Bleep

By the dawn of the 1980s, the link between punk and reggae had already been forged by the likes of Don Letts and The Clash, and the creative symbiosis they fostered in their art and subcultures. Few groups truly embody the explosive culture clash better than The New Age Steppers — and few releases stand as an example of the musical amalgam’s experimental potential quite like their 1980 self-titled debut.

Under all the sonic allusions to dub reggae and post-punk, The New Age Steppers is most striking as a deeply strange record — and purposefully so. Its impression is that this conglomeration of musicians — members of The Slits, The Pop Group, PiL and The Raincoats, among many others — were gunning for something unknowable; nothing less than the future of music. ‘Fade Away’, their version of Junior Byles import hit begins with the crackle of echoey drums and dips into Ari Up’s cooly-delivered diatribe against inequality, later echoed in ‘Crazy Dreams and High Ideals’, but the pieces in-between emit their forward-thinking optimism in dub-fuelled spaciousness, dotted with the ringing of bells, ghostly studio flourishes and an ever-present groove, bringing to mind a version of Can fronted by Lee “Scratch” Perry.

The influential future-facing visions of New Age Steppers begins here.