Pop Group's 'Y'
Pop Group’s debut album from 1979 came midway into the punk scene as an album that soared above and beyond the musical limitations of the punks. Often overlooked and forgotten due to the more well-known acts of the time, Pop Group was one of the most creatively charged bands of the era, and crafted some of the most interesting, dynamic and challenging music ever. Y is certainly of an experimental nature and integrates a range of musical genres and styles into compositions that are often at once touching, frightening, violent and beautiful. The aesthetic is comparable to a Samuel Taylor Coleridge psychosis, only with free-form jazz implementation, new-wave screeching, and esoteric dissonance where orphaned melodies play alongside funk-inspired baselines and abstract piano arrangements. Although the record is infused with the ideals many bands of the era were influenced by, they are expressed here with an intelligence and originality that far exceeds the output of those acts which would come to be remembered from this period. The opening tracks, She Is Beyond Good and Evil and The Thief of Fire establish the Pop Group’s powerful artistic vision, which in many ways references the futurist movement of the early twentieth century. Similarly to the futurists, Pop Group is concerned with the motion of form in relation to the repetitious rhythm of machinery. Society is symbolised as a mechanical force, endlessly producing and consuming, while the individual is capable of thinking freely and embracing radical expression. As an album of such a wildly original standard, Y is a testament to the doctrine of the futurists, the hypocrisies of modern society, and the nature of the human condition.
