Excavate!: The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall

Description

'Mark E Smith provided me with an alternative education, looping me into Camus, and Arthur Machen, and William Blake, and Can, and dub and old garage punk and rock'n'roll.' - Stewart Lee Over a prolific forty-year career, the Fall created a world that was influential, idiosyncratic and fiercely original - and defied simple categorisation. Their frontman and lyricist Mark E. Smith spun opaque tales that resisted conventional understanding; the Fall's worldview was an education in its own right. Who wouldn't want to be armed with a working knowledge of M. R. James, shipping-dock procedures, contemporary dance, Manchester City and Can? The group inspired and shaped the lives of those who listened to and tried to make sense of their work. Bringing together previously unseen artwork, rare ephemera and handwritten material, alongside essays by a slate of fans, EXCAVATE! is a vivid, definitive record - an illumination of the dark corners of the Fall's wonderful and frightening world.

Bob Stanley is the author of Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop (Faber, 2013), and Too Darn Hot (Faber, forthcoming), and has written for the Guardian, The Times, NME and The Face. He is also a filmmaker, and founding member of the group Saint Etienne. He was Writer in Residence at the British Library in 2017. Tessa Norton writes regularly about art, books and music for various publications including The Wire, and for exhibitions and events including Liverpool Biennial and The Tetley. Throughout 2018 she was an artist in residence at Wysing Arts Centre in Cambridgeshire, where she was commissioned to write The Fields are Full of Ghosts.

'Mark E Smith provided me with an alternative education, looping me into Camus, and Arthur Machen, and William Blake, and Can, and dub and old garage punk and rock'n'roll.' - Stewart Lee '[A] cultural icon.' - Billy Bragg, on Mark E. Smith