The downside to being among the few artists largely responsible for birthing the post-punk movement in the latter half of the 1970s is that Colin Newman had a hard time distancing himself from Wire’s legacy in the following decades, in spite of fascinating art-pop, krautrock, and trip-hop ventures he engaged in from the ’90s onward. Ironically, as Britpop began taking off during that decade—with plenty of bands using Wire as a jumping off point—Newman’s real interest was in the club scene, the “faceless techno bollocks,” as he recalls pro-Britpop journalists describing it at the time.
The path Newman took led up to his 1997 solo venture (alongside his wife and musical partner Malka Spigel) Bastard, the record’s name an ironic play on his new music’s supposed illegitimacy. And with the influences Newman leaned on for that record quickly coming back into vogue, now feels like the perfect time for a proper touched-up reissue of that record, which will arrive next Friday via its original label, Swim~, co-founded by Newman and Spigel. Ahead of its release date, we’re getting another taste of the project with Newman resharing the album’s closing track “Turn,” which plays into influences of D&B while providing the only vocals on the whole album in the form of Spigel’s dream-pop wisp.
“Jungle/drum ’n’ bass was the true sound of mid-’90s London—even if the ‘industry’ and its apologists wanted you to believe it was Britpop,” Newman shares. “‘Turn,’ the sole vocal track on Bastard, on which Malka sang instead of me, can be viewed as a creative riposte by us to the sad regurgitation of my own work from 20 years earlier by Elastica et al. Malka and I have always believed in the long game.”
Check out the track below, and pre-order the remastered record—which features a handful of unheard bonus tracks, and which is available on vinyl for the first time—here.
