Antagonitic Music

Beta-lactam Ring

formats available

2XCD
$20.50
MT 196 CD
753907144222
Street Date:
August 6th, 2007
Ship Date:
August 6th, 2007

At long last a lost experimental classic from the earliest days of the UK DIY movement is delivered from legendary obscurity. "…violent anti-music: I think this is a brilliant tape…hauntingly beautiful and totally refreshing sound." So wrote GEOFF RUSHTON (aka JHON BALANCE of COIL) in a 1980 issue of his Stabmental magazine about MARTYN BATES’ Dissonance cassette. Originally released as a micro-edition in the UK in 1979. For the first time Dissonance sees a limited edition CD reissue, appended by a bonus disc with the 1994 "completion" of the piece. Dissonance presaged Martyn's solo career and his work as part of EYELESS IN GAZA in a most unusual way. That first cassette-only cri-de-coeur would have you believe that Martyn would be the next Nurse With Wound. Instead, rather like a more extreme Vice Versa or Human League, with Bates literally finding his voice, the later music (solo and with Eyeless In Gaza) evolved into a textural, fractured, DIY chamber pop informed by the avant-garde, occasionally straying back into outright experimentalism (Pale Hands I Loved So Well, et al.). Dissonance captures, maybe even defines the zeitgeist of the DIY attitude that was rising in the heady days of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. An undeniable antecedent and a true revolution. First pressing of 1,000 copies in a deluxe 5-color gatefold sleeve and 16-page booklet.