Crucial 1: Pop Group “Y” (1979)

Thought I’d start an occasional screed on crucial albums. First caveat: “crucial to me.” i.e., they represent a doorway to other forms of music, art or ideas peculiar to that impressionable time, yet have remained vital ever since. Included in the crucible, perhaps right in the middle, is The Pop Group’s “Y.” Obvious maybe, but essential. After several acne’d years of consuming glam, heavy metal and punk, this record (which I bought as usual in the cut-rate bin for the brilliant cover and the stonking poster) bust the hinges off my perceptions about what music is, and what juxtaposition, improvisation and polemics in music could be.

“Y” is the aural equivalent of principles, and people, being eviscerated in a pogrom; a jumpy, violent collage of dub, funk, freak “jazz” and mutant rock n’roll splintered in eight bloody pieces. Scrawled over the decay and chaos is Mark Stewart, whose vernacular is part student union rant, part intense interior monologue, all filtered through a tin ear and burlesque megaphone. At the time it was revolutionary; in the 20+ year wake of multiple disciples, not to mention myriad fascinating offshoots, it sounds slightly less so. Yet nothing quite matches this pure hunk of iridescent bile. Huge props to the beautifully manic mix by Dennis Bovell, who simultaneously captures the fury of the playing, and the intricate geography of improvisation, and places all this musical and verbal paranoia in a distinct, oceanic sonic space.

From this record I delved heavily into dub (Bovell produced several other of my faves, including Linton Kwesi Johnson’s first two seminal albums and “LKJ in Dub”, the Slits album, and his own stuff with Blackbeard, Matumbi etc); into freeform jazz (Rahsaan, Art Ensemble, Ulmer, Ornette). There are lots of rock albums from this period that were transgressive (Swell Maps, the Fall and This Heat spring to mind; if you haven’t digested Simon Reynold’s “Rip It Up” it’s well worth it) but “Y” captured not only the seething politics of the time in Britain, but the truly multi-culti possibilities when music was both inspired by, and freed from, the terrors of the cold-war and punk-rock.

There are several iterations of the album available. Unfortunately the later releases inexplicably put the non-album 45 “She Is Beyond Good and Evil” first, thus depriving the listener the singular shock of “Thief of Fire.” “She..” is a brilliant track, and justifiably appears on every comp of its kind, but it is also as close to a conventional song as The Pop Group got. I’ve tagged both here, but play “Thief..” first.

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