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Fourth Dimension Publishing
Grudge For Life 'A Book About Ramleh By Richard Johnson' Book B5 Hardback
£22.00
Fourth Dimension Publishing
Grudge For Life 'A Book About Ramleh By Richard Johnson' Book B5 Hardback
£22.00
During the past few years material has been gathered concerning the group Ramleh for a book focusing on their beginning as one of the UK's leading power electronics mainstays to their becoming a more outward-bound rock group given to blending sprawling psychedelia, noise, post-punk, intense electronic music and far more besides, in addition to occasionally nodding to their earlier sound.
Initially founded by Gary Mundy and Bob Strudwick after being inspired by punk, avant-garde and industrial music, as well as the complete restart accorded by Whitehouse, Ramleh soon tore apart the templates with a sound and vision entirely their own.
The idea of fitting snugly into a particular style was never on the agenda, irrespective of the group's having created a sound completely their own to work within.With the advent of the digital age, Ramleh deservedly gained a comparatively wider audience and are now often seen critically acclaimed or cited as an inspiration by other groups.
Partly for these reasons, a book felt like a natural step to take in order to help pin down one of the more interesting narratives to have arisen from such realms of music, and indeed some of the ideas behind it.
Collecting around 356 pages centred on a lengthy and conversational interview with Gary Mundy that looks back at Ramleh's inception and moves through the group's work until and including The Great Unlearning album, plus some of the peripheral projects, Grudge For Life: A Book About Ramleh also includes additional interviews and insight from Anthony Di Franco, Stuart Dennison, the late Simon Morris, Teho Teardo, Stephen Meixner, Steve Pittis, William Bennett, Kate MacDonald, Juntaro Yamanouchi, Richard Rupenus and others.
Besides also including a discography including extensive personal notes from Gary and Anthony and some other bonus material, there are pages dedicated to reprinted ephemera and some previously unpublished photos.
Richard Johnson, responsible for conducting the interviews and collating the material, has long been an avid supporter of the group's work and has additionally released albums by both Gary and Anthony on his Fourth Dimension Records imprint, including the 2CD version of Ramleh's The Great Unlearning album and the It's Never Alright'7'. He has also produced a book devoted to his Grim Humour fanzine, plus during more recent years has contributed to several magazines, including The Wire and Poland's Glissando.
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Fourth Dimension Publishing
'Lost in Room: Mark Perry, Alternative TV and Related, 1977 - 1981' Book
£26.49
vFourth Dimension Publishing
'Lost in Room: Mark Perry, Alternative TV and Related, 1977 - 1981' Book
£26.49
“That’s my argument against the way punks become so cabaret. It’s almost patronising [when bands play all their hits]. Oh, we’d better play ‘How Much Longer’ because people want that. To me, that’s just patronising to the audience. I’d like to feel, and I always have done, that an Alternative TV audience wants us to experiment or to try new things out through that sense of exploration, or that childlike sense of wonder about making music.Visit product page →
That’s why I’ve always wanted to retain that. I haven’t always got it right, but that continuing journey to explore new areas of expression has got value, and that’s why I think it’s worth proceeding in that way. I’m doing that with the new band. I’m trying to instil that with them. This is what ATV is about.”
“People have suggested to me that touring with The Pop Group must have been so arty and that we must have all been talking about Kafka at night. Bollocks were we! We were out of our minds most nights on fucking booze!” “I was really full of myself. I thought back then that I’ve got something to say and must be listened to. You only need to hear some of my stuff to know I was like that at the time, like on ‘Alternatives’, when I was having a go at people and telling them what to do and all that. Looking back, it’s a bit embarrassing, but at the time it was sort of vital. Some people liked that and liked joining in.
So, ‘Fellow Sufferer’ was part of that. I did feel that because I was saying stuff and was playing music [away from] that punk template I was putting my reputation on the line. You know, [my being the] Sniffin’ Glue editor and all that. I was going into what I thought was new ground and, let’s face it, a lot of people didn’t like it, and because of the way I was that spurred me on to make it even more extreme.
So, when we got on to the Vibing Up the Senile Man material, I decided quite early on that we didn’t want to have a drummer and wanted to get back to making a space by getting rid of all the rhythm. I just thought if we get rid of all the rhythm it’ll be more experimental [because] we wouldn’t be tied to a strict beat. That’s why there are no drums, really, on the Vibing Up the Senile Man songs. I played drums on the second Peel session, because we’d got rid of Chris Bennett, though. We’d chucked him out the band.”
