell on the body. That mysterious noise, whose relentless growth heightens the pulse of the rhythm, ultimately triggers an urge to break out in rhythm, and to put it quite simply: dance.

"Coming up in the South Bronx, in the 1970s, we watched Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind," says lead vocalist and writer, Renee Scroggins, who together with her sisters — Valerie on drums, Deborah on bass guitar, and Marie on congas — originally composed ESG with a couple friends. "At the end of Close Encounters, they have that do do do do in the background when they communicate with the aliens," she continues. "So I was sitting at home one day, and I thought: What would it be like if a UFO just landed in the middle of the projects? And that's how I wrote the song. It begins with chaos and craziness, because I know what would happen," she laughs.

Over 30 years have passed since ESG (Emerald, Sapphire and Gold) pressed "UFO" to wax on its debut seven-inch for Factory Records in 1981. Today, the unlikely story of the vinyl's origins seems to be the stuff of lore. While still teenagers, the Scroggins sisters had been performing in New York's downtown scene for a couple of years. "We were opening for A Certain Ratio at a club called Hurrah in New York when Tony Wilson [of Factory Records] heard us," Renee recalls, "and he said, 'how would you like to make a record?' I was like, yeah sure, because I didn't think he was serious. But this was on a Wednesday night, and by Saturday, we were in the studio recording with Martin Hannett."

Hannett, Factory's eccentric in-house producer who is likely best known for his work on Joy Division, lent his uncanny touch to ESG's sound. Bookmarked by the diss song "You're No Good" and the other end of the love spectrum, "Moody," with its emotional highs and lows, the EP consists in a stripped down polypercussive funk that would mark ESG's style for the rest of its output: loosely structured drum patterns weave around pockets of emptiness and stark bass lines, letting Renee's vocals flutter and hypnotize. It caught the attention of Ed Bahlman at NY's 99 Records, who was already unofficially managing the outfit but hadn't realized its full potential in the studio. The Scroggins followed with another EP and recorded their debut full-length for 99, Come Away with ESG, at Radio City Music Hall in '83.

Come Away solidified its magnetic role during a fertile period of New York's musical history, in which at least three strands of musical forms encountered each other to unexpected effect. The angular edge of post-punk deconstructed the blues guitar, no wave bands challenged rock purism by stressing the danceable groove, and block parties exploded in the South Bronx, establishing the conditions for what would eventually come to be known as hip-hop. ESG — which shared the stage with the Clash, Gang of Four, and Grandmaster Flash, and performed at Paradise Garage, Danceteria and the Mudd Club — was at the threshold of all this momentum.