Mark Stewart

All roads have been leading to this. Two years in the making, The Politics of Envy cages, consolidates then hotwires the rampant barrage of elements which have infused Mark Stewarts work since The Pop Group blasted the post-punk landscape with their raw-energy flamethrower and barbed social howls.

Its a stunning work of gladiatorial proportions, a seething arena of sonic mischief, stellar collaborations and deceivingly dislocated backdrops, shot throughout with Stewarts twistedly eloquent observations and manifestos. After spending the last three decades watching his innovations plundered and turned into gold by both friends and foes, Stewart is back with his most high profile album to date, re-establishing him as one of the most volcanic creative minds this country has produced.

Over two years, material was recorded in Berlin, Lisbon, New York, Vancouver and old mucker Adrian Sherwoods On-U Sound, before being knocked into shape with Marks co-producer Youth in London. Stewart takes the art of collaboration to a different level in his never-ending quest for the perfect beat and fresh aural vistas. Like a lightning conductor, he channels the verbal insurrection racing through his brain at light-speed, and he casts bolts of sonic uproar, carried or embellished by names including Kenneth Anger, Richard Hell, Primal Scream, Lee Perry, Gina Birch, Slits bassist Tessa Pollitt, Massive Attacks Daddy G. and Factory Floor.

He has also performed something of a miracle by getting Clash founder and original PiL guitarist Keith Levene involved with often startling consequences, along with original Jesus And Mary Chain bassist Douglas Hart.

The whole thing grew out of something I was trying to do with Kenneth Anger, explains Mark. I was living in Berlin and these mates of mine were connected to this kind of Dada art group in Portugal called Mechanosphere. First of all, I organised this week-long symposium in Portugal for some art funding about magic and art. It was such a pleasure to do that. I was then going to do some weird thing with Kenneth as some kind of avatarIts passing it on but also paying homage. Kenneth Angers spirit kind of hangs over the whole thing.

The Anger connection: renowned as one of the most influential independent filmmakers in cinema history, he is notorious for injecting surreally unsettling works such as 1964s Scorpio Rising, 1969s Invocation of My Demon Brother and 1972s Lucifer Rising with elements of homoerotica, gay culture and his abiding fascination with the occult (or unknown).

I feed off things (like Kenneths stuff) like a nutrient. Little Johnny Jewel by Television when we were kids, gave us an amazing energy, Richard [Hell] was crucial to my history. Daddy G casts a different shadow, but then people like Massive say that I feed them. Then theres this generation next, like Factory Floor, Kahn the Bristol Bass kid and Crookers. Its a pleasure to give something back and also help kids who are starting offIve never really collaborated with people before. Ive always been a real loner, on my own doing weird experiments and not giving a fuck what anybody thought about it. I just wanted to hear a backwards noise; thats how I got my pleasure.

The Pop Group blasted out of Bristol in 1979 with the wired, avant future-funk manifesto of their We Are All Prostitutes single and Y debut album, redirecting their punk energy into the political arena, supporting campaigns such as Stop SUS. Stewarts blood-letting vocal torrents rode disembodied funk grooves and fearsome free jazz skronking, continuing into 1980s For How Much Longer Must We Tolerate Mass Murder? Album. Stewart then hitched up with Adrian Sherwoods On-U Sound, probably the most cutting edge operation of that period. As punk and its post-punk derivative got more formularised, the Pop Group struck further out, before imploding, leaving Stewart immersed in the sonic possibilities of dub reggae and mixing desk mayhem on 1982s Jerusalem EP (which included the unsettling but still uncannily prescient future-funk of 1982s Welcome To Liberty City) and his first solo album, the following years Learning to Cope With Cowardice. Mark Stewart is my hero, declared Massive Attacks Daddy G.

Stewart was also fixated with the early hiphop he heard in the States, bringing back gold dust-like tapes of New Yorks groundbreaking hip radio stations, typically going to the source and procuring the Sugarhill/Tommy Boy rhythm section to join his Maffia. His next three albums - 1985s As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade, 1987s Mark Stewart album and 1990s Metatron - are regarded as epochal future-shocks, blueprinting industrial (Ministry kingpin Al Jorgensen and NINs Trent Reznor citing him as a major influence) and trip-hop (Mark Stewart, hes my chaos, says Tricky). The latter album saw him hijacking techno for another uniquely-personal flight which, by Stewarts idiosyncratic in-breeding process, manifested later that decade in cyber-punk and the work of former flat-mate Tricky, proto-dubstep being another creation. (Most dubstep kids, Burial and that, they love all that stuff me and Adrian were doing).

After 1996s Data Control, Stewart glanced back at his past achievements with 1998s We Are All Prostitutes Pop Group compilation. Following 2008s Edit album. Stewart was the subject of Toni Schiffers documentary movie, On/Off - Mark Stewart: From the Pop Group to the Maffia.

This unmatchable track record of anarchic pioneering and seismic influence prompted Nick Cave to declare, Mark Stewart changed everything. Looking back, Mark says, I thought I was making dance music, but a track on Veneer of Democracy supposedly inspired all the American industrialists, like Front line Assembly and Skinny Puppy, while another track supposedly inspired the Bristol kids. It happens all the time. Ive got this nonchalance that nothing is sacred so Ill crash a Slayer guitar line with Rotterdam gabba beats. For me, its like colours. I grew up doing montages; like I did this collage of Ronald Reagans head on this gay porno cowboy. In fact, Ive never really grown up at all. Im still trying to put round things into square holes.

