Gig review: Mark Stewart, Glasgow King Tut’s

MARK Stewart’s influence runs deep, if not wide. His new album, The Politics Of Envy, features guest appearances from Primal Scream, Richard Hell, PIL’s Keith Levene and veteran underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger among numerous other collaborators, and yet he opened his latest tour to a tight coterie of the same fans who have been worshipping at his febrile altar since he first howled forth with The Pop Group in the late 1970s.

On this outing, he was accompanied by friends old and new, including Pop Group guitarist Dan Catsis and master mixologist Adrian Sherwood controlling, manipulating, playing the sound desk like another instrument. His new rhythm section have big shoes to fill but the size of the bassist’s board of effects pedals showed that he meant business. The belligerent funk of opener Nothing Is Sacred was an energy blast, but turned out to be mere gentle preamble compared to the following Liberty City, which delivered a real renegade soundwave.

A hefty chunk of the set was drawn from the new album. His petite co-vocalist – looking tinier still next to Stewart’s hulking frame – attacked her role with balletic steel, fearlessly playing surrogate to Massive Attack’s Daddy G and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry on the creepy Apocalypse Hotel and proto-dubstep of Gang War respectively.

Such is Stewart’s artistic currency that these brand new songs held their own next to the tightly coiled controlled explosion of old favourite Hysteria.

Rating: ****