The Spirit Of Revolution


In honor of the fact that it's the 4th of July - happy birthday America! - I give you the totally unique and revolutionary rant of Mark Stewart. Former singer of the Pop Group, he pursued music after the dissolution of the band, both solo and with The Maffia AKA Tackhead. Pretty much everything he has recorded has been with dub meister Adrian Sherwood at the controls. The fine British label Soul Jazz got Stewart to compile a bunch of songs from his solo career as well as a few Pop Group tunes, including rare and unreleased stuff, and released them as Kiss The Future. It makes for great listening, the sharp art punk tunes of his old band and the digital, industrial dub of his solo stuff. The Pop Group was always a politically motivated band, and Mark continued that tradition solo. From 1989, Hysteria is one huge, dubby riff topped off with Mark's rants against the man and his distinctive shriek of "hysteria!" - no-one else sounds like this. One nice bonus on the CD is the inclusion of a new song, Radio Freedom. It's digital dub in the year 2005 stylee, featuring a fierce rap and some more politically charged lyrics - this dude's been yelling the same message for almost 30 years now, and it still a message that needs to be heard.