Tracklist:

1. Sticky
2. May
3. Slowfast (Falling Down the Stairs With a Drumkit)
4. Without
5. G-Deep
6. Spaced In
7. Spiked
8. The Orange House & the Blue House
9. Turn

A rerelease of the 1997 album Bastard, by Colin Newman. It was four years into the swim ~ labels history before Bastard arrived. Like my previous albums, it was another collaboration although this time only with my partner in life and crime, Malka Spigel. There was a point in the 90s when British music journalists basically didnt get dance music and would refer to it as faceless techno bollocks. It was that very attribute that Malka and I felt most attracted to. In instrumental music, you could be anyone from anywhere. The only thing that mattered was how good your tunes were. In fact, for the first Immersion album, we pretended to be from Germany and were photographed in wigs and masks. This had the unexpected result of the album selling more copies in Germany than anywhere else! With Bastard, it took a while to get to the concept, which was essentially this: What if we subverted the whole bloke from Wire thing and had a Colin Newman album without any actual songs on it? These days, this is not such a big thing, but it was hugely transgressive at the time. The language of Bastard is house, techno, breakbeat, drum and bass, and doubtless post-rock. The only singing is a one-line Malka sample on Turn. Not only did the album not play by the rules of what would these days be called music by a heritage artist, but it didnt play by the rules of dance music either. Back then, dance music artists didnt mix up styles as they do today. This is one of the reasons the albums called Bastard. Upon release, Bastard was modestly successful in comparison to the labels other releases, although widely misunderstood. The title is intentionally multifaceted, referring to several ways in which the album is a misfit a cuckoo in the nest. But it never meant Colin Newman is a bastard even if Malkas toy finger gesture on the cover tempted fate on that! Malka and I have done more work together on swim ~ and, of course, there has been plenty of Wire activity after its second hiatus during the 1990s but I never felt the need to do another solo album. I dont crave attention and certainly dont feel I lack ways to express myself. In many ways, its more creative to collaborate with others. There is joy and beauty in collaboration. And collaborating with Malka has become so effortless that we almost dont know who does what in the work we create. This has led us to throwing open our partnership via Nanocluster events and albums where we build musical bridges and make partnerships that transcend the art. Maybe thats the point? Surely, art should be about human connection and diversity of expression? Colin Newman, Brighton, 2023