Gang of Four

200 West 2nd St,Pomona CA 91766

19 May, 2023

Description

Gang of Four was formed in Leeds in 1976 by bassist Dave Allen, drummer Hugo Burnham, guitarist Andy Gill, and singer Jon King. The band pioneered a style of music that inverted punk’s blunt and explosive energies —favoring tense rhythms, percussive guitars, and lyrics that traded in Marxist theory and situationism. They put every element of the traditional “rock band” format to question, from notions of harmony and rhythm to presentation and performance.  This original lineup of the band released two monumental albums, Entertainment!(1979) and Solid Gold(1981). A third, Songs of the Free(1982), was recorded with bassist Sara Lee replacing Dave Allen. After Songs Of The Free, Burnham departed the band and Andy Gill and Jon King continued on to release Hardin 1983. After this release, the band broke up. In 2004, the original quartet reformed for tour dates and released Return The Gift(2005). Gill’s untimely death in February 2020 was cause for many to once again re-examine the group’s catalog and the legacy of these early releases was widely cited. Not only did Gang of Four’s music speak to the generation of musicians, activists, writers, and visual artists that emerged in the group’s immediate wake, but the generation after that. And the generation after that, even. In 2021 the band teamed up with indie label super force Matador to release a deluxe, Grammy nominated boxset “Gang of Four 77-81” –a comprehensive and exhaustingly detailed history of the band’s music, politics and influence over the period that cemented the band’s iconic status. In the last few years, their songs have continued to resonate with and been sampled by artists far afield from “post-punk,” including Run the Jewels (“The Ground Below”) and Frank Ocean (“Futura Free”). Now forty years since the original release of Entertainment!,Gang of Four’s legacy cannot be overstated.  In 2022, the band reformed with original members King and Burnham joined by former bassist Sara Lee and Slint guitarist David Pajo, for a hugely successful North American tour. The gang are back and are ready for more Boldly throwing convention out of the window, Melissa Scaduto & Brady Keehn started Sextile in 2015. Combining the raw political energy of 70’s punk with intricately sophisticated structures from 80’s post-punk and synthwave, the genre-bending project gained a devout following in the Los Angeles underground. Evolving through several lineups during the A Thousand Hands and Albeit Living album eras, the project was paired down to the duo and their sound had grown to include elements of industrial and EBM by their 2018 release of the 3 EP. The EP was followed by a hiatus due to growing tension within the band. During that time, the two started new projects respectively – S Product, a collaboration between Scaduto and Kyle Harmon (Arkitect) and Keehn with the techno-meets EBM leaning Panther Modern project. After experiencing the loss of a former and original bandmate Eddie Wuebben in 2019, Sextile reunited with another ex-bandmate, Cameron Michel. Talks of making music together once again began. The initial result of this reunion is “Modern Weekend / Contortion,” a two track EP that navigates the raw energy of our world as it collides with divided digital chaos.