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Mark Stewart 


Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh
4 stars
“Welcome to Liberty City!” bellows Mark Stewart early on in a set to 
tie in with the recent release of his all-star The Politics of Envy 
album. Stewart may not need a megaphone, but he makes his point loud, 
proud and without recourse to the album's guest list, which includes 
dub legend Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Raincoats bassist Gina Birch, 
subversive film-maker Kenneth Anger on theremin and all of Primal 
Scream.

Live, such a Who's Who? may be impossible on this short tour, but it 
doesn't stop Stewart  and a dangerously well-drilled three-piece band 
augmented by fellow-traveller, reggae MC, Brother Culture, lambasting 
the audience with a thrillingly fearless set of punk-funk dub-reggae 
metal clatter. Stewart begins proceedings limbering up physically as 
much as vocally, looking every inch the contender sporting a shiny red 
tracky top with a towel wrapped round his neck.

Stewart's regular foil and production wizard Adrian Sherwood may not be 
in attendance, but this laptop and pedal-powered experience still 
manages to capture the album's  full-on pummelling assault. The 
'Keeping the dream alive' refrain of Autonomia becomes an anthem for 
a new generation of avant provocateurs, while Stereotype shimmers with 
a poppy pulse that would put U2 to shame. An unlikely dubbed-out cover 
of William Blake's poem, Jerusalem, invests Blake's words with a 
multi-cultural modernity while reclaiming the poem's revolutionary 
spirit.

The place for all this really is a noisy late-night underground 
shebeen. Yet, closing with Hysteria, dating from his Mark and the 
Maffia era collaboration with Tackhead, Stewart and co manage to 
transform a Monday night in Edinburgh with a thrillingly relevant call 
to arms. Viva to that.


The Herald, June 13th 2012

ends
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