The Pop Group - Y (Definitive Edition) - 3CD Set

Catalogue Number: LTPGYCD1
Release Date: 1st November 2019

This is the 40th Anniversary Edition of The Pop Group's highly influential and innovative debut album ‘Y’ released in 1979, remastered (from the original tapes).

CD1.

1. Thief Of Fire (Remastered)
2. Snowgirl (Remastered)
3. Blood Money (Remastered)
4. Savage Sea (Remastered)
5. We Are Time (Remastered)
6. Words Disobey Me (Remastered)
7. Don't Call Me Pain (Remastered)
8. Boys From Brazil (Remastered)
9. Don't Sell Your Dreams (Remastered)
10. She Is Beyond Good And Evil (Remastered)
11. 3:38 (Remastered)

CD2. Alien Blood

1. Kiss The Book
2. Don't Call Me Pain (First Mix)
3. Thief Of Fire (Bass Addict)
4. Words Disobey Me (Dennis the Menace Mix)
5. Don't Sell Your Dreams ('A' Mix)
6. Boys From Brazil (Ridge Reels)
7. Savage Sea (Sparse)
8. Snowgirl (Take 3)
9. Blood Money (Slow Thief)
10. We Are Time (Ricochet)

CD3. Y - Live

1. Thief Of Fire (Live)
2. Snowgirl (Live)
3. Blood Money (Live)
4. Savage Sea (Live)
5. We Are Time (Live)
6. Words Disobey Me (Live)
7. Don't Call Me Pain (Live)
8. Boys From Brazil (Live)
9. Don't Sell Your Dreams (Live)

The Vinyl and CD deluxe sets will include the debut single 'She Is Beyond Good And Evil' (also remastered).

The package will also include the 10 track album Alien Blood, and the album titled Y Live.

Alien Blood is the result of the band’s meticulous process of revisiting the original 2" tapes of their studio sessions and recordings, unearthing never-before-heard material, including the studio recording of 'Kiss The Book', gloves off version of 'We Are Time (Ricochet)', and 'Words Disobey Me (Dennis The Menace Mix)' whilst exposing the raw skeletons of iconic tracks such as the original velocity of 'Thief of Fire (Bass Addict).' Alien Blood reveals the life of Y before everything was finalized, exposing revelatory dimensions within these iconic works.

The Y Live album is an essential addendum to the original release, one that captures all the fierce urgency of The Pop Group’s live performances at the time. Comprised of Y era recordings captured at a variety of locations including New York, Manchester & Brussels – the latter on a bill with William Burroughs and Joy Division – Y Live exemplifies what had proved so thrilling about The Pop Group. A snapshot of a time when the group were sharing stages with future acolytes including Cabaret Voltaire, Linton Kwesi Johnson & Public Image Ltd, Mark Stewart describes the recordings as attempts to ‘paint the impossible’.

The Pop Group's Y regularly appears in 'Greatest Album' lists - such as Pitchfork’s Greatest Albums of the 70’s where it is listed at #35, The Wire's 100 Most Important Records Ever Made and Uncut Magazine’s 100 Greatest Debut Albums.

The Pop Group went on to release 2 further singles, We Are All Prostitutes and Where There Is A Will (Split single with the Slits) and 1 further studio album For How Much Do We Tolerate Mass Murder, before splitting up in 1981.

Mark Stewart from the band embarked on a solo career releasing his pioneering album Learning To Live With Cowardice in 1983. Gareth Sager and Bruce Smith went on to form Rip Rig & Panic alongside Neneh Cherry.

The Pop Group reformed in 2010 to tour and have since released 2 new studio albums.

The band will be touring at the end of 2019 and throughout 2020 in support of the album release.

"This is a record of dire necessity, armed for combat against a long litany of ills—none more than typicality." - Pitchfork, Top 100 Albums of the 1970s (#35)

"A maelstrom of dub and distortion effects, a tempest of extremes… Rage, terror, anguish, all hurtle past and round you: time and space feel violently mutable. Digital technology may have made all the cut-and-paste herein easy, but it's never produced so deliriously, maddeningly protean a piece of music." - Wire, 100 Most Important Records Ever Made

"The Pop Group were unique in that every song on their hugely influential album Y seemed like it could fall apart at any moment, but even in their loosest moments they somehow managed to contain the turmoil long enough to create something bold, dramatic, meticulously organized" - Pop Matters, Top 50 Best Post-Punk Albums Ever

"Y sounded incandescent, incendiary; as if the relics of rock were being melted before our very ears…years have done nothing to lessen the sheer weirdness of Y. In fact, time has only intensified its bizarreness. In the destranged world of today’s ‘alternative’ rock, the album sounds more impossible than ever…Joy Division’s Closer is often considered the crown jewel of post-punk, but Y – inchoate with potential, the fire to Joy Division’s ice – has an equal claim." - Mark Fisher, FACT Magazine