Wolfgang Press - The Little Demons of the 4AD Household

Born from the ashes of Rema Rema and Mass, two short-lived outfits that in the early Eighties represented the first cries of the fledgling 4AD label, London's Wolfgang Press were one of the most original, talented and at the same time controversial bands on the darkwave scene, before becoming, midway through their career, protagonists of an abrupt and unfortunate change of direction. Their official activity opens and closes within little more than a decade and a handful of albums, but the highest peaks of their output remain exemplars of rare beauty, and will serve as an ideal starting point for many of those shoegaze (Lush and Breeders) and post-dream-pop (Slowdive, Stereolab, Red House Painters) bands that will in future try, in their own way, to replicate the splendour of that wonderful and unrepeatable first 4AD season.

In the early Nineties, in fact, the English label, formerly Axis Records, goes through a phase of slow, gradual readjustment caused by an inevitable generational turnover, which results in a reduction of releases from those who had long been its most sublime standard-bearers (Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance), or even the outright disappearance of some of those precious gems (Dif Juz and A.R. Kane above all) who had made the legendary label a genuine way of life, as well as the most brilliant meeting point between aesthetic whim, compositional originality and, why not, creative madness.

The core line-up of Wolfgang Press features the flamboyant Michael "Mick" Allen on vocals and bass, Andrew Gray on guitar and Mark Cox on keyboards: the three will gradually be joined during recording sessions by several other guest musicians, all finely selected and borrowed directly from the private playground of the Watts-Russell household, with the usual wit and foresight.

We're in Harrow, north-west London, 1976. Michael Allen is a lively, cheeky young man with long blond dreadlocks. He attends art college, and among his fellow students is Marco Pirroni, future right-hand man of Adam Ant. The two quickly become close friends, united by a shared passion for Frank Sinatra, Captain Beefheart and Brian Eno, as well as reggae music and Kubrick's films. When they decide to start playing together, Pirroni already boasts a brief but notable experience in the field, having performed that same year as guitarist for Siouxsie and the Banshees at London's Club 100, in a sort of punk festival that would go down in history as the very first live performance by the band led by Siouxsie Sioux.

The pair initially found the Beastly Cads, and the following year change the name to The Models: it's a rudimentary punk band that will be very short-lived, also featuring Cliff Fox (vocals and guitar) and Terry Day (drums). The Models release only one proper single, titled "Freeze", but before splitting up for good they record four more songs that find a place in John Peel's vast collection.

At this point the surviving Allen and Pirroni recruit Gary Asquith (vocals and guitar, another former fellow student of theirs), Mark Cox on keyboards and Max Prior on drums (this is Dorothy, future member of the Psychic Tv project). It's 1978, and Rema-Rema are born.

Ivo Watts-Russell's protégés

"One afternoon I come back to the shop and find these five characters playing their demo tape for Peter [Kent, ed.]. That was the first time I thought that, as a label, we were working on something truly important." So says Ivo Watts-Russell, head of the label, and quite a calling card for the five lads, especially considering that around the same time the same stable was about to release "In The Flat Field" by Bauhaus, "Garlands" by Cocteau Twins and "Prayers On Fire" by the Birthday Party, just to name a few, or that in the recording studio you might run into the likes of Colin Newman or Robin Guthrie.

The demo in question is Wheel In The Roses, released on April 1st, 1980; it's an EP containing two studio tracks, the title track "Rema-Rema" and "Feedback Song", plus two live recordings from June '79, "Instrumental" and "Fond Affections".

The songs bear the mark of the band members' youthful listening habits, with clear traces of Stooges, MC5 but also a certain art-punk à la Wire, particularly in the two live tracks "Instrumental" and "Fond Affections" (the latter would be cleaned up and reworked a few years later by This Mortal Coil, on their 1984 It'll End In Tears). "Feed-back Song" and "Rema-Rema", on the other hand, offer a glimpse of what would become the true intent of the new wave era, namely to rebuild after the punk rubble, reorganising with a personal style and a certain intellectual flair all that was good from previous decades in rock, rhythm'n'blues and psychedelia, before the fateful year zero of 1977.

