The Pop Group, "Blood Money (Slow Thief)" (Mute)

Great news! Mute Records is reissuing the Pop Group's galvanic 1979 album Y today. Produced by reggae/dub savant Dennis Bovell, Y is cauldron of free rock, jagged dub, rancorous jazz, and caustic funk that peaks on the careening, cataclysmic "We Are Time." The whole thing is suffused in an atmosphere of dread and imbued with a desire to obliterate personal and political oppression. I recommend that you get the album on every format. (Mute's releasing it on four-piece Inca gold vinyl with a 40-page booklet, three posters, and two signed prints; a Deluxe four-piece 180-gram vinyl edition includes a 40-page booklet and three posters, Y vinyl with the “She Is Beyond Good & Evil” 12-inch and poster, a 3xCD edition, and a limited-edition cassette. The tape and single CD, plus digital, are available today. The vinyl editions come out November 22 and the triple CD in December.)

"Blood Money (Slow Thief)" is an alternate version of "Blood Money," and can be found on the Alien Blood bonus demos LP, part of this deluxe 40th-anniversary reissue, along with Y Live. The original is a harrowing dubby nightmare, with vocalist Mark Stewart at his most anguished and macabre, a man driven mad by capitalism and/or war. He wails, "Teeth beckon you/Who says guns speak louder/Money's a weapon of terror/Spiders I can trust open my chest/An order is an order, even when it makes no sense" over Gareth Sager's strangulated sax ululations, Simon Underwood's weaponized bass plunges, John Waddington's Sonny Sharrock-ian guitar squeals, and Bruce Smith's foreboding, methodical beats. The previously unreleased "Blood Money (Slow Thief)" lasts about 90 seconds longer than the Y version and adds Stewart beseeching some unknown evildoer, "What does it feel like to kill a man?!" Musically, this Alien Blood rendition is slower and even more deconstructed and disturbing. The new video below by the filmmaker Peter Harris, Stewart, and animator Llyr Williams is a masterpiece of viscous, visceral queasiness.