Jan 23, 2019

RhoDeo 1903 Aetix

Hello,


Today's artist is a British musician and founding member of The Pop Group. A pioneer of post-punk and industrial hip-hop, he has recorded for On-U Sound Records and Mute Records. .. ......N'Joy

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An enduring figure on the edgy frontiers of the British music scene, Mark Stewart first came to prominence during the late '70s as a member of the punk/dub noisemaking squad the Pop Group, and has been storming musical boundaries and making powerful, confrontational music ever since. After he began working with producer Adrian Sherwood, Stewart began releasing caustic, chaotic solo albums such as 1983's Learning to Cope with Cowardice, which incorporated radical political messages into a dense, explosive mix inspired by dub and funk. Stewart's fearless genre experimentation and distinctly neurotic vocal style later proved to be a major influence on industrial, trip-hop, digital hardcore, and countless other styles throughout the coming decades. Stewart continued to subvert techno, industrial, and dub on further solo efforts like 1990's Metatron and 2012's The Politics of Envy, and participated in a Pop Group reunion during the 2010s.

Stewart was born and raised in Bristol, England and attended Bristol Grammar School; one of his school friends was Nick Sheppard, who later went on to join the Cortinas and the Cut the Crap-era Clash. Emboldened by punk but not impressed with its stylistic hegemony, Stewart and his friends were eager to start a funk band, and in 1978 he teamed up with guitarists John Waddington and Gareth Sager, bassist Simon Underwood, and drummer Bruce Smith to form the Pop Group. Between their limited musical experience and Stewart's strident vocal style and accusatory political lyrics, the Pop Group's music took a considerable left turn from their original blueprint, bolting slashing guitar noise and fractured melodies to primitive funk and dub rhythms, and though their commercial success was limited, the band's influence would prove to be massive over time.

In 1980, the Pop Group split up, and Stewart, Bruce Smith, and Waddington appeared on the first album by the New Age Steppers, whose music was a prescient fusion of dub and post-punk experimentalism. It was Stewart's first work with producer Adrian Sherwood of On-U Sound who would prove to be a valuable ally and frequent collaborator. Stewart released his first solo effort in 1983, Learning to Cope with Cowardice; credited to Mark Stewart + Maffia, the album was produced by Sherwood and featured many of the same revolving team of musicians who had appeared on the New Age Steppers recordings. For the next album by Stewart + Maffia, As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade, Stewart and Sherwood joined forces with guitarist Skip McDonald, bassist Doug Wimbish, and drummer Keith LeBlanc, who had been the core of the Sugar Hill Records house band before teaming up with Sherwood to form Tackhead. This line-up of Maffia recorded Stewart's next two efforts, Mark Stewart and Metatron, and reunited for Stewart's 1996 album Control Data.

Through much of the '90s and 2000s, Stewart devoted much of his energy to producing and collaborating with other artists, including Tricky, Massive Attack, Trent Reznor, and ADULT, and he immersed himself in the electronic music community, where his fondness for tossing different musical ideas at one another found a home. In 2005, Stewart released Kiss the Future, a career-spanning anthology of his many musical projects, and he completed a long-awaited new album in 2008, Edit. A documentary about Stewart and his career, On/Off:, played at a number of international film festivals in 2009. In 2010, Stewart announced that he was re-forming the Pop Group with original members Gareth Sager and Bruce Smith for a series of reunion shows, and that the band would begin work on a new album. Stewart found time to release new solo projects in 2012: The Politics of Envy (featuring guest appearances from Lee "Scratch" Perry, Richard Hell, Keith Levene, and members of Primal Scream and the Raincoats) and Exorcism of Envy (featuring much of the same supporting cast, along with Factory Floor and Kenneth Anger). The Pop Group's third album, Citizen Zombie, was released in 2015, followed by Honeymoon on Mars in 2016. In 2017, Stewart wrote lyrics for several tracks on Little Axe's album London Blues, and he appeared on De Lux's More Disco Songs About Love the following year. Stewart's debut album was reissued with a disc of previously unreleased material as Learning to Cope with Cowardice/The Lost Tapes in 2019.