Right after the release of Wheel In The Roses, Marco Pirroni leaves the band for good to continue his career as guitarist for Adam Ant, so Allen, Cox and Asquith replace him with Danny Briottet, are reborn as Mass and release first the single "You And I/ Cabbage" in 1980, then their only album, Labour Of Love, in 1981. Although the Mass experience also proves short-lived, the band still manages to stamp its name into the label's glorious catalogue, starting with the cover art (featuring a Venus de Milo fitted with conspicuous pink nipples), which remains a minor cult item for anyone who obsessively devours every detail of the 4AD inventory: for Allen and co., careful attention to visual presentation will remain a constant in the years to come, with all subsequent artwork entrusted to the same designer, Alberto Ricci.

Although it may come across as dark and unsettling on first listen, the album nonetheless offers some remarkably notable moments, starting with the long and gruelling title track "Mass", nearly ten minutes of horror-movie, spectral atmospheres, introduced by a keyboard sound somewhere between a black mass and the Stranglers of "The Raven" ("Baroque Bordello", for instance), while the second half of the track gives the ear a little more to hold onto and heads towards a post-punk-style finale (the creaking guitar anticipates Bauhaus's "Stigmata Martyr" by a few months).

"Why", which appears twice in the tracklist, is a minimalist goth piece (the lyrics contain no actual words), while "Ill" is a whirlwind of airy sounds and scratchy guitars, with Asquith's voice tearing itself apart in a continuous, tormented and frightening wail. The grim march of "Innocence" and "Isn't Life New" almost entirely set melody aside in favour of lacerating screams and bursts of sax and xylophone, until "FAHTCF" brings back something closer to an actual song, albeit amid shattering cymbals and funereal organ.

Overall, Labour Of Love is an abrasive, misanthropic delirium, one that was forgotten even by the boldest, most forward-thinking radio stations. By the end of the year Mass split up: Asquith and Briottet will reunite in Renegade Soundwave (1986), while Allen and Cox continue on together and found Wolfgang Press, "with no ambition for fame" as they would later put it, "but to wage a noble crusade against the fodder fed to the masses by Radio One and Top of the Pops". Often asked about the origin of the band's name, Michael Allen leaves it an open question, explaining that "it's deliberately meaningless and open to any kind of interpretation. Wolfgang because it recalled Mozart (much admired by the band members), Press just at random, but Wolfgang Press sounds good".

At the time, the authoritative US music magazine Spin justified the choice as a tribute to a peculiar contraption designed (but never built) by the Austrian composer himself to write his music, which was named, fittingly, the "Wolfgang Press." In any case, their 1983 debut Burden Of Mules is one to remember.

The Torment

Dark, intense, impenetrable: the nine tracks that make up Burden Of Mules are wildly different from one another, yet all legitimate offspring of a common mother, the latent unease of the post-punk era in its many shades. It opens with "Lisa (The Passion)," a splendid instrumental overture marked by a melancholic, decadent atmosphere, built on organ-like strings and insistent pounding percussion, while the guitar heard on the track belongs to Andrew Gray (borrowed from In Camera, who would later become the band's third permanent member).

The stop-start gait of "Prostitute I" and "Prostitute II" is marked by a heavy, monotone bass pushed to the front, very similar to what had characterized, a couple of years earlier, for instance "Half-Mute" by Tuxedomoon (their "59 To 1" comes to mind). Both are less proper songs than small works of art, sketched out with lines of percussion, pixiphone and clarinet and stamped with the voice of an Allen who sings here with the detachment of a latter-day Alan Vega, intoning lines like "Prostitutes are the salt of life/ If you don't like the taste, light another cigarette," flipping the point of view (though not the meaning) of the acid invectives hurled a few years earlier by Pop Group's "We Are All Prostitutes." The drums here, as throughout the album, are played by Richard Thomas of Dif Juz.

