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March 1st, 2011

Gang of Four frontman Jon King talks with BLURT about Xbox commercials, the evils of iTunes, Tea Party and politics, and his band’s first album of new material in 16 years.

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via BLURT.com

THE GANG’S ALL HERE – Gang of Four

BY RON HART

For nearly 35 years, Gang of Four from Leeds, England, have pressed on – albeit in a fit of stops and starts (much like their music) – as one of the true purveyors of the sound commonly known as post-punk. Alongside the likes of Wire, Liliput and The Fall, they helped create a unique strain of eardrum buzz that piggybacked off the momentum of the success of fellow Brits The Clash and The Sex Pistols.

However, in the case of the Four, the group pole-vaulted the genre to such dizzying heights of Trotskyist confrontation that they simultaneously challenged their audience to dig a little deeper within the premises of their politics and social standings in the world. And in a modern age where governments have been diluted to just another commodity to be traded on the global financial market, blind consumerism and detached social networking are usurping the life’s blood from the soul of the human race and people are forming united fronts to rise up against the tyranny of their longtime oppressors across the Middle East, the quartet’s incendiary strain of funk-informed guitar polemics is as timely as ever.

It’s a notion that had made Gang of Four’s latest album, their first collection of new material in 16 years, one of the most anticipated releases of the still-young year of 2011. C O N T E N T (Yep Roc), a record that was funded through online donations via Pledge Music, is the follow-up to Return The Gift, their 2004 re-recording by the original lineup of their greatest hits as a calculated strategy to divert money away from the group’s original label EMI. It finds the foursome of vocalist Jon King, guitarist Andy Gill and new members Thomas McNeice and drummer Mark Heaney (replacing classic members Hugo Burnham and Dave Allen, respectively) taking aim at the personal and economic struggles of maintaining a functional way of life in the Internet era and stands tall as their strongest set of songs since 1981’s Solid Gold (still in dire, dire need of a reissue).

BLURT recently caught up via electronic mail with Mr. King to talk about the new album, politics, the MP3 revolution and the group’s questionable decision to go against their anti-advertising ethos to have one of their songs appear in an Xbox commercial, among other topics.

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BLURT: In hindsight, how do you feel the PledgeMusic campaign went for the funding of C O N T E N T?

JON KING: It’s been an interesting exercise and raised a useful amount of money to help fund the album. We’ve always said that musicians should get reasonably paid for what we do. But the new model – where music is shared and downloaded for nothing, where traditional record companies are doomed but where technology based intermediaries – like Apple, who don’t invest a cent in talent [yet] are making almost all the money – means that it’s no longer possible to earn any money from recorded music. So everyone’s been trying to find an alternative way to do things. This almost always ends up embracing advertising or sponsorship, which is weird for musicians to want to do so wholeheartedly. It’s a collective act of…Click HERE to continue reading now.

C O N T E N T is available now on CD, LP and digital now at the Yep Roc Webshop. Click HERE for more info or to order now.