Post by Ras Berry on May 27, 2011 21:36:36 GMT
Taken from the July 2011 edition of Mojo magazine:
Title: TBC ("It could be Creed, Operative, or The Immaculate Deception.")
Due: October
Producer: Mark Stewart and Youth
Songs: Vanity Kills, Let Me Talk To The Driver, Neon Girl, Children Of The Revolution
The buzz: "This is going to be as noisy, heavy, and out there as anything I've done. I also had these ideas for sci-fi lullabies, these ballads. It's weird for me, because I'm so noisy..."
"I really wanted to get some of my heroes on this record," declares veteran provocateur Mark Stewart. Thus his eighth album features a jaw-dropping cast - dub magus Lee 'Scratch' Perry, proto-punk mover Richard Hell, Cabaret Voltaire's Richard H Kirk, magick film-maker Kenneth Anger, Massive Attack, Primal Scream, Slits Tessa Pollitt and Viv Albertine, Gina Birch of The Raincoats, Current 93's David Tibet and yardcore pain-bringer The Bug. There's another contributor to raise eyebrows, in a good way - the elusive Clash/PiL guitarist Keith Levene.
"I get people who usually turn stuff down," says Stewart. "They respect me, for some fucking reason. Keith Levene said, 'For you, Mark...' He's the unsung hero of British punk - for me, he's as important as Tom Verlaine."
Stewart admits Toni Schifer's recent documentary, On/Off: Mark Stewart From The Pop Group To The Maffia, helped suggest the mobbed-up direction, when eminent interviewees declared their esteem for the genre-splicing brainshocks he's been making since 1979. Recordings began in Berlin, Lisbon, Vienna and Vancouver, with more concerted work at On-U Sound and Youth's Youthanasia studio. So far, there are spy themes, icy house and disco, fugged hip hop, tribal punk, brooding orchestrations, planet-sized bass and bursts of phantom guitar from Levene.
T-Rex's Children Of The Revoltion, meanwhile, is recast as sardonic, mutoid ragga as played in a football ground. "I just crash things," Stewart says. "I crash genres. I want to hear that bass line with metal guitars, just to tell my story. People run off with these sparks and make something else. That's what punk was, crashing. That's what this stuff is like." Suitably for the man who gave voice to such anti-matter protest works as The Pop Group's We Are All Prostitutes and his own As The Veneer Of Democracy Starts To Fade, it will be lyrically confrontational. "I don't accept reality, really," he says. "It's an illusion...(but) all I talk about are the things that interest me, like I'd be talking in the pub. It's part of reality. And there is a shadow war going on."
Stewart, who's also recording and playing live with the reactivated Pop Group - remains phlegmatic, however. "My girlfriend was asking me, 'Why are all these people bending over backwards across the world?'" he says. "I said, It's probably because I haven't done anything crap."
Title: TBC ("It could be Creed, Operative, or The Immaculate Deception.")
Due: October
Producer: Mark Stewart and Youth
Songs: Vanity Kills, Let Me Talk To The Driver, Neon Girl, Children Of The Revolution
The buzz: "This is going to be as noisy, heavy, and out there as anything I've done. I also had these ideas for sci-fi lullabies, these ballads. It's weird for me, because I'm so noisy..."
"I really wanted to get some of my heroes on this record," declares veteran provocateur Mark Stewart. Thus his eighth album features a jaw-dropping cast - dub magus Lee 'Scratch' Perry, proto-punk mover Richard Hell, Cabaret Voltaire's Richard H Kirk, magick film-maker Kenneth Anger, Massive Attack, Primal Scream, Slits Tessa Pollitt and Viv Albertine, Gina Birch of The Raincoats, Current 93's David Tibet and yardcore pain-bringer The Bug. There's another contributor to raise eyebrows, in a good way - the elusive Clash/PiL guitarist Keith Levene.
"I get people who usually turn stuff down," says Stewart. "They respect me, for some fucking reason. Keith Levene said, 'For you, Mark...' He's the unsung hero of British punk - for me, he's as important as Tom Verlaine."
Stewart admits Toni Schifer's recent documentary, On/Off: Mark Stewart From The Pop Group To The Maffia, helped suggest the mobbed-up direction, when eminent interviewees declared their esteem for the genre-splicing brainshocks he's been making since 1979. Recordings began in Berlin, Lisbon, Vienna and Vancouver, with more concerted work at On-U Sound and Youth's Youthanasia studio. So far, there are spy themes, icy house and disco, fugged hip hop, tribal punk, brooding orchestrations, planet-sized bass and bursts of phantom guitar from Levene.
T-Rex's Children Of The Revoltion, meanwhile, is recast as sardonic, mutoid ragga as played in a football ground. "I just crash things," Stewart says. "I crash genres. I want to hear that bass line with metal guitars, just to tell my story. People run off with these sparks and make something else. That's what punk was, crashing. That's what this stuff is like." Suitably for the man who gave voice to such anti-matter protest works as The Pop Group's We Are All Prostitutes and his own As The Veneer Of Democracy Starts To Fade, it will be lyrically confrontational. "I don't accept reality, really," he says. "It's an illusion...(but) all I talk about are the things that interest me, like I'd be talking in the pub. It's part of reality. And there is a shadow war going on."
Stewart, who's also recording and playing live with the reactivated Pop Group - remains phlegmatic, however. "My girlfriend was asking me, 'Why are all these people bending over backwards across the world?'" he says. "I said, It's probably because I haven't done anything crap."