It's Michael ("Mick" to everyone) Allen himself who explains his main sources of inspiration: "The Fall, anything by Nick Cave, but above all the early Pil records. It all began after I first heard 'Metal Box'." Indeed, you don't even need to dig very deep to trace in this accomplished debut a great deal of Mr. Lydon's dark-punk-funk blend, as for instance in "Complete And Utter," a diabolical, baleful chant that moves through a bleak landscape of alienation and psychic imbalance. Allen sings in a graceless, inelegant way, his vocal approach sounding crude and off-key: quite a few of the band's songs would come across as downright irritating, were it not for the cunning of certain arrangements or the meticulousness of the rhythm section. Yet it's precisely this intriguing blend that makes Wolfgang Press a one-of-a-kind presence on the contemporary scene, a band that transcends any possible categorization or reduction to a label. And so it happens that creative flair and intelligence marry beautifully with the unconventional tone of their frontman, a disciple of the Mark E. Smith school and of the most irreverent, depraved side of Nick Cave.

In short, plenty of recklessness in service of an equal measure of genius, and vice versa, as in the initiatory ritual "Slow As A Child," celebrated in a chamber-like sound that drips over a tremulous, sinister piano, foreshadowing an ending that takes on the shape of a wicked call from beyond the grave. Or in the terrifying tribal dance "Journalists," where Allen/tormented soul writhes in an anguished, unheard plea, closer to a dog's bark, while everything collapses around him, in a punishing little spectacle that brings back onstage the pagan circus of the former and the theatrical vocation of the latter, the Virgin Prunes. Frenzy, chaos and psychosis feed the obsessive, disturbed noise-making of the title track "Burden Of Mules," the same black hole that had swallowed up "Mesh And Lace," the 1981 debut of fellow travelers Modern English, or, across the ocean, the first "Confusion Is Sex" by Sonic Youth, from the same year. "Give It Back" sets the stage for a mocking performance that tallies the casualties in the valley of death told by the lyrics, whose fragmented percussion and primitive breakbeats faithfully reconstruct it, while the abstract, disoriented punk/jazz piano sonata "On The Hill" is the final piece of a mosaic that is by this point complete and total — which, paradoxically, is perhaps the greatest limitation of this point-blank debut, since the impossibility of pinning it down to a fixed, precise address ends up denying it its rightful place in the new wave pantheon. "Too sophisticated for the mainstream and too alternative even for the underground scene," as one critic put it at the time.

It's often said that an artist is never appreciated enough until they're gone, and Wolfgang Press are genuine artists. They have courage and talent to spare, and Ivo Watts-Russell knows it well, but he has no intention of waiting for their eventual demise to commemorate them — so the whole label coddles them a bit, and to smooth and refine some of their inevitable primitive rough edges they're paired with the best available at the time: Robin Guthrie. And here another story begins. Under the hidden direction of Mr. Cocteau Twins, there's a first small but decisive turn toward a kind of anarchic yet committed pop, born from the same seeds that the twins from Grangemouth had first planted in "Garlands" and then cultivated in "Head Over Heels," before seeing them fully bloom in "Treasure" within a couple of years.

Ecstasy

As had already happened with many of the Cocteau Twins productions of that period (though somewhat true of all the label's bands), Wolfgang Press too had the habit of releasing a long string of EPs, which would ultimately prove to collect their best material. So in 1984 came Scarecrow, the first of a breathtaking trilogy, opening with a cover of Otis Redding's famous "Respect," presented here as a sparkling, 50s-flavored duet staged by Michael Allen in crooner mode alongside the queen herself, Elizabeth Fraser. The jazzy trumpet leading the dance testifies to a general shift in the band's attitude, gradually lightening up to open onto a more accessible, less hostile sound, with just one dive back into darker territory represented by "Deserve."

But it's "Ecstacy" that is the true gem set within this first EP, adding yet more sparkle to the label's already rich catalogue. It's a paralyzing apocalyptic-folk track of the kind that does honor to the best of Douglas P., with a purely instrumental intro (an insistent bass line and an obsessive tinkling of keyboards) that hypnotizes and stuns the listener, before ferrying them into a second part where Allen's voice operates on two different planes (a long spoken monologue overlaid by an anguished, melodramatic singing) and a sumptuous final crescendo give the track a cinematic beauty with a western setting, in a riot of trumpet and percussion. "Ecstacy" is one of those songs that still send chills down your spine on every listen, the ideal culmination of an entire season of stylistic exercises suspended between music and poetry, earth and air, dream and reality, as only the dreamlike, ethereal suggestions of Cocteau Twins, the ethnic-mystical alchemies of Dead Can Dance, the transcendent, otherworldly suspensions of This Mortal Coil, and certain rhythmic virtuosities of Dif Juz or of the dreamiest Durutti Column have ever managed to be.

