The Pop Group
The Pop Group to reissue their debut album Y and previously unseen video of Kiss The Book and Getintothis’ Peter Goodbody has the lowdown.
Ahead of the release of the definitive edition of their highly influential and innovative debut, Y, released on Mute on 1 November 2019, The Pop Group have shared a new video for the unreleased studio recording of Kiss The Book.
Previously only available as a Peel Session (recorded in 1978), Kiss The Book is one of several unreleased gems found when The Pop Group unearthed the original 2” tapes of their studio sessions and recordings.
Remastered and cut at half-speed at Abbey Road to mark the 40th anniversary of Y’s original release, the band are releasing two limited edition box sets that include the original album, She Is Beyond Good & Evil;and two additional albums Alien Blood and Y Live, as well as an extensive booklet and art prints.
A super deluxe version of the box set limited to 500 copies will include 180gm Inca gold vinyl pressings with two signed prints.
Originally released on 20 April 1979, Y represents a stunning culmination of The Pop Group’s crucial nonconformity.
Preceded by a meteoric rise in recognition, Y firmly realised the latent potential of the group’s early years. From playing Bristol youth clubs to early gigs supporting Pere Ubu and Patti Smith to gracing the front covers of NME and Melody Maker, The Pop Group’s progression to the forefront had been swift.
With the recording of Y, The Pop Group were to build on the promise of these earlier experiences and of their first recordings, delivering a debut album that transcends most, if not all, classification and one that exists in a league of its own.
Y
Recorded in 1978, the Y sessions were conducted at Ridge Farm in Dorking, Surrey, an experience the band’s bassist Simon Underwood now characterises as “an intense and electrifying journey of creative exploration and experimentation”.
The album was produced by dub maestro Dennis ‘Blackbeard’ Bovell, with Y becoming his first non-reggae project.
The group’s decision to collaborate with Bovell is emblematic of the risk and range found on Y, where tracks are adeptly moulded with reverb, delays, tape loops and a range of other studio treatments.
The results corral all of the captivating mixing desk ingenuity that Bovell had been previously applying to UK reggae and lovers rock, making for a record that ventures into altogether unchartered territory.
As well as the feats of engineering applied by Bovell, the group were, as their then manager Dick O’Dell now recalls, “bursting with creativity”.
The product of this creativity was drawn from a wide pool of influences, running from punk, dub, reggae, free jazz and funk to impressionism, chanson and avant-garde experimentalism. On Y these touchstones are channelled, disassembled and reconstructed in blistering new permutations.
The Y Live album is an essential addendum to the original release, one that captures all the fierce urgency of The Pop Group’s Y era live performances.
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Comprised of recordings captured at a variety of locations including New York, London, Sheffield and Manchester, Y Live exemplifies what had proved so thrilling about The Pop Group.
A snapshot of a time when the group were sharing stages with future acolytes including Cabaret Voltaire, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Public Image Ltd, Mark Stewart describes the album as a document of performances that were attempting to “paint the impossible”.
Combining the visionary lyrics of Mark Stewart, the convulsive rhythms and instrumentation of Gareth Sager, Bruce Smith, John Waddington and Simon Underwood, and the unconventional production expertise of Dennis Bovell, Y soon became a pivotal and epochal classic.
In the years since release its relevance has stood undiminished; an accomplishment that has lost none of its fearless sense of ambition and attack.
Together this definitive reissue of Y, She Is Beyond Good & Evil’, Alien Blood and Y Live affirms The Pop Group’s status as a group that have consistently stretched the boundaries of what is conceivable.
With this extensive reissue one of their finest and most celebrated achievements is renewed and expanded.
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