Mark Stewart and the Mafia

http://www.vennfestival.com/friday.htm

though there are concerns we wont get the full show in bristol due to excess of last night - not an uncommon thing in the on-u world.

- word reaches me there is a chance that i may meet up with a member of Echo and the Bunneymen at the gig !

(not will or ian though .. )

could be an interesting evening .. though i am tied as solid Steel/dj food are in town and i would love to see them do their thing.

but its ON-U !

great advice for an old f*cker that has to drive home, and look after the kids from 6am tomorrow morning.

6am wakeup calls from 2 year old monsters post on-u excess ..

geez.

feel my pain.

unless it all falls through .. as indicated above this is not unknown in the world of on-u.

if you do go, please do report back as i'd love to hear whether they are still great. or not.

I'm hoping for at least a small U.S. tour once that MS comp gets released... but I'm doubting it.

http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005635.html

home town gig could be better - hopefully !

that london report worried me.

but fuck it. this was hometown gig.

here's a quick rundown :

> messed up 40 minute jap psyche rock epics from the acid mother temple suport that won me over.

> shane machowan clearing the bar of alcohol while i tried to get one measely bottle of beer

> rob (smith and mighty) smith grooving down in the mosh pit

> stagebound missiles nearly make mark walk off - the stare/anger the man eminated towards the source was quite unnerving, even at his age .. *(he looks well lived in - has put on weight and is a lot taller than your average frontman - quite a stage presence it must be said ..) - but he warmed .. and looked to be really enjoying it later on. even smiling, and singing a love song to Bristol City !

> sheer unadulterated glorious on-u extreme noise - well controlled/tight as f*ck/subsonic bassbooms making people recoil and groan in pain and pleasure/keith le blanc drum chaos/skip macdonalds guitars . i mean these people are legends. and they were on serious form.

> the set included perfectly mesed up distorted versions of all sorts of known classics (metatron got a lot of airplay), libery city sax solos, jerusalem of course. with the band giving it as tight as i have ever seen. the bass hurt.

> 'see you in 10 years time' kissoff.

> hometown gig euphoria in excelsis ..

> ladies of the night checking me out on the walk back to the car.

all in all - was quite awe inspiring.

naturally my head hurts now ..

.. here's the complete gig in bearable 128Kbps

11 tracks - 62 MB yousendit.

http://s45.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1W08PTG087JUY0M32178GW4M41

i have it stored away ..

and loving the david sylvian cover version (forbidden colours) even more than in the flesh ! a ballad !

http://www.ireallylovemusic.co.uk/blog

Learning To Cope With Cowardice is being reissued via on-u/EMI mid november.

extra tracks :

the wrong namd and the wrong number
high ideals and crazy dreams
high ideals live
live paranoia

Mark live sounds like quite the experience.

So apart from Meltdown, is he going to play any UK dates?

I'm listening to Mark Stewart & Maffia for the first time in my life (self-titled US intro LP culling trax from the first two UK albums) and I think it's one of the most amazing things I've heard in I don't know how long. It's not like the On-U sound is entirely new to me -- I used to have a copy of that Gary Clail LP on Nettwerk, love My Life In a Hole In the Ground -- but I'm no expert and this shit is bananas. Nice to be reminded every once in a while that it's possible to make deeply challenging and unsettling music without sacrificing any of its immediate, sensual appeal. In that sense, I'm reminded of Embryonic, the most recent Flaming Lips album (a tangential association based only on time spent listening to it earlier this week), but this is so much richer and wilder. All praise to the Most High for making this exist.

:(

I totally forgot that comp LP existed. If that blows yer mind, you need to hear the records in their full forms, the two are very very different. The first (Learning...) is wary & paranoid yet optimistic. the second (As The Veneer...) is the sound of a boot stamping on a face forever. Nothing else like it, Sherwood at his most insane.

also search "Anger Is Holy" from the 3rd S/T LP, not to be confused with the comp. imo there are diminishing returns thereafter.

Yeah, I've heard others mention the diminishing returns thing. And I am now more than curious abt the full albums. Expected to prefer the LeBlanc/Wimbush/McDonald-backed side 2 (tracks from Veneer), but side one'e equally impressive. Crushing noise and heavy dub-funk throughout. Maffia does a much better job of unifying the two than Tackhead, IMO, though I clearly need to do a lot more digging.

