Former members of The Fall announce the release of the "Slates Live" EP

Bella Union and POPSTOCK are delighted to announce the release of the ‘Slates’ Live EP by The Fall out 26th April and available to preorder here. POPSTOCK was created by the surviving members of the Slates iteration of The Fall to present unusual and alternative versions of the brilliant records they helped create. These records promise to be unique in that they are the only new Fall releases going forward where actual members of the group are consulted, involved and remunerated at all.     

‘Slates’ Live presents live versions of the six songs that make up the original mini-LP, variously recorded in Holland, Hamburg, Glasgow and London, with these singular versions chosen to present the songs at every stage of their live performance, both pre and post-recording. Lovingly curated with input from the four band members - Marc Riley, Paul Hanley, Stephen Hanley and Craig Scanlon - at every stage, including sourcing, mastering and design, and with sleeve notes by Fall uber-fan Stewart Lee, Slates Live is the type of release that Fall fans have been craving for years.

Commenting on the release the band say: “To have the opportunity for all four of us to work together on this release has been a real privilege. ‘Slates’ was always one of our favourite records and these versions not only prove what a great bunch of songs it contains but also how much we were able to enhance them live on stage.”

The Quietus have today published an interview with the band which can be read HERE.

Below is an excerpt from the sleeve notes written by Stewart Lee:

“Is there a definitive version of any Fall track? Or indeed of anything? In the closing years of The Fall, long after the line-up featured here had decided they’d suffered enough for their art, and for other people’s, Mark E Smith’s musician-irking on-stage amp-fiddling essentially ensured nothing sounded the same twice. And in assembling an alternative version of the 1981 10” mini-LP / maxi-EP Slates from contemporary live recordings, the surviving members of The Fall’s finest line-up posit a different, but equally valid, document.  

That final, and all but stable for a decade, Fall ensemble played like some Stooges-Hawkwind cosmic earthmover, bulldozing riffs into the transcendent, until the music stopped in 2017. But The Fall featured here, the 1979-1982 aggregate, remain unsurpassed, the standard by which all further Falls were judged. And, within the rigorous limits dictatorially imposed upon this Fall, they were chemically febrile and resolutely flexible, a brutalist experimental outfit spawned of pub backrooms and working men’s clubs, and given to cautious but effective extemporisation, despite Smith’s exhortation, on the studio version of Slates, Slags etc.

Slates is one of the greatest Fall records; a tight and compact rabbit punch to the back of the neck, despite being only the diameter of a Little Chef side plate, and features, in Leave The Capitol and An Older Lover etc, two of the finest Fall songs.”

‘Slates’ Live EP artwork and tracklist:

1. Middle Mass

2. An Older Lover etc.

3. Prole Art Threat

4. Fit And Working Again

5. Slags, Slates Etc.

6. Leave The Capitol