Possibly never more so than on the new album, as body-slamming beats grind and collide into rabble-rousing street carnage, contagious melodies are sometimes allowed to rear like 60s energy jazz before Stewart lets loose another hellfire narrative. Contributing to much of the maelstrom in his inimitable fashion is Keith Levene, a little-heard figure in recent years, who helped Mark bust open the dimensional sound. Keith is counter intuitive he was one of the few people that I got on with from the London punk scene when I used to come up to the Roxy and stuff. I think we were playing one of our first Pop Group shows in London supporting the Cortinas at the Marquee; the day that Elvis died. I was talking to somebody outside, and didnt even know what Keith did then. We were talking about UFOs and it was like talking to a mate outside a pub. I love the bloke.

Having recording a surfeit of material (which will eventually surface), including collaborations with Cabaret Voltaires Richard Kirk, Crass, the Bug and Judy Nylon, Stewart deliberated painstakingly over the track sequence. Listened to as a whole, this salivating beast of an album is an evocative, force-ten wall of sound, often breathtaking in its emotional and musical scope, but making perfect, if twisted, sense

Vanity KillsAlthough featuring Kenneth Anger on theremin and Richard Hell (Neon Boys, Television, Heartbreakers, Voidoids) on vox, Stewart starts the album by reaffirming the fact that, decades ago, when working with Adrian Sherwood, the UKs foremost sonic scientist, he defined what is now called dubstep. Except here, the grainy, throbbing undertow was created with Bristol new blood Khan, according to Stewart, like the new generation of Bristol bass after Joker and Pincher. I call it future bass.

AutonomiaThat Primal Scream track ended up on there because I wanted something noisy, explains Mark. Coming in on the Sherwood connection, they dont disappoint, firing up an agit-protest superfunk monster with sirens and Bobby Gillespies frenetic keeping the dream alive call-and-response chant with Stewart. The song was originally written about Carlo Giuliani, killed at the 2001 G8 demonstrations in Genoa.

Gang WarCrackpot reggae legend Lee Scratch Perry as rarely heard before, spitting diamonds over a nerve-gouging central motif with Slits bassist Tessa Pollitt blanketing the dense, heavyweight urban dubscape.

CodexSlo-mo coldwave, with shadowy extra-terrestrial rhythm-loops and grainy hell-drive dynamics, ending unexpectedly on haunted strings and Stewarts muted reflections.

WantFloor-shaking bass mechanic Youth and Kirsten Reynolds (Project Dark), transmitting her light sensitive diodes, pulse and crash on this track, whilst grindcore guitars stoke the feeling of encroaching paranoia. Created with Factory Floor, and new school of Bristol basshead Kahn contributing a foetid slab of aural malevolence.

Gustav SaysA shivering sheet metal romp, riding a rhythm somewhat redolent of the Osmonds Crazy Horses (but actually German electronic legends Der Plan), dipped in an steaming acid bath on one of the best examples of the albums trademark 21st-century schizoid wall of sound.

Baby BourgeoisCool electro-glide in blue mating synthetique flurries with a sick stinging put-down song: classic Stewart confrontationalism, railing against corporate cocksuckers and declaring sanity sucks.

Method to the MadnessA huge, seething synth-crawl provides one of the albums atmospheric highlights, gouging beyond industrial or dubstep to create a frightening new take on modern mood music.

Apocalypse HotelStewart and the Bristol-based individuals who went on to form Massive Attack go back to the punk era. When it came to constructing this bleak, heaving whale of a tune, Daddy Gs unmistakable deep-throat intonations made the perfect garnish.

Letter to HermionePossibly the most unimaginable cover version, but this is indeed the song off David Bowies eponymous 1969 album (aka Space Oddity), David and Mark being fans of each others work. Originally, the song was a wispy lament for girlfriend Hermione Farthingale (who jilted him in 1968), now its a spookily-orchestrated, beatless lament, maybe harking back to Bowies ominously dense Outside period.

StereotypeIts almost as if, having undergone the sensory roller-coaster of the previous ten tracks, Stewart turns on the light, presses the button marked Hit Single and even lets Levene unleash some of his inimitable metal guitar jangle on a slice of gorgeously melancholic brilliance. Joined by Factory Floor and Gina Birch of the Raincoats effectively-fragile counterpoint, Stereotype is an effortless modern pop classic, catchy in the extreme and the perfect end to this intoxicatingly provocative set of songs.

If Kenneth Anger described his Scorpio Rising as a death mirror to American culture, Stewart has managed to pull off a similar feat for both British music and subterranean jungles of the world. Still vandalising his larynx and lyrical flow to the outer limits, this time he also focuses on making sure he gets heard by more than the devoted and eager plagiarists, even willing to play the media game, to be an explosion in the heart of the commodity. In safe 2011, we need Mark Stewarts hot-wired danger train more than ever, except this time hes steering a collision course through musical fields long riddled with his legacy to take his long-awaited place among the great subversive musical minds to emerge in the last century