Understand that the band for Learning was drawn from the New Age Steppers. Any recommendations in that direction? I've never heard them, either. Or the Pop Group. (Jesus, all the things I haven't heard...)

search all of both imo, start w/Y for Pop Group and anything for Steppers

I actually put the self-titled comp in my Pazz & Jop top ten for, what year was it, 1985 maybe? 1986? Reviewed it in the Voice too, I believe. Don't have it anymore. But I saw a copy of Learning To Cope With Cowardice in a used record store here for $4 a couple months ago, and was too cheap to pick it up, and I've been regretting it. (Used to have either that one or As The Veneer of Democracy Starts To Fade, too, or maybe both. I liked them a lot at the time. Got rid of all my old Pop Group records too, around 1990 I guess -- even the "We Are All Prostitites" 45 with the Amnesty International Report about torture of prisoners on the B-side. What the hell was I thinking?)

Actually, just checked my files -- I reviewed S.A.N.D., which came out in 1987, but didn't like it nearly as much as the first two, which I called "two of my favorite albums of the decade," so I guess I had them both. And the self-titled was my #1 album of 1986! (Ahead of Motorhead, Die Kreuzen, Mekons, Metallica, Beastie Boys, Nick Cave, Gone, Amor Fati, Membranes.)

But yeah, I apparently liked "Anger Is Holy" from that third LP a lot:

"When Miles Davis predicted in the '70s that an entire decade's worth of music was on the verge of being condensed into just a few phrases, I'd guess he was forseeing something like S.A.N.D.'s 'Anger Is Holy.' The cut opens too ponderous, with an overpained moan turning the title slogan even more stilted and foolish than it reads on paper, but colossal conga-beats and shrapnel-thrower feedback start knocking each other awry, and then Sherwood commences splicing, interspersing, sampling in Stewart's alley-rat snarl, submerging it, scratching everything up."

I wrote a lot about Sherwood a lot in those days otherwise, fwiw. Favorite non-Stewart album of his was probably African Head Charge's Off The Beaten Track. Not sure I ever heard My Life In A Hole In The Ground though, oddly enough.

Thanks for the info, khk. It's weird, the whole Sherwood axis was a popular critical touchstone in those days, and much less so (it seems) in recent years -- in the States, anyway. Maybe this stuff strikes a lot of ppl as dated now? I dunno...

Personally, I find that I'm much better able to "hear" it now than I was then. To me, it seemed dated way back then. I mostly hated the era's reliance on gated snares, primitive synth drums, and harsh DMX clatter. Got that a lot from the Celluloid crew (Material, etc.) and it really turned me off. Sherwood seems like one of the few people who really understood how to use that palette -- along with a ton of US hip-hop producers, of course, esp. the Bomb Squad -- but I heard about Sherwood more than I actually heard his best work.

Seems a shame the early On-U Sound has become a footnote, with so little mainstream attention.

"It's weird, the whole Sherwood axis was a popular critical touchstone in those days, and much less so (it seems) in recent years."

The Wire did a On-U Primer a couple of years ago and I seem to recall Sasha Frere-Jones bigging up Creation Rebel? New Age Steppers? in an interview. I tend to like Sherwood's earlier stuff (Creation Rebel, African Headcharge, Singers & Players stuff) best although there are some gems even in the later years (the Lee Perry albums, Songs & Praises, etc.)

Yeah, it seems to have lingered longer in the UK's critical consciousness -- which makes sense given the provenance, and the fact that this general type of music has continued to evolve & flourish over there (dub, dancehall, experimental dance music, "the hardcore continuum", whatever). So I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that it's dropped off the US indie/generalist radar -- for the most part, barring folks like SFJ. Maybe if that Mark Stewart comp on Soul Jazz had been better received?

Didn't even know there was a Soul Jazz comp. But honestly, I don't get the idea that Sherwaood was ever that much on the US rock-crit radar that much to begin with. It's not like any of his albums ever came close to doing anything in Pazz & Jop, for instance. The cool indie-label monthly Op gave him plenty of space in the early/mid '80s -- there was one guy there who was pretty obsessed with Sherwood; that might even be where I learned about him. But at the Voice, at least, I was the only person who wrote about him much. (I did a lead review roundup of On-U stuff in March 1986, headlined "Master Blaster Dub," plus smaller things here and there.) Pretty sure Christgau only ever included a couple albums in his Consumer Guide. Then in the early '90s there was a fairly comprehensive Will Hermes essay (along with a very comprehensive weighted discography) in the Spin Alternative Record Guide book. So that's some stuff. But don't kid yourself into thinking Sherwood was a major critics' icon in the '80s; most had barely heard of him, I bet.

