Property of Acolytes Action Squad

Allow me to briefly introduce these peculiarly anomalous services.

Very late in the 20th century, sounds began to coagulate around an idea which hatched and called itself Acolytes Action Squad. Originally 2, briefly 3, sometimes 1, but essentially 2, if Ac.Ac.Sq. had ever stated a guiding principle it would have entailed music as, all at once, an audible cry, an unleashed reflection of unMEDIAted ideas, and a shield. A shield from what? Founding member The Essence explains, "When I started making music, my sense was that, for it to save me, it had to amount to something that took steps beyond entertainment, something more sustaining than just frivolous, essential, like blood, and digestion. I needed saving from music the way it was being presented all around me. That's why I started. Got lost. Stopped. And started again"

It is now very early in the 21st century and, using this unstated guiding principle, Acolytes Action Squad members' curious and scattered output over the last decade includes: A 4 track cassette, a 6 track vinyl EP, 2 full length CD albums (including new release "Winkle Time with Acolytes Action Squad", an album of regenerative remixes for a Yorkshire experimental electronics/noise music record label, an improvised film soundtrack for an Iranian visual/conceptual artist, live and recorded contributions to a 5/6/7 piece improvisational folk music ensemble, several audio-visual and literary assignments for a Sheffield based visual research laboratory, live performances with a multi-national Sheffield based free-jazz-rock-funk-noise-electronic-pop music band, and experimental sound engineering for mostly anyone who asks.

I'm in a privileged position. As former press officer and regular pre and post production collaborator with the band, I can testify to the variety of highly charged visual and sensual responses that have been caused by their sound. Do they sound like a group of infants too young to fully appreciate or accept that the civilization that bore them was in fact dead at the time? Is it all some isolated and untouched tribal celebration of a bizarre non-temporal collective breakdown or perhaps a series of strange sexual hymns? Are they simply intoxicated? Why does everything sound so diseased? Is that a broken fax machine…..? I personally urge you to find out.

In spite of hitherto very limited support for their project among underground distribution and record label enterprises, and virtually none from within current mainstream musical grids, Acolytes Action Squad cling hard on to all kinds of ideas others would as soon as have them abandon as unworkable, irredeemable, unfashionable, unfathomable even. And while the industry surrounding music in our times and places largely persists in lauding dated mythologies and retrograde nostalgia, particularly among its younger practitioners, the steadfast and ferocious lustre of Ac.Ac.Sq's guiding principle continues to show few signs of tarnish.

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SHANGHAI (DJ)
Terraas Studios
Sheffield, UK
2007