VIA PRESS RELEASE | “Gang of Four, in a way, were the great missing link that led us all down a road of austerity of sound, and discipline of method.You could be fooled into thinking they are minimalist, but these are keenly arranged tracks that trade on the currency of suspense, and the power of reduction. The lyrical layer is poetic, passionate and painfully human. —Brendan Canty, Fugazi
On April 23, Matador Records will reissue two of Gang of Four’s critical early works, Entertainment! (1979) and Solid Gold (1981). Both have been remastered from the original analog tapes and will be made available on LP and CD.
Gang of Four’s debut record, Entertainment!, remains one of the most beloved and influential works of its era (or any era, really)—an unparalleled collection of songs that has left an indelible mark on generations of bands, producers, and artists. The group’s second album, Solid Gold, celebrates its 40th anniversary today. It boasts a much deeper, bass heavy sound than Entertainment! and contains the singles “Outside the Trains Don’t Run On Time” and “He’d Send In The Army.”
Entertainment! and Solid Gold are also collected in Gang of Four: 77-81, a new box set due out March 12 on LP and April 23 on CD. This stunning limited-edition box set gathers Gang of Four’s influential early work—the two aforementioned full-lengths, an exclusive singles LP, and an exclusive double LP of the never officially released Live at American Indian Center 1980. Additionally, the package includes two new badges, a C90 cassette tape compiling 26 never-before-issued outtakes, rarities and studio demos from Entertainment! and Solid Gold, and an epic 100-page, full-color hardbound book. A never before heard demo from the box set, “Elevator,” is available to listen to now.
The book details the history and legacy of the original Gang of Four with never-before-seen photos, contributions from surviving original band members, rare posters, ephemera, flyers, essays, artwork, liner notes and more. It also marks the first official publication of their lyrics. The CD version of the box will not include the badges or the C90. The demo recordings will instead be made available through a download code.
A new tribute album, The Problem of Leisure: A Celebration of Andy Gill and Gang of Four, will be released in May via Gill Music. The 20-track double album features contributions from Flea and John Frusciante, Warpaint, Idles, La Roux, and more.
This month, Solid Gold and Entertainment! will be featured on #timstwitterlisteningparty, where Dave Allen, Hugo Burnham, and Jon King will comment on the songs throughout playback. Tune in for those at 6pm GMT on 3/1 and 3/12 respectively.
Gang of Four was formed in Leeds in 1976 by bassist Dave Allen, drummer Hugo Burnham, guitarist Andy Gill, and singer Jon King. The band pioneered a style of music that inverted punk’s blunt and explosive energies—favoring tense rhythms, percussive guitars, and lyrics that traded in Marxist theory and situationism. They put every element of the traditional “rock band” format to question, from notions of harmony and rhythm to presentation and performance.
This original lineup of the band released two monumental albums, Entertainment! (1979) and Solid Gold (1981). A third, Songs of the Free (1982), was recorded with bassist Sara Lee replacing Dave Allen. After Songs Of The Free, Burnham departed the band and Andy Gill and Jon King continued on to release Hard in 1983. After this release, the band broke up until Gill and King started working together again in 1990. In 2004, the original quartet reformed for tour dates and released Return The Gift (2005). The band then continued with a range of lineups until Gill’s death in February 2020.
Gill’s untimely passing was cause for many to once again re-examine the group’s catalog and the legacy of these early releases was widely cited. Not only did Gang of Four’s music speak to the generation of musicians, activists, writers, and visual artists that emerged in the group’s immediate wake, but the generation after that. And the generation after that, even.
In the last few years, their songs have continued to resonate with and been sampled by artists far afield from “post-punk,” including Run the Jewels (“The Ground Below”) and Frank Ocean (“Futura Free”). Now more than forty years since the original release of Entertainment!, Gang of Four’s legacy cannot be overstated.
