The Pop Group

‘There’s a line on the record that says, “Somebody once told me that hope is a power.” My hope really lies in people on the electronic frontier.’

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(Photo by Guy Kokken)

'You don’t have to go very far off the interpreted path to find yourself in difficult situations; the courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of interpreted experience…Here are a few attempting that deed'

Featuring selections from Death Grips, Hieroglyphic Being, Sleaford Mods, Beak>, Protomartyr, Charles Hayward (This Heat) & more

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We play Festival BBmix / Festival BBMIX 2016 on the 26th of November

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‘Buying Honeymoon on Mars has sent me back to those three albums. The first, Y, is especially good for sounds, the second and third for words and world woe. All of them feel sculptural to me, both mineral and metal, hacked from the planet and beaten out of it, whilst the accompanying shouting – a work party of one, hitting the jackhammers and hollering – adds great momentum. To listen to such musical lean and heave is still oxygenating down all the years…

At its best, you hear on Honeymoon on Mars what was there before and what therefore is the Pop Group: the sound of something being ripped from the flow of time, a great questioning machine kicking into life, a calving glacier, a scream running over the top of everything. Aged eighteen, when he stood across the bank of school lockers from me, Mark Stewart was somehow already primed for his late middle aged honeymoon, was already embarked on adulthood even though that adulthood would keep him forever, it seems, in the raw first light of angry consciousness…’

Terrific personal reflection on the power of The Pop Group down the years in Caught by the River. By author & BBC Radio producer Tim Dee.

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Japan’s very own ‘Sound Originator’ Takeaki Maruyama aka Goth-Trad has produced a monumental remix of The Pop Group’s first single Zipperface from new album Honeymoon On Mars.

An indispensable ringleader in Tokyo’s dubstep scene and a prolific proponent of raw dubwise futurism, Goth-Trad has won support from the likes of The Bug, Kode 9 and Mary Anne Hobbs and has recently collaborated with Boris and Dälek on his latest record Psionics.

Here his rework takes the original into infernal depths, drawing out oppressive levels of tension and infusing Dennis Bovell’s prior mixing desk manipulations with sparse soundsystem brutality.

Zipperface (Goth-Trad Remix) is Out Now

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'What does the future hold for both of you beyond your immediate projects?'
MS: I think we’re going to adopt some children. OK magazine are going to pay for us to go to Disneyland and get married.
VR: Then we’ll move into a tent together.

Mark Stewart & Vic Reeves discuss an unlikely alliance. Revelations include Vic inventing Industrial music and Mark pioneering buttoning up your shirt pre-Ian Curtis.

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DEATH TO DISTRACTION
Honeymoon On Mars Megamix EP
A continuous trip through the album’s infernal dub versions
Produced by Dennis Bovell

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On Honeymoon On Mars, Influences & Zombie Drone Armies

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(Photo by Adam Gasson)

A live session for Marc Riley ahead of the start of the UK / EU Tour next week

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The Pop Group in the studio with Dennis Bovell during the making of Honeymoon On Mars.

'A bulldozer funk maelstorm of splintering sounds'

LTD ED 180g Colour LP / LTD ED Boxset / 180g Black LP / CD / DL

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Nick Helderman photographs a day of collaboration between The Pop Group & Protomartyr at rehearsals for Rough Trade’s 40th at the Barbican

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