Martin 'Youth' Glover" (Killing Joke).

📷: Frank Jenkinson

Youth *December 27, 1960

Taste the salt of my tears, take the wealth of my years. Singing in the millennium with you.

When Off the Ground was completed [Paul] decided he wanted dance mixes of a couple of the songs for release as 12-inch vinyl singles, hoping to reach a younger audience this way. To undertake the work he hired Martin Glover, founder member of the band Killing Joke, who, despite being 31 years old, went by the name Youth. Youth quickly established a rapport with McCartney, the two musicians sharing a similar hippyish mindset and manner of speaking. [...] [Youth:] “[So I] went down there [to Hog Hill Mill] and I started sampling … I said, ‘What would be great if you could just add a couple of other things to the loops I’ve taken off the multi-tracks and just take it a bit further,’ and he was happy to do that. I got him jamming, got him on his guitar, and all these other [instruments]. He’s got such a great collection.” One of the instruments Paul played on this very modern record was Bill Black’s double bass [...]. Youth took the tapes to his home studio where he assembled alternate versions of what he expected to be one final track. Then Paul came over with the family to listen. “He and Linda and some of the kids would come down and just sit in on the sessions until three or four, and got a real buzz out of some of the alternative mixes I was doing for the ambient ones and really, really loved it, and then he came back and he said, ‘I want to put all these mixes out’ [laughs]. I said, ‘They’re actually for editing into one mix.’ ‘No, no.’ He’s often like this [laughs]. So the first album was really all the different mixes from that one session.” By the ‘first album’ Youth means the collaborative CD strawberries oceans ships forest. ‘It’s basically a magical reference in the English folk tradition,’ Youth says of the curious unpunctuated title, declining to elucidate. Paul decided to put this enigmatic recording out under a pseudonym, [...] the Fireman, in honour of the fact that his father had fire-watched in Liverpool during the Blitz. ‘This was supposed to be an antidote to him doing commercial releases or songs with record company pressure,’ comments Youth. ‘It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to imagine how much of a box being Paul McCartney could be, and the idea of wanting to do things outside of that box, with no previous association, anonymously, can be very attractive.’ […] ‘It is a dance record, but it’s also ambient, and it’s a little esoteric [with elements of] electronica,’ explains Youth. ‘But it’s also none of those things, cos it’s stuff he’s all played, and it’s all originally recorded and that makes it different.’

[—from Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney, Howard Sounes]

Martin Glover has a set of his own parameters and they inform his choices of collaboration as one can assume from this weird sentence I typed in here. I mean, him producing Pink Floyd? Sure, he probably always dreamed of this, though The Endless River is not really their album per se. No, the disc serves as the postscript to their career, yet the LP concludes with the tune on the link, where everything fits. We follow the foggy landscapes to reach the oasis in the form of the finale, which might be too close to whatever they did during the late 80's, yet what a song! Sure, this is not one of their best, yet the things just soars in the vein of their classics. Of course, the piece has a bitter-sweet quality now, since this was a celebration of their detente that evaporated later on.

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Killing Joke: “Full Spectrum Dominance” (2023)

I will say that Killing Joke is one of the few enduring artists / bands out there who only get stronger and tougher with each album (see Ministry, Curse Mackey, and Unsane). There’s absolutely no slowing down on their part. Your Messiah Jaz Coleman and Company came to remind you that they never lost it. Fans got an exciting surprise when Killing Joke’s latest orphan single “Full Spectrum Dominance” dropped ahead of them performing their debut album and What’s This For...! at London’s Royal Albert Hall earlier this month. They never deserted their social and world politics behind and this is no different, helping them stay relevant all this time. They never deserted their talented chops, either, as the UK collective rides smoothly to victory once again. Jaz’ vocals stay dead-focused straight-ahead and fly far with Geordie’s strings howling along for the ride and Youth’s bass always putting pressure on their target. Big Paul Ferguson never misfires and lends “Full Spectrum Dominance” its speed, aggression, and tension. Consider this a continuation of last year’s Lords Of Chaos e.p. and hopefully all roads lead to a new album.

Essential Logic - Prayer For Peace - from their new (!) forthcoming album Land of Kali; a Poly Styrene song, from Lora Logic’s second stint in X-Ray Spex in the 90s

Written by Poly Styrene Produced by Youth & Lora Logic Video Director: Kavi Karnapura Das

Killing Joke has finally returned.

Blinded by greed, thy kingdom come.

Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) directed by Richard Donner

THE PRINCE OF EGYPT 1998

But I was their enemy. I was the prince of Egypt, the son of the man who slaughtered... their children! You've chosen the wrong messenger! H-how can I even speak to these people?

Martin Glover's name can be found on a variety of platters and one does ask oneself – which one of these might be the work the most people are most definitely familiar with? Personally, I would say Urban Hymns by the Verve is the most famous work he's associated with. True, he didn't produce all the tracks there, yet those he did gave the group a taste of success that eluded them for so long. The tune on the link became their biggest chart success and the group also did something they probably didn't intend – they showed a way forward for Britpop. You can already hear the strains Coldplay shall develop on their own, while several other groups will take the balladry into the soundtracks for medical soap operas. However, the original still has a power we cannot deny.

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Killing Joke: “I Am The Virus” (2015)

Lords Of Chaos came out earlier this year. We put three and three together and concluded that it had to be a leftover track from the Pylon (2015) era. I wanted nothing less from Jaz Coleman growling and devouring everything in his path, forever hungry and causing bloody murder with drummer Paul Ferguson, basisst Martin ‘Youth’ Glover, and guitarist Geordie Walker. It not only made Omega WUSB’s summer bonus industrial broadcast, but it’s also in my forever workout playlist.