That may be true. In the mid-80s, I was regularly reading the Voice, Artforum (Marcus, who talked a fair bit about music), Option, Forced Exposure and (a little later) Your Flesh. Folks at all those places gave him a lof of credit, both directly and as a reference in talking about other stuff -- like say hip-hop as deconstruction (a popular angle). Plus, you know, there was period during which Material/Celluloid/Laswell were on everybody's radar, and I think he & On-U were often roped in with that. And he produced Pretty Hate Machine for NIN, right? Or at least some tracks on it, and Reznor mentioned his name quite a bit as an influence, iirc.

Anyway, that was how I got the (perhaps erroneous) impression that he was kind of a big deal to US critics. Doesn't really matter, I'm just happy to have found this now.

That last post came off wrong. Wasn't my intent to fault "the critical establishment" (shakes fist like Snoopy at the Red Baron) for ignoring Very Important Noise-Dub Progenitors. Wasy trying to suggest that my sense of On-U's overall importance to the US indie/alt crowd may have been distorted by what I was reading.

Anyway, I picked up a used copy of that Mark Stewart comp as well as The Pop Group's debut (Y). Love it all to death, though the Pop Group stuff is less consistently groove-driven, more primitive dub punk (which I expected). Cool as hell, but I do miss the beat focus and wild-ass 3D production that Sherwood brings to the Maffia. And that Soul Jazz IS something of a disappointment. Only 12 cuts deep, and 4 of them decent but underwhelming recent joints. The rest is GREAT, but it doesn't contain anything that isn't on Y or that US Maffia comp, which is a damn shame.

Inspired me to dig out that Death Comet Crew retrospective from a few years back, and I find that I'm liking it, too, a whole lot more than I did at the time. Distinctly amateurish and lo-fi in comparison to the Stewart productions, but still satisfyingly trippy, funky and harsh. Anybody got any suggestions for listening in the same ballpark? Intersection of hip-hop, dub and str8-up noize? I remember liking some Dalek stuff, and that's similar, but what else?

Dalek, Rubberoom, that Techno Animal album Brotherhood of the Bomb and the singles on Matador they released around then, the second Ice record Bad Blood, almost everything Wordsound put out.

Also try the New Age Steppers if you want more dubby Stewart (and Ari Up to boot.)

Wordsound's a good call, cuz yeah, hip-hop dub noise pretty much = 90s illbient. Remember liking Spectre, Spooky and We™ at the time. And Wordsound put out an EP of those crazy fucked-up Jungle Brothers dubs from the J Beez Wit the Remedy sessions through their Black Hoods offshoot. They'll always be aces in my book for that alone.

Main difference between the illbient stuff I've heard and Pop Group/Maffia/DCC is the absence of any strong punk component, even a conceptual one. That's a big part of the appeal for me. Hip hop and dub for the groove, dub and noise for the psychedelics, noise and punk for the chaos and attack. I'm really into the sense of irregularity that the tracks generate, the sense that they don't have any defined shape. They stick out this way or that in an intuitive, sensual manner, but they aren't looking to soothe or envelop the listener. You never know from moment to moment where the sound is gonna go next, even after you've heard them a few times.

Will check out Techno Animal and Ice, as I've been meaning to for a while, but have the (perhaps erroneous?) impression that they'll be more regular/predictable in shape. We'll see...

I guess some of the acts are Wordsound-related, but from the past decade or so, you might want to consider looking around for the Broklyn Beats label comps Brutal Police Menace (feat. Garth Vader, Nettle, Criterion, Zipperspy w/ Christiph Ire, Welmo Romero and Splice, Huge Voodoo w/ Mike Ladd, Aristide Massaccesi, Jack Clang, Ylyptyk, Doily) and The Broklyn Beats 7" Series (w/ Doily, Criterion, DJ/Rupture, Rotator, Broklyn Beast, 1-Speed Bike, 1-Sound, Donna Summer -- not the disco Donna Summer, the hipster collage-art one.) Lots of stuff on those definitely in the Sherwood tradition. A few of those acts have okay EPs or full-lengths of their own, too.

