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Reviews (2)
Louder than war
d. 31. Oct. 2019
By
By
Tim Cooper
d. 31. Oct. 2019
"The Pop Group's landmark debut album would go on to become the template for post-punk. Forty years later, its visceral power still has the power to shock and inspire in a box set full of surprises ... It's impossible to overestimate the impact this record had on its original release in that transitional year when punk's one-time one-chord wonders mutated into post-punk and began to flower, the tendrils stretching in many different directions. Y came out in a year of landmark albums: London Calling, Unknown Pleasures, The Metal Box, Cut, Fear Of Music, Live At The Witch Trials, Drums And Wires [etc] ... The Pop Group may not have made quite as much impact as many of those, at least not on the general public (...), but in terms of shattering the status quo and demonstrating just how far those mutations could go, Y was as significant as any of those others, if not more so".
Mojo
2019 December
By
By
John Mulvey
2019 December
"In March 1979, an ambitious but volatile new band from Bristol played a gig at the Locarno discotheque in Portsmouth. They were called The Pop Group, but the music they made - an unholy mêlée of new wave bravado, free jazz skronk, chasmic dub and something resembling funk as reimagined by [Captain Beefheart &] The Magic Band - was anathema to both pop fans and the punks who'd gathered at the venue ... Too anarchic for punk, too weird for post-punk, too chaotic even for their own good, The Pop Group's initial run of records saw the possibilities of the late-'70s music scene being tested to their utmost ... By the time the debut album Y was released (...), they were trying to reconcile the era's DIY spirit with the heady musical chops of Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy; a kind of harmolodics for beginners ... An extra disc of early versions and mixes reveals how awkwardness was always critical to the Pop Group MO ... Nine exhilarating live tracks are actually tighter than might be expected, thanks in no small part to the rigour and elasticy of the (...) rhythm section".