In early 2010 recorded 2 albums – Facta Non Verba and Panem Et Circenses. These translate as Deeds Not Words and Bread & Circuses. Deeds Not Words is ironic: this album contains more spoken poetry and prose than any other UNIT project to date. Even in generally musical numbers, the spoken word imposes itself, occasionally to the detriment of the work in question.
On our album Class War in 2008 we recorded renditions of 2 works by The Pop Group (The Amnesty International Report and We Are All Prostitutes) so for Facta Non Verba we elected to make an arrangement of Where There’s A Will (the 3rd and final single by The Pop Group with an excellent track by The Slits on the other side) but here we interpolated a couple of extra sections I wrote with texts by myself and Herr Fritze.
We decided upon 2 versions of the Pop Group piece – 1 with vocals, keyboards, bass guitar and drums and 1 with vocals, saxophone, flute, bass guitar and drums. Unable to decide which we preferred, we elected to use both of them which is why I decided to add the central section that contains our texts and music. Ultimately, by the time we’d finished with it, not very much of the Pop Group original music actually survives...the usual fate of any group whose work we cover!
Andy Martin – Vocals.
Zhang Yao Min – Saxophone, Flute.
Fabian Fritze – Bass Guitar, Vocal.
Luc Tran – Hammond Organ, Piano, Keyboards, Drums.
Text by Mark Stewart, Andy Martin & Fabian Fritze.
Music by The Pop Group & Andy Martin.
Mixed and produced by Zhang Yao Min.
If you have enjoyed this track we recommend you check out these works by UNIT on this site
A Study Of Alkaline Metals
Barbara's Bridge
Another Faded Fragment
The Quasar
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes
A Normal Child
Donations to our finances can be made ([email protected]) if you wish to support our future work.
In 2016 we released our 30th album (Fast – Clean – Cheap) and with it an era passed. We realised it is neither necessary nor desirable to continue to issue our work on compact discs. The process is expensive and time consuming (pressing CDs, printing booklets and tray cards, buying jiffy bags, going to the post office – it’s so 1990s) so now Band Camp exists, an avenue is presented by which we can release our work to the public directly. Our projects will be obtainable from this address:
unit-united.bandcamp.com.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The paypal address for our Band Camp and Lulu sites is now [email protected].
In addition there are currently 12 books available. These are proper books in print, not fake, ersatz ‘books’ you see advertised on the internet these days as ‘e-books’. They can be purchased from lulu.com. Type ‘Andy Martin – Grange Hill’ to locate them.
[email protected]