Here are some reviews I wrote for a column in Blurt last year, about some 7-inches by some of the acts that wound up on those comps. They're probably redundant to each other, to a certain extent, but maybe they'll give you some ideas about other stuff to hunt around for:

BROKLYN BEAST “March of The Oil Barons”/”The Vampire Strikes Back” (Broklyn Beats, 2002): Clearly there’s a concept of historical importance here, not to mention a craft project: The label – featuring a photo of George W. Bush with fangs drawn on his face -- is not actually on the disc, but rather on a sticker inside the sleeve, ready for the listener to cut out and apply. “Since United Records wouldn’t print our label you get to do it yourself!,” exclaims a Brooklyn-addressed press release, which I also tucked into the sleeve. That same one-sheet explains that the record is “a one-off experimental breaks project with production by label heads doily and Criterion,” and calls the music “hard dub and chug fun for the summertime,” which overstates matters somewhat: I hear skipping vinyl noises, cartoon-like sound effects, distorted scratch sounds, all switching gears and shaped and repeated into a clanging facsimile of a rhythm. Sort of reminds me of the early works of U.K. industrial band Test Dept. The flipside is equally repetitive, but faster, and even more disruptive, with abrasive horn-sample additives. An intriguing curio that tries to answer the question: “How far from what people think of as music as you can go and still maintain a recognizable beat?” Not quite this far, but maybe close.

CRITERION – “Race Traitor”/”Honky Talk Hits” (Broklyn Beats, 2001)
Two more aural experiments from a mad-scientist laboratory in Brooklyn, working overtime to resurrect dub without reggae life support: “Honky Talk Hits” lets an inverted piano mess and minstrel-show vocals that go “yeaaaahhh…..” dig through sand dunes’ worth of dirt; “Race Traitor” is closer to some of Adrian Sherwood’s more outlandish ‘80s productions, or maybe Keith LeBlanc’s 1983 12-inch “No Sell Out,” credited to Malcolm X. A repeated sample of Dick Gregory growls “We don’t dislike you, we hate your stinking white racist insti-tooo-shuns,” which slogan performs the musical duty of keeping the experiment grounded, so centrifugal force doesn’t yank everything apart.

DOILY “2000 Dumb”/”Welcome Home” (Broklyn Beats, 2001): The martial rhythm sounds submerged – on a submarine, maybe. Springs and gadgets and bellows (both kinds) succumb to nautical miles of deep-sea echo. Deadpan spoken phrases, seemingly from movie dialogue, emerge out of the abyss: “Shot down in cold blood.” Gradually the music turns into a busted pinball-machine on tilt, or better yet a firing range, heard through static over a broken field radio in the back of a Jeep with no doors. That’s the A-side; the B-side has not-quite-tuned-in shortwave transmissions evolving into dub reggae, or some bassline’s recognizable approximation thereof. The transmissions fade in and out, do backflips over Pymgy of the Ituri Forest drums, thicken into quicksand until you start losing your belongings. Word is that some Brooklyn gal pieced it all together.

I-SOUND “Sweating In The Ages”/”Dog Years” (Broklyn Beats, 2002) In “Sweating In The Ages,” a broken computer keyboard dances a skittery soft shoe, turns into a cash register spewing pennies all over the room, which turns into a Martian typewriter, which gets mellow and forlorn and then turns into a tick-tocking metronome. In “Dog Years,” an unhurried, fuzzy clank suffused with crud somehow forms itself into an identifiable albeit highly distorted groove. Nice pockets of space -- albeit conveying less personality, somehow, than Indian Jewelry’s. Though based in Brooklyn, I-Sound once split an CD with Berlin’s To Rococo Rot, whose name is spelled the same forwards and backwards.

the Digital Hardcore stuff veers into Mark Stewart territory now and then.

i.e Atari Teenage Riot, Christoph De Babalon, Hanin Elias, etc.

xp And here's a link to reviews I wrote a few years ago connecting that Death Comet Crew comp you mentioned, Sherwood's Never Trust A Hippy, and David Banner's first screwed and chopped album:

http://www.villagevoice.com/2003-11-25/music/music/

Thanks for the tips! Familiar w/ Broklyn Beats through their /rupture and Donna Summer 12"s, both of which are great. Like the Donna Summer/Jason Forrest stuff in general, though it's a lot more jokey and head-oriented (as opposed to ass-oriented) than the Sherwood stuff it's probably inspired by.

/rupture's early mixes (Gold Teeth Thief and his 1st Shotgun Wedding set) are some of my favorite music of the last 10 years

xp Yeah, the Summer stuff I've heard is defintely toward the jokey end of Broklyn Beats, too. And like I say in those reviews, I wouldn't say the label quite pulls off what Sherwood was doing 25 years ago (too clinical, somehow, and yeah, probably not groove-oriented enough), but it probably comes as close as anything else I've heard so far this millenium.

