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Rise again: The Fall (from left) Marc Riley, Paul Hanley, Steve Hanley, Craig Scanlon.
The Fall Slates Live!
BELLA UNION/POPSTOCK. EP
1981 six-track EP Slates is one of the essential Fall documents, where every irregular element tessellated into visionary, satiric malevolence. Now former members Craig Scanlon, Marc Riley and the Hanley brothers have advanced through the badlands of Fall archive reissues to re-curate Slates on its original 10-inch format, cherry-picking contemporary live versions from Britain and Europe. The audio quality varies a bit – a doubled-in-length Prole Art Threat sounds like it was recorded in an aircraft hangar – but the dredger bass, poltergeist guitars and rockabilly-Burundi-beats power through, with late psycholector Mark E Smith at peak form, adding a dig at “fat English dicks in Mexican hats” to Middle Mass, giving it up for “extreme nit-picking” in Slates, Slags Etc, and injecting exuberant spleen into the anti-metropolis Leave The Capitol.