The following year came Water, which compared to its predecessor ventures down completely different stylistic paths. Yet the result is still excellent. The experience of Scarecrow delivers a band more aware of its own abilities and renewed in its intentions, and on these foundations are built the sweeping waltz-time march "Tremble/My Girl Doesn't," "Fire Eater," and the refined "My Way," which probes the most distinctly wave-leaning dance territory.

Working with Robin Guthrie forges a more fitting sound and an enviable technical polish, which reach full maturity on Sweatbox, also from 1985, the final chapter of this unmissable trilogy. The four tracks making up the EP reinforce the band's artistic creed, which now applies itself to a skillful effort of deconstructing and reshaping pop's rules according to new standards, offering a sonic snapshot admirable for its creative ingenuity. Concrete proof of this comes in "I'm Coming Home," a refined flamenco guitar that counterbalances a noir orchestral score, and the velvety synth-pop of "Heart Of Stone," which completely overturns Neil Young's "Heart Of Gold," rewriting it in its own image and likeness (Cock Robin owe them thanks, but so do Frazier Chorus, His Name Is Alive, Mazzy Star, and pretty much all the label's new signings). Finally, there's the cheeky, electric-funk dance with a menacing tone of the title track, and the sinister "Muted," an industrial dance with drums carved out by Manuela Zwingman of Xmal Deutschland, yet more pupils taking lessons at the Watts-Russell school.

To more easily track down Scarecrow, Water and Sweatbox, you'll have to wait a few months, until November 1985, when 4AD thought it wise to gather them into the compilation The Legendary Wolfgang Press And Other Tall Stories, which collects the material from the three EPs, albeit with some tracks offered in slightly tweaked or remixed versions compared to the originals — unlike what happened with Cocteau Twins, for whom a similar compilation would remain a long-awaited wish for over twenty years, until "Lullabies To Violaine" in 2008 finally brought some clarity to the scattered 12" output released during that period.

Next Up

In 1986 came their proper second album, Standing Up Straight. They pick up again from the eclecticism of the earlier EPs, adding classical-music instrumentation and markedly industrial elements to the band's already formidable sonic arsenal. So it happens that they soar by the moonlight of "Hammer The Halo," where Allen channels a less feverish, more bluesman-like Nick Cave the singer-songwriter (with female vocal backing straight out of soul music), or plunge into the intricate "Ghost," a sobbing lament wrapped in a multicolored kaleidoscope of sounds that barely manage to defuse the oppressive, funereal organ.

Standing Up Straight is also much more besides, saturated as it is with contaminations and experiments of varying success but all of undeniable interest: it relaunches the disturbed frenzies of Talking Heads on "Forty Days Thirty Nights" or the ruthless, criminal tribalism of Pere Ubu on "Rotten Fodder", or again garage dissonance on "Fire Fly" and a "Dig A Hole" precariously balanced between funk and robotics.

The album closes with the grim descent into hell of "I Am The Crime", once again led by the hand of Elizabeth Fraser, here in a desolate, agonizing vocal that pushes her to the limits of her abilities, assuming a limit beyond which her voice is forbidden to venture even exists.

Also worth noting is the exclusive booklet that accompanied the album's release, in which the lyric sheet was offered as an integral part of a broader visual project curated by 23 Envelope, the graphic design studio set up by designer Vaughan Oliver and director/photographer Nigel Grierson, a duo who between 1983 and 1988 established a solid partnership with 4AD, putting their name to the label's most important sleeves for Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil, etc.

1987 gave birth to Big Sex, a new, off-kilter 12" that makes clear once again, if it were even necessary, why Wolfgang Press were always a band ahead of the curve, for better or worse, in creative ingenuity and visionary drive: "The Wedding" is a hallucinated tribal ceremony, heavy and primitive, modelled on "That Heat", though it swaps out that track's crude percussion for sudden flashes of distorted guitar; "God's Number" is pervaded throughout by atypical drumming, with the novelty of soulful female backing vocals underpinning a ramshackle vocal, while an incessant, forlorn melody makes "The Great Leveller" the closest thing to a traditional pop song Allen and co. had attempted up to that point, were it not for a few deranged arrangements scattered here and there, just to remind us never to take anything for granted when we drop the needle on one of their records.