DHR totally makes sense as a mention, but I never did manage to get the hang of ATR. Liked Shizuo a lot, but the more stridently PUNK stuff ATR were cranking out turned me off. Was too lockstep, uptight and contrived-sounding -- or at least I thought so at the time. Maybe I should revisit? Any recs for particularly dusted/funky Alec Empire productions?

illbient / digital hardcore revival? too soon.

Never too soon!

contenderizer if you've not heard the Christoph De Babalon stuff on DHR I wholeheartedly recommend it. The LP he did for the label is probably the best DHR or DHR affiliated thing.

Also recommend DJ Scud and the whole Ambush label. Probably best and raw-est combo of jungle-gabba-noise around for a while there. /rupture has a combo Nettle whose first record is in a similar vein (with slightly more Muslimgauze influence) that's well worthwhile as well. Rumors of a follow up w/ dudes from Nass El Ghiwane have never materialized.

Yeah, I remember liking the DJ Scud stuff I heard. Had a copy of his Ambush ceedee for a while, I got rid of it somewhere along the way, dunno why. In my mind, that stuff slides off in two directions: into Bug-style dancehall influenced gloom, or into Kid 606/Shitmat/V Snares insanity (neither of which is my favorite thing in the world).

Will try and track down the CdR LP you mentioned, though.

CdB, I mean to say...

Yeah Scud's kind of the perfect marriage of the two, mostly cuz it's 1) still very recognizably dance music and 2) Scud seems to genuinely love the pop/ragga/dancehall elements he uses. I have a fantastic 40 minute Scud mix that he did for kool.pop.

Ah this is it:

http://www.discogs.com/DJ-Scud-2002-v1/release/1542232

leonardo?

I'll to through it up there this weekend.

throw, ahem

It's there now.

after a week of on-u love as per the other thread, i found a copy of Mark Stewarts latest album, Edit, in the bins.
3 spins in already and i think its going to be one i play a lot more than the others.
while his previous albums all have great tracks littered about, they can make for a difficult listen from album opener to closer. edit though seems for more concise and controlled, though still with plenty of the usual trademark noise outbursts.
anyone know more about the film, on-off, thats supposedly on its way as per the albums notes ?

Got the Learning + Lost Tapes double pack reissue today - these skronking unpredictable productions are such unadulterated joyrides! I only got to know the On-U Sound stuff through the Sherwood at the Controls compilations a few years ago and I've turned into a huge fan. Still so much more to hunt down, luckily the local record store owner's a fan, too...

https://www.clashmusic.com/news/mark-stewart-the-pop-group-has-died/

sorry, should have put the link in this thread.

r.i.p.

aaaaargh just heard this from a friend

JUst saw an RIP mentioned on a Dime Pop Group torrent.
Sorry to hear it. Have loved Y since I was turned onto it by mention in Birthday party comparisons to when I got obsessed with them just after they split. From what I remember I got Y and Lick My Decals Off baby by Capt Beefheart in the same purchase.

was knocked out by him posting a link to my Gun Club article in his FB feed a couple of years ago. Cos I loved his work a lot.
Unfortunately only time i saw the Mafia at all was the very last song when they supported the Swans at ULU in 85, one of the gigs that contributed to Public castration is a Good Idea. I'd been up speeding the night before otherwise might have been more together and caught the whole set.

Still think back to the Maffia headlining the On-U Revue your that seems to have been scrubbed from history.

back in the day i only used to buy mark stewart/on-u releases out of dedication to the label.
then i went to the gig as mentioned above, and yeah, the penny dropped.
hard.
also, having misplaced them, i have just refound the mp3s for the Venn Festival gig.
just wish they were better than 128s, but hey.

one of my favourite MS tracks was hidden away on a compilation that on-u released during their dead zone years.
still sounds insane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXLZDH5G860

"she is beyond good and evil" is one of the best songs ever written. rip

had no idea he was 18 when Y came out, seems impossible

i'm still trying to process this. way beyond sad.

MS was such a huge figure in my musical journey that it feels beyond belief he is gone.

the incredible liberty city or maybe it was his version of jerusalem, was my entry point and i saw him play live a ton of times in the 80s. my brain never fully recovered.

i then worked my way back to discover the pop group and it is indeed almost impossible to ponder that he was making music like Y at such a young age. there are times i have thought "she is beyond good and evil" is thee best song ever written.

eventually the universe worked its weird ways and i got to know him and he asked me to support him and remix him and then again when the pop group reformed. what an honour! truly he was a visionary. an awkward, difficult fucker, but truly in touch with this universe in a way very few people are.

i saw him live twice last year and he seemed SO alive.

somewhere, there is a place for us....

