I recently spoke with Jah Wobble, bassist, composer, and tireless pursuer of all things true. Born John Wardle in Stepney, East London, he got his name from a drunk Sid Vicious who couldn’t quite say it.
In 1978, he wrote the bassline that became “Public Image,” and his dub-heavy playing anchored PiL’s first two albums, including Metal Box. He left in 1980 and never stopped moving. He went on to work with Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit of Can, The Edge, Brian Eno, and Bill Laswell, and with his band Invaders of the Heart, he had a top 40 hit with Sinéad O’Connor on “Visions of You,” from the Mercury-nominated Rising Above Bedlam.
We talk about all these things as they relate to his world and life views. Jah is a deeply grounded and spiritual human and approaches all he does from a perspective of music as art and gateway to higher realms. This is a long listen grounded in this point of view.
His newest record is Mystic Liverpool: The Beatles’ Psychedelic Songbook with Tian Qiyi, out now. On November 13, Dimple Discs reissues The Usual Suspects, the long unavailable 2CD set first released in 2017. It has 23 tracks cut live in the studio at The Smokehouse in East London, revisiting PiL, Invaders of the Heart, and his solo catalogue.
As the frontman and creative co-architect of Ultravox, co-writer of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, and the producer behind some of the most enduring records of the new wave era—including “Fade to Grey” and “Vienna”—he shaped synth-pop and post-punk at the moment both genres were finding their footing. His fingerprints are all over many eras.
Casale was a graduate student at Kent State on May 4, 1970, and witnessed the National Guard shootings that killed four students, two of whom he knew. That day shaped the worldview that de-evolution came from, and it runs through everything Devo has made since. We got into all of it: the origins of Devo, the band itself, politics, Kent State, his winemaking, and his new solo work.
Jez and Martin talked about the new recordings, becoming A Certain Ratio and the early Hacienda days along with Joy Division, plus future plans. And while they came up through Factory Records alongside all the classic acts that emerged in the late ’70s they built a sound out of funk bass, Afrobeat drums, brass, dub, and Latin percussion along with the angular edges of post-punk. This year marks two anniversaries: 45 years since they recorded Sextet, their 1982 third album that hit number one on the UK Independent Chart, and 40 years since Force, their 1986 fifth album and last for Factory.
After “What’s Up?” became an era-defining hit in 1993, Linda stepped behind the boards and wrote and produced some of the biggest songs in pop music: Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful,” Pink’s “Get the Party Started,” Alicia Keys’ “Superwoman,” plus work with Dolly Parton, Adele, Miley Cyrus, Celine Dion, Ariana Grande, Joan Jett, and Courtney Love. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2015, and made history in 2019 as the first solo woman nominated in the Grammy’s Producer of the Year category in fifteen years.
Formed in 1973 with Chris Watson and the late Richard H. Kirk, Cabaret Voltaire stands alongside Throbbing Gristle and Clock DVA as a pioneer of the late-’70s and ’80s experimental underground, fusing tape manipulation, found sound, early synthesizers, and confrontational visuals into something no one had heard before. Records like the 1979 single “Nag Nag Nag” and 1980’s “Three Mantras” drew from Dadaist provocation and post-industrial Britain, rejecting rock orthodoxy in favor of pure experimentation and, in doing so, shaped industrial music, post-punk, EDM, and club culture itself.
He came up with The Soft Boys in Cambridge in the late seventies, out of step with punk and closer to The Doors and Syd Barrett than anything happening around them. Underwater Moonlight went nowhere at the time but became one of the most influential records of its era. He has been prolific ever since, solo and with the Egyptians and the Venus 3, writing about insects, weather, death, and the small absurdities of life with a sharp eye and wit.
The Mekons formed in Leeds in 1976 under Jon Langford and Tom Greenhalgh and have outlasted nearly every other band to emerge from that same British punk explosion, shapeshifting through country, folk, dub, and art-punk without ever settling into one shape for long. Before joining, Timms recorded the experimental film score Hangahar with Pete Shelley of Buzzcocks in 1980 and fronted the all-female outfit the Shee Hees.
Before founding Clock DVA and TAGC/The Anti Group in 1978, he was an original member of The Future, the project that evolved into The Human League. Clock DVA stands alongside Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire as a pioneer of late-’70s and ’80s experimental sound, with releases like the 1980 debut Thirst on Fetish, named by Paul Morley in his NME review as one of the best debut albums of the decade, and the 1988 electronic landmark Buried Dreams.
Beyond his work with the band, he’s shaped the sound of artists across genres—from The Orb, The Verve, and Paul McCartney to Kate Bush, Crowded House, Gina Birch, and Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour—blending experimental, dub, and atmospheric elements into a signature production style. His career bridges punk, mysticism, and radical creativity, making him one of the most singular figures in modern music.
The duo has toured vigorously since their inception and have recorded over fifty releases, which include 12 full-length studio albums and numerous collaborations, EPs, and live records. The latest, Leave This World Behind, came out in March on their own label, Heads On Fire Industries. Five tracks built around a Sonic Rituals live series they’re performing through 2026. We talked about how Dave and Ego met, the birth of the band, and the deeply grounded and spiritual point of view that this light filled and heavy music is born of.
They moved to NYC in 2023, looking for something beyond what small-town Georgia had to offer. They hit the ground running. A chance encounter with ’80s underground stalwarts Live Skull pulled them into the city’s noise scene and into orbit with Lydia Lunch and The Art Gray Noizz Quintet. In 2025, they toured with Gogol Bordello and shared stages with Bush Tetras and Jon Spencer.
Alongside the band’s thirteen albums, Jason has appeared in Peaky Blinders and stars in the new rave-era thriller Game, directed by John Minton and produced by Geoff Barrow (Portishead). We talk about drugs, therapy, breaking free from addiction, the birth of Sleaford Mods, artistic perspective, live performance, and the new record, Demise of Planet X out on Rough Trade on January 16th.