Lonely Is An Eyesore

But 1987 is also the year of "Cut The Tree", their own personal tribute - and what a tribute - to an era, the first one of 4AD, that was slowly fading out, and a melancholy glance at what has now passed and will not return. The track has the most markedly darkwave sound of their early days, a slow, meditative opening and a heart-pounding final crescendo, with a refrain repeated to infinity.

With "Cut The Tree", Wolfgang Press took their place alongside Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, Dead Can Dance, Dif Juz, Throwing Muses, Colourbox and Clan of Xymox on the dogma-compilation Lonely Is An Eyesore, a genuine cultural manifesto drawn up in 1987 by the label, which here offers the most enchanting portrait of a decade that, in music history, remains - if not the most beautiful - certainly the most picturesque, lively and colourful.

From here on, the protagonists of that unforgettable scene would continue their adventures each along their own path, some going on to write pages of considerable importance (Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance), some losing their way along the road (Throwing Muses and Clan of Xymox), and some disappearing for good (Colourbox, Dif Juz).

Wolfgang Press evidently wanted to surprise on this front too, and unable to decide which of these three possible paths to take up again, within a few years they would end up going down all three. The first, the most tortuous and rocky, is as always the one leading to the most coveted destination, with the release of Bird Wood Cage in 1988: "the album I'm proudest of," as Allen calls it, "the perfect bridge between the band's past and future", which this time serves up funk, dub and reggae ingredients to flavour a certain rediscovery of music's "black" roots and the Motown tradition, here not diminished but rather enhanced by the band's deft use of electronic innovations.

Behind the hilarious "toilet bowl abandoned in a grassy field" that adorns a Warhol-style cover lies an LP that is, all things considered, accessible and among the most well-rounded in the band's discography, now even tackling topical lyrics ("Kansas" touches on the Kennedy question and more broadly America's chronic obsession with assassinations) or even love songs of a peculiar kind laced with black humour ("See My Wife" and "Bottom Drawer"). The first single "King Of Soul" stammers out funk and gospel choruses, "Raintime" is whispered over a slow burn of country violins, while "Swing Like A Baby" lingers on a warm mix of dark atmospheres and synthetic arrangements.

The ghostly frame of "Hang On Me (For Papa)" is lit up by a subtle accordion tango that plays with cryptic keyboard phrases, while the tattered, Byrds-like fabric of "Kansas" is continually stitched back together by a pleasure-seeking wah-wah guitar, more or less what happens in the distorted "Shut That Door", perhaps the best example of what Wolfgang Press could create in their most inspired moments: sinuous discord, funk overflow and neo-industrial noise.

To round off Bird Wood Cage, 1989 saw the release of the Kansas EP, which looks far more like a bizarre attempt to invade geo-political territory than a true appendix to the album, given the tangle of recorded spoken-word passages dwelling on the Kennedy question in the reprise of "Kansas" and the banjo of "Assassination K./Kanserous", which reconstructs "Yellow Rose Of Texas", the folk anthem of the state of the same name.

Daring and Losing

Allen and co., however, stood out not only as musicians of crystal-clear talent, but also as keen observers of what was happening outside their own sphere of expertise, always on the lookout for sonic updates in line with the latest trends, in a manner that smacked more of challenge and provocation than constructive engagement, as if determined to impose upon themselves a kind of artistic imperviousness to the new wave advancing around them, and to reassert at all costs an innate ability to translate into their own language any musical slang, even where none was required. And so we witness another sudden change of direction, this time radical and irreversible.