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When post-punk agitators the Pop Group disbanded in 1980, Mark Stewart briefly collaborated with the New Age Steppers and, the following year, embarked on his first solo project with producer Adrian Sherwood and several Steppers personnel. While Learning to Cope with Cowardice was no less confrontational than some of the Pop Group's work, it left behind the harsh, frenetic avant-funk of the Bristol band to foray into more experimental, dub-oriented territory. The standout track is the cut-up version of "Jerusalem," the English hymn (using William Blake's visionary words) that has come to stand almost as an unofficial national anthem. Stewart's "Jerusalem" embodies the multiple sonic facets of this album, juxtaposing jarring electronics, hectoring vocals, and heavy beats with more expansive layers of melody. Here, Stewart mixes his own strident declamation of Blake's verses with samples of a traditional arrangement of the hymn and with echo-heavy dub textures in such a way as to craft a complex meditation on issues of race, class, and tradition in Thatcher-ite Britain. Ironically, although Stewart doesn't use his own words, this ranks among his most powerful political statements. Elsewhere, Stewart sees democracy eroded by the encroachment of the State in league with corporate forces. The soundtrack to that vision is rendered appropriately dissonant, fragmented, and menacing in the chaotic, scratched, cut-up sound of "Blessed Are Those Who Struggle" and the austere metallic distortion of "None Dare Call It Conspiracy." Stewart's less challenging side can be heard on the title track, with its basic hip-hop rhythms, as well as numbers like "The Paranoia of Power" and sections of "Liberty City," which are built on smooth reggae grooves with his tortured singing offset by melodic female vocals. 1985's follow-up, As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade, would further explore the more experimental dimension of Stewart's sound.



 Mark Stewart And The Maffia - Learning To Cope With Cowardice (flac  358mb)

01 Learning To Cope With Cowardice 6:12
02 Liberty City 5:36
03 Blessed Are Those Who Struggle 5:13
04 None Dare Call It Conspiracy 5:25
05 Don't You Ever Lay Down Your Arms 5:13
06 The Paranoia Of Power 5:37
07 To Have The Vision 3:34
08 Jerusalem 3:45
09 The Wrong Name And The Wrong Number (Original Version) 12:00
10 High Ideals And Crazy Dreams 3:08

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For this album, Mark Stewart and producer Adrian Sherwood assembled the definitive Maffia lineup with the imported talents of drummer Keith LeBlanc, bassist Doug Wimbish, and guitarist Skip McDonald -- best known at that point for their work with the Sugarhill Gang and Grandmaster Flash. Opening with a robotic voice informing listeners they are about to be programmed to take their place in society, this is no rapper's delight but another glimpse into Stewart's shadowy world of political and sonic dissidence. LeBlanc, McDonald, and Wimbish contribute to a fearsome collision of industrial noise, abrasive electronics, and heavyweight funk that serves as a soundtrack to Stewart's lyrical obsessions: surveillance, the military-industrial complex, oppression, and economic inequity. Thanks to the hefty rhythm section, this album has a more overpowering, assaultive feel than its predecessor, as numbers like the ominous title track and "Passivecation Program" are built on punishing beats and mammoth basslines that batter the listener into submission. On top of that solid foundation, Stewart pastes together an unsettling collage of found sounds ranging from the call of a muezzin and media voices to barking dogs and simply barking mad noise. The air of confrontation is intensified as Stewart harasses listeners with distorted spoken and half-sung pronouncements and warnings. On the chaotic, disjointed "Bastards" -- harrowing enough with Stewart repeatedly shouting the title -- the menacing, sampled rasp of William Burroughs (who also appears fleetingly amid the manic hip-hop beats of "Pay It All Back") makes the proceedings all the more sinister. The album's standout is the dub-inflected "Hypnotised," which is infused with scratches, ocean-trawling bass, and shimmering melodic fragments. Uncompromising, challenging, and yet totally compelling, this album stands alongside Learning to Cope with Cowardice as one of Stewart's most innovative and important projects. This cd reissue also contains the "Hypnotised"/"Dreamers"12".



 Mark Stewart - As The Veneer Of Democracy Starts To Fade (flac  347mb)

01 Passivecation Program 7:06
02 Bastards 5:26
03 The Resistance Of The Cell 5:21
04 Untitled 0:44
05 As The Veneer Of Democracy Starts To Fade 5:37
06 Pay It All Back 4:29
07 Hypnotised 5:51
08 Slave Of Love 4:46
09 The Waiting Room 4:18
Includes
10 Hypnotised 7:25
11 Dreamers 6:30

