Mass

condition (record/cover): EX / EX 

With original innersleeve.

This seems to pick-up from where Rema Rema’s Wheel In The Roses left off, except a bit heavier and odd. Cox retains the EDP Wasp (I’m assuming) but the organ seems more like his signature instrument here, with Gary Asquith’s glass-cutter guitar and Danny Briottet’s gut-punching kick-drum abuse — latter two to later form dance-rock outfit Renegrade Soundwave, but you wouldn’t tell that from hearing this! There’s elements of Bauhaus, PiL, Joy Division, Swell Maps and even Factrix if that’s possible(!), and alot of moments — jumping a couple of decades — even remind me of Pengo of all things! Most amazing is the starter simply called “Mass” — no, not exactly “Hey Hey We’re the Monkees”! More like Michale Graves playing another Con Job Punk fundraiser except someone’s spiked the punchbowl with cough syrup, bad acid and heroin. It seems like four different songs on one track! Plenty of other noisy mayhem such as “Ill” (speaks for itself really), “Isn’t Life Nice” and “Elephant Talk”. Rounding it all off officially with “Innocence” — sounding closer to ‘You And I” but there’s a hint at something quite uplifting and towards the sparse textures of the later Wolfgang Press album Burden Of Mules. And after all that “You And I” sounds markedly different in the context of this reissue than on Natures Mortes. (What d’ya know!) And the racket of “Cabbage” is the LSD-laced icing on a hash-cake relic of post-punk noise…