Annie Anxiety had already cut a single, "Barbed Wire Halo," for Crass Records when the 17-year-old New Yorker encountered
Adrian Sherwood and his partner of the time,
Kishi Yamamoto. Together, the trio schemed over what would emerge as one of the most abrasively delicious albums of the age, the stinking Southern blues-fired jungle-dub of
Soul Possession. According to
Anxiety, the album sessions were conducted in sleepless bursts of two or three days at a time, "living on Guinness and cheese sandwiches." She continues, "There'd be different people coming in, they'd leave, and we'd take one multi-track off and then we'd work on a
Prince Far I multi-track...." The musicians on the album itself were drawn from the ranks of
Crass, but the overall mood of the record is not too far removed from that conjured by
Sherwood alongside
Ari Up and
Judy Nylon, ensuring that it has remained a firm favorite despite more than 20 years of unavailability.