Whether you regard Offset, Stag & Dagger and the grubby gentrification of Hoxton as your spiritual abode or further desecration of the style and shaved sides said to be overhauling most musical substance, Gang Of Four would be partially to blame for a plethora of alleged "post-punk" guitar toters writhing in their own filth in E2 today. Whether playing Butlins for The Breeders' ATP curation last year or smashing seven shades of shit out of an unsuspecting microwave in Hainault Forest, Jon King's seething yelps could be construed to veer precariously close to the abyss of contemporary irrelevance. All that said and done, You Don't Have To Be Mad, the latest offering gifted to the scroungers of this here World Wide Web is a jolting, visceral jab at kiss and tells and sordid camera phone shots that assumes the morality that it probably is best to have a screw or two loose... Fleshing out their celebrated staccato stylings with Thomas McNeice's humming bass lines as beefy as an Argentinian steak house filled with doldrum-stomached gauchos, it's a little disconcerting having lyrics of the over-50s "off their tits" blurted down the garbage shoots of your ears and being deposited in the forefront of your cerebral synapses. Yet there's ample evidence we're still in the midst of four Great Men...
"We’re emerging blinking into the light after many months locked in Andy’s studio, clutching Gang of Four’s new album: Content. Later this summer you’ll be able to buy it on download or CD. But we’re offering weirder and more wonderful options to a limited number of GO4 aficionados. What about taking a helicopter trip to this summer’s Glastonbury Festival with us? Or you might enjoy a listen to our first ever gig (recorded in Leeds in May 1977), provided to you on a cassette inside a Walkman individually decorated by Andy and Jon. A private view of an exhibition of GO4 art combined with a gig in London’s ICA this June are just some of the other possibilities... Jon & Andy"
Great Men indeed, offering quite weird and wonderful opportunities on Pledge Music including personal Andy Gill mix masters, lyric clinics and being amongst the first to hear upcoming LP Content in the very studio in which it was conceived a Londres. Oh and if you still haven't sorted your route to Worthy Farm next month, how about chopping it down from the Capital and back with the chaps..? A percentage of the money raised will wing its way directly to Amnesty International, whilst the remainder will ensure that King & co. can carry on condemning the community throughout the coming months and years. To Hell With Poverty, inequality and Heat Magazine scandal. Have a gander over at Pledge Music here!
DOWNLOAD: Gang Of Four, You Don't Have To Be Mad.