Mark Perry is a familiar name from the early punk scene in London due to his having published Sniffin’ Glue fanzine between July 1976 and August 1977. As he became increasingly disillusioned with punk, however, he at least still remained driven by its impetus and started his group, Alternative TV. With their first release, ‘Love Lies Limp’, issued as a 7” flexi single with Sniffin’ Glue 12, itself the final edition of the fanzine, it was clear that Alternative TV were not going to readily sit comfortably alongside the countless hordes of identikit punk groups forming around the same time.
Sharper yet wrought with frustration, Mark Perry took the group through a more personal space that pre-empted what a short while later became known as post-punk. Whilst sometimes charged with the same energy and anger, the music was more opened out and embraced all manner of different and often disparate areas, from reggae to industrial, improvisation and even brazen pop. Offset by subject matter that likewise often smashed down those borders of expectation, Mark always took his music wherever he felt it should go.
Not given to compromise or always taking the easiest route, even when sometimes handed to him, his approach to songwriting or making records has rarely strayed from an artistic vision which sets him apart from his contemporaries. Lost in Room focusses on the first four years of his musical path, beginning with ‘Love Lies Limp’ and ending as the first version of the group collapsed soon after 1981’s Strange Kicks album and Mark’s joining The Reflections.
Along the way are tours with Chelsea, Here & Now and The Pop Group, a huge love of Frank Zappa, a meeting of minds with the late Genesis P-Orridge, the running of Step-Forward Records and working for Miles Copeland’s Faulty Products network of labels, plenty of anecdotes about the world he was embroiled in, and the story behind the records themselves.
Broken into two main parts, one concerning the historical development of Alternative TV and Mark’s occasional releases outside the group, and the other dedicated to the ideas that informed many of the songs themselves, this book is centred around a conversational approach to a series of weekly interviews conducted via Zoom with Mark between late 2021 and summer 2022.
Deliberately retaining the organic nature of the conversations, replete with tangents that sometimes refer to later work or creep elsewhere completely, Lost in Room is the first book to explore the early years of Mark Perry’s having become one of the most interesting and honest voices to have arrived from the cultural shift of the late 1970s.
Including a foreword by Graham Duff, discography, selected lyrics and many previously unseen or hard-to-find photos and images, this book is an absolute must for all of those interested in this period of music and, indeed, those seeking some snapshots of its importance on one of the best groups to have emerged from it that are still active. -
Where to start with Alternative TV? Most know that Mark Perry, founder of Sniffin'Glue fanzine, formed the group either due to or as a response to punk in 1977.Visit product page →
Since the debut How Much Longer'7' released that very same year, however, Mark has remained the sole surviving original member and driving force. Not one to stand still, he has taken the group through a succession of lineup changes embarking on a wide spectrum of styles since then; the only truly unifying factor amounting to a sensibility that never once strayed from its original status.
It is through this justifiably much vaunted approach that Alternative TV have been responsible for around fifteen albums since their formation, with the last one, Opposing Forces, from 2015 on Public Domain Records, proving to be their strongest thus far with its marrying of igneous rock, idiosyncratic touches, barbed commentary and occasionally seething undercurrents of dark psychedelic noise.
Dark Places', the newest e.p., expands the mantle set by Opposing Forces, introducing four songs cascading between full-on rock to a kind of abstract minimalist electronics approach perfectly in keeping with Alternative TV's occasional traverses to the furthest reaches.
Each track, pinned into place by Dave Morgan and Clive Giblin, arrives with its own distinctive approach, enhanced further by the legendary Vic Godard's guest appearance on guitar on Like a Tomb', once more encapsulating a vision as perfectly widescreen as it is bifurcated.
Tracklisting:
Side A:
1. The System
2. Verlust
Side B:
3. Like a Tomb
4. Her Dark Places -
Sold outVisit product page →Limited edition release, representing the fourth entry in the subs series, by this UK duo who strike out against modern mediocrity with full-on punk attitude, smart hip-hop beats, skewed electronics and samples, plus a fiery lyrical swagger rarely heard since Mark E. Smith scratched down his whizzed-out observations.
Both songs here are different versions of tracks to be featured on the Sleaford Mods' album, Divide and Exit, on Harbinger Sound.
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