In that same year, 1989, Allen the listener and music obsessive was literally struck by the release of "3 Feet High And Rising", the debut album by US hip-hop trio De La Soul, which he placed on his personal list of essential records, and which led him "to rethink the entire creative process behind our previous work. It was a record full of novelty, joy and freshness, thanks to which we rediscovered that making music can sometimes actually be fun." From these considerations came Queer in 1991, their own highly personal foray onto less exclusive dancefloors, made up of a rather cerebral and fairly inconclusive house music, with heavy use of samples that were often not even particularly functional to the cause (among other things, a series of disputes over sample rights would force significant corrections for the edition destined for the American market). Caught between disco-funk and easy-listening rhythms, the album heads down a dead-end track that terminates in a cocktail bar, where it would feel more natural to listen to it seated at a table sipping an aperitif than in front of your own turntable - in that setting, we wouldn't even notice we were being treated to an original Wolfgang Press record, which would at least spare us the effort of stooping to gather up the crumbs of the brilliant band they once were. And if we ever did decide to pick them up, there are two possible reasons that would drive us to do so: either we're long-time fans fuelled by unshakeable devotion, in the vain hope that sooner or later one of their eccentric flourishes might resurface, or, far more likely, we simply haven't finished our drink yet and fancy playing a guessing game with our drinking companion: whoever is first to unmask all the samples scattered around "behind our backs" wins, starting with New Order and Kraftwerk (quoted in "Honey Tree") and continuing with Pink Floyd ("Questions Of Time"), Velvet Underground ("Birmingham") and so on. The bass is played on almost every track by ex-Throwing Muses member Leslie Langston, starting with the two singles "Questions Of Time" and "Mama Told Me Not To Come", a Randy Newman cover, further proof of a certain recklessness when it came to trampling on other people's territory.

The only tracks that really step up a gear are the anti-Thatcher blitz of "Sucker", which travels on frequencies dear to Nine Inch Nails (not coincidentally, that year the Wolfgang Press opened for Trent Reznor and co. on tour), and the disco-music of "Heaven's Gate", one of the album's most successful cuts. Also worth noting is the velvety trip-hop of "Dreams And Light", penned by Annie "Anxiety" Bandez, a multi-media "cursed" artist held in high regard by Frank Zappa and often at work within a certain experimental avant-garde (she's behind the booze-soaked rendition of "Things Happen" on Coil's "Love's Secret Domain", plus numerous other collaborations with Current 93 and Nurse With Wound).

Let's be clear, we're not suddenly in the presence of slacking novices - the sharpness and ingenuity are still there, beyond dispute, and they're not even dented by the crudest banalities that pad out "Birmingham", "Louis XIV" and "Birdie Song"; the tracklist would also offer considerable ideas if only they'd come from less seasoned hands, but given the high-level outings these seasoned, brilliant musicians had accustomed us to, Queer remains a modest, unfinished project all the same, one that risks looking downright embarrassing next to the ingenious sonic cut-and-paste with which former labelmates Colourbox and A.R. Kane (hiding behind the acronym M/A/R/R/S) had rewritten the fundamental laws of the new avant-dance universe, fixing them in the simple mathematical equation "Pump Up The Volume".

The US edition adds the single "A Girl Like You (Born To Be Kissed)" to the tracklist, a wink at a wider audience, and for the first time the band also cracks the charts (No. 2 on the Billboard chart, the biggest commercial success of their career). "A Girl Like You" would later be covered by Tom Jones, for whom Allen wrote "Show Me Some Devotion" in 1994 (included on the album "The Lead And How To Swing It"). Jones returned the favor by joining the band on stage for "All Virgos Are Mad", a self-celebratory showcase that 4AD organized in Los Angeles in January 1995.

The most natural outcome of this mainstream drift is Funky Little Demons, released in January 1995, which writes the word "end" on the band's story. Despite the title, the album contains nothing remotely diabolical, except for persisting down the same path already gone wrong on the previous Queer, of which it's the most obvious and predictable continuation. Nor is it particularly funky, though it does carry four extra years of experience on its shoulders, which at least allow for a more cautious approach to crossing into dance territory - terrain that, for them, continues to prove hostile and uneven.

The compositional approach finds a better balance than on the previous Queer, and the 12 songs making up the tracklist sketch out a more logical, sensible script. This time it's Massive Attack's "Blue Lines" that shakes Allen's artistic convictions, by now fully settled into the role of diligent disciple. The result is a naive white-soul over synthetic grooves that finds its best expression in the little gem "Executioner", a sensual musical idyll between Allen and French poet Sandra Moussempès, while the bland rock-dance of "So Long Dead" or the single "Going South" have little to add to eleven years of honorable career, recounted with scant clarity on the track "11 Years".

