Interlocking the cold with the heat (or maybe it’s the opposite) is Gang of Four’s specialty. In Leeds’ northern gloominess, singer Jon King, guitarist Andy Gill, bassist Dave Allen and drummer Hugo Bumham launch their post-punk revolution by means of disjointed guitars and sharp grooves. Entertainment !, their first album released in September 1979, imposes the singularity of this climatic yin and yang. Very very cold then in the melodies that Gill’s six-string clips through stridency and whittling away. But very very hot in its elastic and funky rhythms like the Talking Heads from that era. The pile-up is all the more violent that the texts from this Entertainment! aren’t really entertainment but rather small Molotov cocktails made using situationism, feminism, alienation, North-Irish conflict, Maoist guerrilla in South America and many other festive considerations… With their colleagues from The Fall, Père Ubu, Au Pairs or PIL, Gang of Four rattles the harmonies, the choruses, the solos and the melodies like no other. Their radicalism will influence years later bands like The Rapture, Radio 4, Editors, Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand… © Marc Zisman/Qobuz