Alan Vega’s name is synonymous with unfettered tireless creativity - through his years playing in Suicide, and all the way up until his death in 2016. Vega was constantly creating. That process led to a wealth of material that didn’t see the light of day immediately when it was recorded, which came to be known as the Vega Vault. Mutator is the first in a series of archival releases from the Vault that'll come out on Sacred Bones Records. Mutator was recorded alongside Vega’s longtime collaborator Liz Lamere at his NYC studio from 1995-96, and serves as a document of a particularly fertile time in his creative life. Mutator wasn’t shelved intentionally, but Vega’s back-to-the-grindstone M.O. meant that he had moved on to making his next record before this one was finished. Lamere and Vega’s close friend and confidante Jared Artaud (The Vacant Lots) discovered the raw, unmixed recordings from the Mutator sessions in the Vault in 2019. Soon after, they mixed and produced them into the visionary album that was lurking within those tapes. At the time of the Mutator sessions, Vega was massively inspired by what was happening in the streets of New York. That influence trickled into the sounds he captured in those sessions. That sensibility paired with Vega’s unmistakable voice and force of personality, is what made it the great album it is now. The final piece was the production job completed by Lamere and Artaud 25 years after the songs were first captured. Listen to Nike Soldier