Thee Faction’s “At Ebbw Vale” – Deleted

At Ebbw Vale is no longer available by mail order. Thee Faction still have a handful of copies which will be available at gigs only.

Thee Faction: At Ebbw Vale

12″ Vinyl LP (with free digital version on CD)

 

“As good as ‘Slade Alive’. Yes, THAT good”.  Chris Roberts (venerable rock critic, The Guardian et al)

“Timely. I love these mad bastards.. ! ” (4/5) Simon Price, The Independent on Sunday

(Union Man/Proletarian Man #23 in Price’s ‘Tracks of 2010’

“Simply Brilliant. Now more than ever the link between Soul and Socialism needs restoring, and to that end I wish them the best” Andy Lewis, Paul Weller’s bass player

“I have always been particularly fond of this lot” Gideon Coe, BBC 6Music

“…the greatest band I have ever seen” Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Les Inrockupitables

“The future is unpleasant Socialist R’n’B” Patrick Neate, Whitbread award-winning novelist

“Dr Feelgood meets Citizen Smith” BBC Three Counties

“What a cracking record” Paul Brannigan of Kerrang!

“It’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re at. And At Ebbw Vale is a good place to be” (9/10) …Is This Music? 

“They’re back!..blistering socialist R&B with an explicit political agenda. Right on!” Last FM

“TOUGH!” John Robb, writer and expert in this field

“Quite the most brilliant Socialist R’n’B album I’ve heard all year”  PopBitch

4-minute preview of the whole album here >>>

Side One:

Union Man/Proletarian Man…Don’t Sell Yr Consent…Conservative Friend…Charm Alone…The Cactus…Gone Too Long

Side Two:

Hands Untied…Rise Up, Don’t Give Up…Julie Got a Raise…Social Inclusion Thru Marxism…4Evry1…I Can See the Future

Thee Faction came blasting out of Reigate in the late 70s like a proletarian A-Bomb. By 1985 they were at their peak, packing unorthodox, underground venues with thousands of politically charged comrades, but refusing to use capitalism’s means of production to commodify their music. The ultimate in Socialist R&B, in sound, attitude and practice. If you wanted to hear them, you had to pick up a bootleg tape, or squeeze into one of their shows. In May 1985 their legendary NUM benefit in Ebbw Vale, South Wales,  drew thousands – tens of thousands if we are to believe the legions of old socialists, punks and R&B enthusiasts who now claim to have been there. Everyone who was there – and we at Soviet Beret Records were amongst them, plugged into the mixing desk with the help of ‘the Russian students’ – would happily testify to having witnessed, contributed to, and been filled with, genuine revolutionary fervour. Like the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club, James Brown at the Apollo and Dr Feelgood at the Kursaal, Thee Faction at Ebbw Vale has slotted into history somewhere between myth and reality.

And then Thee Faction disappeared. They went on tour to Eastern Europe, and, according to legend, ‘got lost the other side of the Iron Curtain’, not popping up on these shores again until their astonishing comeback gig in London in April 2010. Tight-lipped about what happened to them in the intervening years, and hell-bent on leading the fightback against the new Conservative-Liberal administration without wasting their time on nostalgia, they nonetheless agreed to give an official release to ‘the old songs’.

Recorded in situ, Soviet Beret Records are proud to offer Thee Faction’s first ever official release: At Ebbw Vale. The whole 12 song set, complete with the ‘bourgeois pantomime of an encore’, and including snatches of band propagandist Baby Face’s infamous polemic, all squeezed onto a single slab of 12″ vinyl. For Soviet Beret Records this is the holy grail: Socialist R&B’s rawest, most unpleasant band, recorded at the absolute peak of their powers and their politics, onour label. Forgive us a moment of smug excitment; it’s been a long wait.

What do you get for your £8.50? Thee Faction’s At Ebbw Vale on 12″ vinyl, with a  sleeve destined to go down as a design classic. You also get an unpackaged, but beautifully printed, CD of the album, slipped into the record sleeve, so that you have At Ebbw Vale in a digital format to play with. You get all of this packed and posted to you. And, if you’re quick, you’ll get a button badge too.

If you enjoy Socialist R&B – and you wouldn’t be browsing Soviet Beret Records if you didn’t – you need this record.

For more information on Thee Faction: news, tour dates, recipes, reading suggestions and so on, go towww.theefaction.org

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