Update: The Pop Group to reunite

By Kyle Ryan  |  May 24, 2010 | 5:40pm
Aux Features Music

British experimental post-punk band The Pop Group—inactive for roughly 30 years—is reuniting, frontman Mark Stewart tells The A.V. Club. The band, last heard on 1980's For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder?, plans to release a new album called (The Alternate) and play some live dates. There's no word yet on which members are part of the reunion or where and when any live dates will happen, though the album is tentatively scheduled for September.

For a brief period in the late '70s, The Pop Band honed a confrontational type of post-punk built on a dissonant mix of punk, dub, funk, and noise. It was a sound that poet Allen Ginsberg allegedly once described as "Armageddon"—and, unsurprisingly, it proved unsustainable. Not long after For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder?, The Pop Group disbanded. Stewart went on to have the most celebrated career of his bandmates, both as a solo artist and as frontman for Mark Stewart & The Maffia, releasing albums that influenced artists like Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Sonic Youth, Massive Attack, Tricky, Chris Connelly, and others.

The press release Stewart sent to The A.V. Club says the reunion is "in honor of 'The New Banalists,'" which is apparently a new umbrella concept for The Pop Group. Its manifesto: "Deny the politics of envy. Taste is a form of personal censorship. Technique is the refuge of the insecure. We are The New Banalists." Maybe they could tour with Throbbing Gristle?

Update: Stewart has announced the first two dates of the tour: Sept. 18 in Bologna and Sept. 20 in Turin. Noiseniks in Italy are psyched.

 
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