THE POP GROUP – 3’37” (B-Side Of She Is Beyond Good And Evil 7″)
The thing about The Pop Group is that – get this! – they weren’t a pop group. The thing about “3’37″” (best currently found on Virgin’s Jazz Satellites comp) is that, without Mark Stewart’s fevered vocals to churn things up, they sound exactly like you’d want a modernist, aggressive pop group to sound like. This – juggernaut dubriffs, twisty videogame guitar, a poppin’ beat and the odd bit of adrenalised noise – is the music Primal Scream would be making if their current stuff amounted to more than rhetoric and old records. It sounds violent and sexy without any DHR-style crassness – so much of the music recorded around this time could’ve been the future, could still be if we let it.