Reuniting after four long decades, iconoclastic London DIY outfit This Heat are back. XLR8R’s Bruce Tantum sits down with founding members Charles Bullen and Charles Hayward.
“There have been few musical entities like This Heat since the band disbanded in 1981; there were even fewer in the years prior to the London combo’s formation in 1976. Born of equal parts audio experimentation and antiwar furor, their sound—an exploratory blend of avant-rock, musique concrète, primal electronics, dub and a general toss-away-the-rules attitude—helped the trio to create a space within the British progressive-music scene that was shared, at best, only by fellow iconoclast outfits like the Pop Group. A box-set CD retrospective of the band’s work, Out of Cold Storage, released through Chris Cutler’s ReR label, came out in 2006. But now, to mark 40 years since the This Heat’s beginnings, Light In The Attic has put together a vinyl rerelease of the the group’s studio catalog: 1979’s subversive debut, This Heat, coproduced by David Cunningham of Flying Lizards fame; the 1980 EP Health and Efficiency, equal parts buoyant and bleak; and 1981’s Deceit, the most traditionally punk of the bunch (relatively speaking, of course).”
Reincarnated as This Is Not This Heat, Charles Bullen, Charles Hayward and co treat Rewire 2017 to their pioneering protest music on Sunday, 2 April. Watch an excerpt of a thrilling 1982 live performancebelow, and find out more about their Rewire 2017 performance at:This Is Not This Heat.
Rewire 2017 Festival Passes (€65) and Day Tickets (€27.50) are available at:Tickets.