Better, then, to take their leave with "Derek The Confessor" and "Chains", delicate yet enjoyable ambient tracks that take up the gauntlet thrown down by Air and Broadcast head-on, or with the dance beat of "Christianity", which helps soften the bitterness of this exit for a band now on its last legs, given that any ambition of a techno rebirth inevitably gives way before the rising star of Warp and the surging Bristol phenomenon.

Funky Little Demons is a dignified farewell nonetheless, not one to dismiss, but how far away that November '85 now seems, when 4AD had decided to immortalize the best of their output under the epithet "Legendary"...

In February of that same year Cox leaves, and Allen and Gray consider carrying on without him, but only manage to complete a promotional tour of the album across the United States, after which they lay down their arms and officially declare the Wolfgang Press story over.

In 2001 the compilation Everything Is Beautiful (A Retrospective 1983-1995) is released, the last official product to bear the band's name.

Today Michael Allen is working alongside Italian musician Giuseppe De Bellis, a former collaborator of Orb. Together they created the project Geniuser, which gave birth to "Mud Black" in 2005 for the Danish label Phisteria, the EP "Press/Delete" in 2009, and "I Am" in 2018. Former bandmate Andrew Gray has also collaborated with Geniuser, while continuing to record on his own; under the pseudonym Limehouse Outlaw he released his debut solo album, "Homegrown", in 2002 (Allen returned the favor by writing most of the lyrics). The two also take part in the new creations under the name Lavender Pill Mob, the brainchild of former Mass member Gary Asquith, while Mark Cox is likewise active with his new project U:Guru.

The surprise comeback: the second life of Wolfgang Press

In 2020, somewhat surprisingly, the band resurfaces for Record Store Day with Unremembered Remembered, a collection of demos conceived between 1995 and 1996 as a possible follow-up to Funky Little Demons, which had just been released. Mark Cox had already left the band, so Allen and Gray, envisioning a future as a duo, wrote seven new tracks that ended up gathering dust in a drawer. The material, mastered at Abbey Road and in line with the electro-funk style of their later work, was pressed on a limited-edition vinyl that managed to bring six of those seven tracks back to light, including the fine "My Mother Told Me", "Black Hole Star" and "Miss H.I.V.".

Even more sensational is what happens four years later, when, a full twenty-nine years after their last official album, Wolfgang Press decide to start over with A 2nd Shape (2024), their sixth studio LP, which stands as yet another stage in an uninterrupted evolution. Stephen Gray, Andrew's brother, now takes Mark Cox's place, but the juiciest news is that the album is this time released via Downward Records, the label founded in Birmingham by Karl O'Connor (aka Regis), known for blending post-punk with industrial-techno influences.

The result is an excellent compromise between modernity and echoes of their more unsettled, minimal past, with jittery synths, slowed-down drum machines and dub elements fueling stimulating paranoias, as on the disturbed "The Line" and "Glacier", the instrumental "The 1st", or the catchy mechanized ballad with pop sensibility "Knock Knock", whispered in slow motion with the sensual voice of a singer who can shift mood effortlessly and swiftly. All nine songs on the tracklist were recorded with pre-Pro Tools technology using an old eight-track ADAT. The lyrics are socially engaged, often anchored to real-life events, as in the lead single "Sad Surfer", which narrates with disintegrating pathos the story of Victorian-era English painter Richard Dadd, known for imaginary landscapes populated by fairies and other supernatural beings. Convinced that his father was the devil, Dadd killed him and fled to France, where he was arrested by police, and from then on spent the rest of his life in the psychiatric hospitals of Bethlem and Broadmoor back home.

The atmospheric "Reset Your Mind" is driven throughout by a drone with ambient coordinates, "Take It Backwards" instead pumps out a catchy, immediate chorus, while "21st Century" oscillates sarcastically over synths, sharpening the divide between aggressive sounds and house temptations. Special mention goes to the frenetic opening track "This Garden Of Eden", which brings back to the fore, as was the custom in their early days, heavy bass lines and Allen's gravelly baritone, which here barely holds back when it would seem to want to scream instead.

A welcome, top-tier comeback: who knows whether it will have a follow-up or remain just an isolated blitz, but in the meantime let's enjoy it. In 2024 Wolfgang Press are still among us, who would have ever thought it?

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