The Other Section

Just when you think you’ve heard this stuff a lot, the refrain socks you with its arching, Valkerie-like harmonies. Truly portentous stuff.

Yin and Yang. I like this record, and I think they have talent.

Of course it’s nigh on impossible to listen to this in one go, from start to finish, but each remix has merit. Worth a listen for sure.

Hearing new stuff from the Membranes makes me realise just how much I’ve missed them. They always had a dayglo entertainer’s vibe married to an acute sense of what was going on around them, don’t be fooled by their (admittedly intoxicating) cartoon nature...

It’s a shame it’s so short.

It’s pleasant and certainly toe-tapping but stuff like So Far Away is far too reminiscent of bands I listened to back in the mid ‘80s to make any sort of point to me as to why I should swap my old records for this.

Indeed, what strikes you about a lot of the work on show is that, though known as an artist primarily concerned with exploring some of the most modernist aspects of making music (right through from The Future to today, by way of Human League, alliances with Throbbing Gristle and Clock DVA and TAG), his visual ideas are incredibly arcane, strikingly so.

But most of all it is the fact that – whatever the show’s flaws – this stuff is on show in one place and recognised as being worth showing as an alternative – or warning - to what’s happening now, culturally. And this is a good thing and a good thing that is lasting, I hope. 

There’s something incredibly weird about this EP, it’s as if the music can’t communicate fully, like it’s been deliberately stifled but that must be the policy…

The passages about Dad are tremendous. Especially the bit about Dad as the gatekeeper and proselytiser of the BSP revolution. His speech could mirror the kind of staccato commands given to the Red Guards in 1917-22.

Haines, the avant-garde Arthur Scargill, is once again on the outside.

Mr Hands' boundless energy is a wonder to behold, and there's something wholly appropriate about the entire ritual: a more accomplished parody of rock music than the likes of Steve Coogan or Christopher Guest ever quite managed. With extra bong hits.

We have plane hijackings, riots with farmers, and bassists escaping in the n.u.d.e.

I can imagine the author cocking a snook at my literary poncey-ness if I mention Cyril Tourner's "Revenger's Tragedy", but "A Rebel Life" and the aforementioned play definitely share their respective narrator's feelings of self-loathing and desperate determination to solve the world's problems with a single crushing blow.

Cider with Roadies illustrates that living the life of a rock journalist isn't real life, rather a life lived through others, a life at one remove.

The 7/7 bombings and their failed follow up are presented as the ultimate 'blowback'. They are the price paid for a deeply flawed policy of alliances with Islamic radicals based on values of chivalry and trustworthiness, values that are fundamentally incompatible with the terrorist's way of life.