(best use of Satie ever - sadly only half the song is on youtube) -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLULm8YpOpw

Found this last year on YouTube..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3jwGfniuW8

I'm listening to LTCWC for the first time in a long while, and I think this sounds more electric, vital, and extraordinary than it ever has. Some of the lyrics used to strike me as slightly rote, but in 2023 they sound more distilled and essential. I'll have to go back to Y after this—though I've never heard either How Much Longer or Veneer, which maybe I should rectify

RIP

oh man Veneer is my fave, so good & intense

ah nice, I'll prioritize that one

Mark Stewart – Mark Stewart is incredible too. He tears apart Donna Summer and Ruyichi Sakamoto.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNp6B39f9KA

awesome, never seen that, thx

I mentioned this on the obit thread - Ms Telecom once ran Pop Group social media and we were lucky to hang out with Mark several times over the years. Felt honored to be dubbed a "worthy conversationalist" even if it feel like I went a few rounds with the Bristolian Muhammad Ali. We're still stunned here.

I first thought of "Storm Crow" from Pay It All Back 8. It's also in the Mark Fisher documentary (I think it might be about him?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zAHRaUtWm8

Blooming love Y, that production that soujnds like freefall. Found We Are Time in the same shop a while later and it was less than a pund cos the generic sleeve made it look like a 12 inch. Have loved taht too. I'm now no longer going to be able to ask him abou influences, not sure why I never did.
Obvious cues to Beefheart on thaaaaat WAT set I think but is possible I'm missing that being to something else.

18 is awesome.
But I am reminded fo things like him and the band thinking shifting fader levels randomly on a recording session was a significant subversive act.

Do wish the Pop Group's organisation would release a full early set by the band. Also shame that We AreTime and Cabinet 9of Criosities were released as separate cds instead of together.
Hope there are live sets that I haven't heard from the Y and earlier era.

Very interested in his history snd progress into punk. It seems now that him going from soul/funk into punk is not as much of a rarity as it seemed when I first heard about it Dylan Jones' Sweet Dreams had a few more similar stories. I guess funk was an element o finfluence across a lot of post punk so maybe not that unexpected.

Have Y on my 3changer this week though player is fuzzing it out. Probably way beyond time. May Neeed t bung 9n the 2nd lp before long.

he talks a lot about his own and TPG’s early days (and his love of dub) in this episode of Tangent Calling, a podcast focusing on the Bristol scene:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1Wd1M8abM0LpYfjiOqnUQs?si=vjBH9rsATfyrHB_qseWe1Q&dd=1

the subject is ostensibly the release of the dub version of Y, but it goes many places before it gets there

this episode is from Oct 21, there is also one with him from Mar 22, which I haven’t listened to, which focuses on his then-new VS album and noise music:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1y7PecjJaIqrq4Xc5TP21J?si=tY7-WZasSvKQggxuyBqafA&dd=1

Y is absolutely The One for me too, very possibly the very best thing to come out of punk, a blast again, as ever, when I played it yesterday in Stewart’s memory. For How Much Longer… is a continuation in large part but it sounds much more claustrophobic and is not on the same level as a result.

I also listened to Veneer yesterday, and while I understand/appreciate it was a(nother) groundbreaking record, the ground it broke is just not very appealing to me. I don’t like industrial as a genre and I also find the muddled hip-hop beats quite dour, especially compared to everything that is going on rhythm-wise on Y

the thing that makes Y so exceptional is that there’s an openness and space to go with all the denseness of sound and intensity of expression that is absent from Stewart’s later projects (the ones that I’m familiar with anyway).
that is clearly the input of Dennis Bovell (MS talks about him in that first podcast ep as well). it’s truly a blessing that these two forces (of viktry) got to work together for this.

(kind of blows my mind that Bovell worked more or less simultaneously (or successively?) on Y, LKJ’s Forces Of Victory and Janet Kay’s “Silly Games”)

that second episode is interesting too btw, the first half is mostly about the PG era as well

(kind of blows my mind that Bovell worked more or less simultaneously (or successively?) on Y, LKJ’s Forces Of Victory and Janet Kay’s “Silly Games”)

and Cut by The Slits!

you’re right, that one too. incredible.

Is Bovell soundtrack for movie Babylon from around 80 available?

https://dennisbovell.bandcamp.com/album/dennis-bovells-babylon-the-original-score-download