Gang of Four

This four-track mini-album, originally released in 1980, was like a warning shot fired across the bow of Western capitalism. Of course, the shot was fired by an obscure British band that had named itself, whimsically, after a particularly nasty group of Maoist revolutionaries, and the powers that be weren't paying much attention; let's just say that the great ship of capital stayed its course. But even if the Gang's revolutionary messages failed to have a noticeable political impact, the band's musical influence was tremendous. Drummer Hugo Burnham and bassist Dave Allen generated a minimalist yet monstrous groove that underpinned Andy Gill's jagged, funky, slash-and-kill guitar and the flat, plainly didactic vocals of Jon King, and the resulting sound was bracingly unique. This debut EP was the sparest, most frightening thing the band ever released; "Outside the Trains Don't Run on Time" and "It's Her Factory," the two standout tracks, are both built on bare-bones funk drumming and brief bursts of angry guitar, over which Jon King shouts lines like "Home/It's no castle/He wants his wife to run/And fetch." Is it fun? No. Is it poetry? No. But as dialectical rhetoric goes, it sure is compelling. ~ Rick Anderson, All Music Guide