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Although Mark Stewart's left-wing leanings tend to be discussed only in the context of his sloganeering lyrics, the ex-Pop Group vocalist has emphasized that music itself can also be politically radical. When critics grumbled that this album lacked the political edge of Stewart's previous recordings, they were perhaps focusing on the more introspective dimensions of its lyrical content and glossing over tracks that were as sonically confrontational and subversive as material on Learning to Cope with Cowardice and As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade. Stewart challenges listeners' expectations through open-ended experimentation, rejecting simple song-oriented formats. With producer Adrian Sherwood and Maffia members Keith LeBlanc, Skip McDonald, and Doug Wimbish, he continues to play havoc with conventional notions of structure on several tracks, assembling dark, fragmented collages cut up with scratches, heavy metal guitar flourishes, voices culled from the media, and blasts of electronic noise. A prime example is the nine-minute assault of "Anger Is Holy," which finds Stewart pasting together big go-go beats, a recurring sample from Billy Idol's "Flesh for Fantasy," and his signature distorted vocals -- as well as interrupting the proceedings with a random moment of complete silence. But there is a less difficult, more melodic side to this album. Considered by some to be the blueprint for trip-hop, "Stranger" grafts together a version of Satie's "Gymnopedie No. 1," West Side Story's "Somewhere," and Stewart's pained/painful crooning. More than this track, however, the most genuinely beautiful and affecting cut on the album is the bass-heavy reworking of Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Sylvian's "Forbidden Colours" (titled "Forbidden Colour"), which Stewart then deconstructs on the dub version that follows. "Fatal Attraction" moves in a more dance-oriented direction; with its snaking, Moroder-esque disco beat, this track points toward the heavyweight 'funk grooves Stewart would explore on 1990s Metatron.



 Mark Stewart - Mark Stewart   (flac  376mb)

01 Survival 5:10
02 Survivalist 2:43
03 Anger Is Holy 9:11
04 Hell Is Empty 7:05
05 Stranger 8:19
06 Forbidden Colour 4:43
07 Forbidden Dub 3:11
08 Fatal Attraction 9:00
09 Stranger Than Love 7:16
10 Stranger Than Love (Dub) 5:29
11 Survival 4:08

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Following his eponymous 1987 album, Mark Stewart continued his collaboration with producer Adrian Sherwood and the Maffia (Sugar Hill's Keith LeBlanc, Doug Wimbish, and Skip McDonald); in 1990, he released Metatron, his most accessible record to date. On his first three albums, Stewart had juxtaposed expansive dub-oriented numbers with more experimental tracks that made for decidedly uneasy listening. That harsher, more difficult dimension of Stewart's sound is absent from Metatron, which trades experimental cut-ups and electronic noise for relatively seamless, tight techno funk workouts. Indeed, the emphasis here falls on the stellar rhythm section of LeBlanc and Wimbish, who provide a solid foundation for this material. At times on "Mammon" and "Faith Healer," Stewart's fraught, distorted voice is almost buried under that heavy groundwork, while on numbers like "Hysteria" his vocals occasionally pierce through the weighty arrangements. On Metatron's slightly uneven predecessor, Stewart had shown a more introspective side, something that several critics took as a blunting of his political edge. Here, Stewart achieves a more fully realized blending of the personal and the political; his characteristically nihilistic pronouncements concerning the sinister effects of authority and technocracy on everyday life sit well alongside explorations of individual psychology and dysfunction on tracks like "Shame" and "These Things Happen." All the components of Stewart's sound converge to maximum effect on "Collision," as the heavyweight beats and distorted vocals are topped off with something bordering on heavy metal guitar -- there's even a brief solo. But Stewart can get away with such excesses; on the previous album, he'd already done the unthinkable, sampling the guitar from Billy Idol's "Flesh for Fantasy." Although Metatron is a homogeneous record, "My Possession" changes the equation somewhat with its house groove and minimal keyboards.



 Mark Stewart - Metatron   (flac  321mb)

01 Hysteria 6:13
02 Shame 6:55
03 Collision 5:20
04 Faith Healer 4:04
05 These Things Happen 6:14
06 My Possession 2:18
07 Possession Dub 3:15
08 Mammon 6:20
bonus
09 My Possession 5:39
10 Hysteria Dub 4:00

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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

many thanks

JC said...

Many thanks from me also! Mark Stewart is an highly underrated and very influential artist. Got the Promo-12" of Fatal Attraction with the vinyl only remix of Hysteria by Adrian Sherwood somewhere lost in my crates. Need to dig that out soon :)

Love your taste in music!
JC

Anonymous said...

Thanks very much Rho. Used to have these on vinyl but now long gone. Will enjoy listening to them again via your generosity. Cheers, tf

Mick said...

Same here. Peel was a fan and played them regularly. Still love them.

LonelySubmariner said...

Hallo Rho! Thanks for another great post. FYI - the 2019 Version of 'Learning to Cope with Cowardice + Lost Tapes' can be found here:
http://exystence.net/
Search site for Mark Stewart and you will find the page link.
Many thanks to Exy & friends for their efforts.

[R][R][R] said...

Hello Rho! Could You Re-Up the Mark Stewart And The Maffia albums. Thank You!