Mark Stewart-Learning to Cope with Cowardice

For fans of: Explaining who Lee Perry is, explaining who The Pop Group is (coming soon to a shitty blog near you!), ruining parties for the plebs who don't understand your music.

I love reggae and funk music, and really, what sane person doesn't? There are few things finer in life than putting on one of these records and immersing yourself in the heavy bass tones and peaceful repetition. Even the political reggae songs are so spectacularly relaxing (I generally sing "England is a Bitch" throughout the day). It's sort of difficult to imagine how one could make a reggae record unappealing. Well, Mark Stewart in his infinite genius found a way.

Oh how you have led me to terrible trips and freak outs time and again Mark Stewart, with your politics and your disregard for melody and your weird voice. Sure, The Pop Group sounded like the aftermath of a bat flying into the recording room and then everyone had to wave their instruments around to try and shoo it out, but they were a punk band! It's ok for punk music to sound like that. This isn't what I want in my dub reggae, no one wants this. Some things are great combined. Peanut butter and chocolate, that's a slam dunk, Hitler and Stalin, they were the Simon and Garfunkel of their day, even PBR and burritos, two seemingly unconnected things that appear to be combined in order to produce a strained tricolon, are fucking awesome in tandem. But Mark Stewart hasn't given the listener PBR and burritos. He's given her Dub and industrial.

It's an ugly and unpleasant cacophony, and the logical extreme of all the post-punk experimentation with reggae music. Mark Stewart's commitment to this style provides images of sonic death, the unending bass and trumpet samples informing the hopeless images of death and existential frustration that Mark Stewart provides. From the "I'm only happy when I'm working" chorus of the title track to the album's finale, a powerful and movingly dark interpretation of William Blake's "Jerusalem," the listener can see a clear picture of the Thatcher's England and the capital-obsessed world as Mark Stewart views it. That it is a world without morality, contentment, or compassion.

Bottom Line: This album functions as a fascinating crossroads in terms of the evolution of industrial music as Mark Stewart's sampling and editing techniques would influence generations of industrial and even hip-hop artists attempting to make a similarly chaotic sonic sphere. But the record is amazing by it's own merits. It's reggae music without joy, it's dance music without euphoria. It's the perfect way to bum yourself out and everyone around you.