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For a band that splintered in 1980, The Pop Group have achieved an awesome reputation. This is not only because of the ground breaking sound they reached by doing their level best to be The Fatback Band (whilst having the competence one would expect of a bunch of 15/16 year old school mates) but also due to the forward searching nature of their main writer and singer Mark Stewart. Remaining in his home town of Bristol after the split, Mark fell in with famed producer Adrian Sherwood with the specific aim of creating music with an edge that also has information contained within it. The result was the epochal "Learning To Cope With Cowardice" album full of crunching ecstatic noise production coupled with pulping dub rhythms provided by the immortal Creation Rebel, the cream of Jamaican reggae musicians.
Meanwhile, the sound of New York label Tommy Boy was hitting Bristol, and Mark in particular. Having told Adrian of his desire to work with the constituent musicians who provided the framework of the pioneering label's sound, a series of fortunate coincidences involving market stalls and Midem lead to the arrival in the UK of the original Sugarhill Gang rhythm section (step up Skip McDonald on guitar, Doug Wimbish on bass and Keith LeBlanc on drums). Together the five created three devastating albums (see discography) that set a new standard in the merging of sound. Varying musical influences (from rock to house to hip hop to dub) weren't so much blended as thrown into a cement mixer to lock them together. Inside all this Mark's voice extrudes and intrudes with a series of lyrics that express concerns placed in a samizdat polemical format. The themes (ranging from surveillance to alienation to cyber) have now achieved common currency. The music has become increasingly timeless as the world catches up with sound sculpted to such an awesome intensity.
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Now releasing his latest album "Control Data" (on Mute Records), Mark has moved on yet again. Due to constant name checks from the likes of Tricky and Massive Attack, another generation is ready to be served up with yet more information. With new recruit Simon Mundey co-writing and programming both in the studio and live, fresh light is being thrown onto the ideas that Mark has been threading together in the six years since the last album. A long time for many but work is always in progress whether it be on the projected book and now an exciting CDI project. Mark's attitude being that he only makes records when he has a sound that he wishes to achieve and that takes time. Hence an album is the result of constant revision and editing of ideas, words and music. Keep the faith
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