Tim Foster spoke with Gavin Butt about his new book ‘No Machos Or Pop Stars: When The Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk’.

At points in the evening it was an encounter with the sublime. I actually felt a sense of hope as I listened to their music, that despite war and climate change and perpetual inequality and oppression maybe, just maybe, the human race could have a positive future after all.

The songs on here are just as taut, tense and relevant as they have always been. This isn’t some laid back rehash for nostalgic old punks to listen to while they clean the car on a Sunday morning, this album means it. No lazy escapism or nostalgia here.

Truly revolutionary music isn’t just about lyrical content it is also about form, structure, texture.

The fact that they were so closely associated with the counterculture meant that they continually got it in the neck as ‘aging hippies’, but they were hugely influential on the early punks. Members of the Sex Pistols, Clash, Damned etc were all fans, but it was their anti-establishment, anyone-can-do-it attitude that had just as much of an impact as their music.

We got together because we wanted to have a band, sing about some experiences, let our voices be heard in regards to certain issues that we don’t agree with, and to give visibility to other issues that are still taboo.

…by fulfilling the Situationist’s ideal of disrupting the top down discourse of individualised dysfunctionality, breaking the spell of ‘the spectacle’ and deliberately creating environments of participation GIS may be one of the few bands that have come close to fulfilling punk’s potential.

This band is important. They remind us that neoliberalism is construct not nature; it’s corrosive effects can be resisted. I don’t know what effective protest looks like at the moment, but this feels like part of it because it’s an affirmation of what makes us human; reminds us of what life is meant to be about: community, trust, hope.

Track Not Found? Think Kate Bush with a punk sensibility – imagine she grew up listening to Nirvana and Riot Grrrl hooked up with Natasha Khan and started a band.

Arterial Movements is another chapter is the unfolding story of an important band, it doesn’t just reproduce what’s gone before but subtlety moves things along…”I think that the newer material is slightly more complex than some of the previous releases. We’re currently finishing off new material for a long player, and there will be some nice surprises for people on it”.

…Henry Cow embraced capital C culture with both hands and tried to integrate its fringes into a new mainstream. We didn’t just want to speak to our peers or our own generation. We were inclusive and directed our music at anyone prepared to listen…

A collection of writings and photos that say more about modern life and politics in Britain than a thousand tabloid newspapers. It’s pissed off and angry but never self indulgently dark

There is no radical resistance in simply consuming music and adopting a disobedient identity. Simply saying “I don’t consent to this” with a t-shirt or a hashtag, is not enough – yet so many of us have swallowed it as being the epitome of rebellion. Action is derided, but performative angst is universally acclaimed. To break out of this trap you need organisation and direction

Taking elements of hardcore punk and making it fit for purpose. Bad Breeding are not about reproducing punk’s posturing; they know the difference between rebellious and revolutionary.

Structuring the book thematically around identity, money, love/unlove and protest enables Goldman to join the dots up between a multiplicity of artists across time and space, seeing the similarities in struggles for equality, community, safety and freedom at various times and in various places.

The first important thing to say here is that post-punk reflects a growing working class involvement in the leftist avant-garde that we can trace back to the expanded opportunities of the postwar years. John Cooper Clarke reckoned it was ‘the furthest the working classes had gone into areas like Dada’ and he was probably right.

Often musical form can perpetuate the cultural hegemony of a dominant ideology but it is also true that music can disrupt and challenge that hegemonic representation of society, be an artform that gives dissident expression to the lived experience of a community/class.

From the first track the music is controlled intensity, constructed to achieve an objective, form follows function. The crowd at Studio 9294 must be predisposed towards the message Test Dept are sending to be here, understand its importance, or they couldn’t endure this bombardment of the senses. . .

…this is where it all turns into an adrenalised blur of white light and shadow, of band members careering off into the crowd, of Jim and John’s vocal interplay, of them using the stage as a physical launch pad, of Nicole’s thunderous drumming…

Platinum Rats is 12 examples of great songwriting, musically fresh and exhilarating and lyrically intriguing, the whole album sounds like one beautifully crafted melodic punk gem after another!

Against the backdrop of late capitalism’s domesticating of so much cultural output Girls In Synthesis stand out like a searing, prophetic burst of uncompromising honesty, like a beam of condensed light, waking you up, reminding you of the importance of art as insurgency.