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PRICE:
$13.00
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3-4 Weeks
01. CHARLES HAYWARD - Crying Shame
02. CHARLES HAYWARD - Strong-Arm-Dead-Line
03. CHARLES HAYWARD - Pinpoint
04. CHARLES HAYWARD - Sweetheart
05. CHARLES HAYWARD - Never Before
ARTIST
TITLE
Switch On War
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
SR 040CD SR 040CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
7/13/2004

Hayward was a founding member of the seminal UK group This Heat, then later formed Camberwell Now. Switch On War was originally issued in 1991 and is now reissued on its original label, after a long vacuum of unavailability. "Switch on War a dream state synthesis of nights watching live TV coverage of the 1st Gulf War, the reduction of colours to an electron midnight blue, the long periods of nothing really happening, the contrasting landscapes, (the desert, the city at night, the newsroom), the sudden hurtling through space, through a doorway, a camera on the nose of a missile, the bearing of silent witness slowly turning into complicity and mute acquiescence. At the back of the mind the thought that all this would soon be reduced to snapshot memories, archive, newsreel, history. Originally devised as a performance for the Club Integral, in South London, at the height of the military activity, Switch on War was a harsh and brutal response to the media coverage of the conflict informed by a grotesque and disconcerting anti-music aesthetic heavily influenced by the disorienting, overloaded sound world of Space Invaders arcades. The CD version was recorded binaurally some weeks later, live in a disused morgue, as the war came to its stalemate close. By this time the anger had a bleak streak of sadness, a distorted expressionist requiem. This CD had the life expectancy of a magazine article or some such, no more than a year and it would be archive, a mere souvenir." -- Charles Hayward