Mark Stewart – The Fateful Symmetry (Mute) (13th Floor Album Review)
Mark Stewart was a giant of an artist (stature as well) vocalist for agit-pop anarchists The Pop Group, an English group that in four short years (1977-1981) traversed punk with dub, jazz and funk creating a sound that impressed Nick Cave, Mike Watt (Minuteman) and gained fans afar a field as Matt Groening (the creator of The Simpsons).
The group members went onto feature in groups like New Age Steppers, Pigbag and Rip Rig + Panic, with drummer Bruce Smith going onto and continue to play in PIL today.
Stewart’s post-Pop Group efforts as a solo artist with the On-U-Sound crew saw him take his dub-punk-jazz sonic experimentation, a dadaist vision down the road of industrial electronica, all the while confronting the hypocrisy and inequalities of consumer society. Sadly, Stewart passed away in April 2023, but he left behind not only his vast taonga of music and AV creativity, but also a completed final album, his ninth solo effort, The Fateful Symmetry.
The Fateful Symmetry begins fiercely, Memories of You, the lead single, produced by Youth (Killing Joke) and featuring Hollie Cook (Paul Cook’s daughter), is an intimately personal song of love, perhaps lost, astride an electro rock rhythm that is catchy. Whilst next off the bench, Neon Girl features Gina Birch (The Raincoats), again produced by Youth, this time at a slower pace, referencing cinematic and French chansonniers. Both songs could be pop(ular)…
I read recently there is a travelling celebration of Mark Stewart’s creativity and works, kicking off this month, in the UK, aligned with the album’s release, provocatively titled TASTE IS A FORM OF PERSONAL CENSORSHIP. It is no coincidence, I believe, that it’s this ethos, that perhaps is required understanding, when listening, experiencing The Fateful Symmetry.
While researching, I watched a clip of Mark Stewart being interviewed about his ethos, his approach, his influences in making music. What cut through was his belief in slicing, cutting, taking risks to create and confront. The Fateful Symmetry is possibly his penultimate embodiment of this. Because as you journey through this album, there are flashes of Stewart challenging himself (and subsequently his listeners) as songs leap forward shattering codified expectations. This The Rain, Stable Song and the album’s final song A Long Road, expose Stewart’s sensitive, emotional fragility, they are placed throughout the album, without convenience, thus interrupting listening complacency.
Expectations are sated though, his cover of The Korgis, Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime harks back to the magnificence of his first solo album Learning to Cope with Cowardice, with its dubwise infectiousness, while incorporating Stewart’s flirtation with elements of French folk. Crypto Religion, is an electro funkist, river of rhythms and bass, a modernist appraisal of global neo-consumerism, and Blank Town is a shock to the system, with its space-rock driven guitar riffs and drums.
The Fateful Symmetry is a creatively disconcerting album, magnificently marking the denouement of Mark Stewart’s mahi, (though what baubles of taonga will be (re)discovered, who knows) If the album has a purpose, a raison d’être, it is Stewart once again nailing his life manifesto of juxtaposition to the proverbial town hall doors.
Simon Coffey
The Fateful Symmetry is released on 11 July 2025 via Mute, Stewart’s long-standing label, helmed by old friend and kindred spirit Daniel Miller.
Mark Stewart – Official website / Facebook / X / Spotify
