Elbowed out of
the Clash, Mick Jones responded forcefully with
Big Audio Dynamite, a modernist audio-terrorist outfit whose 1985 debut,
This Is Big Audio Dynamite, seemed all the more futuristic when compared to
Joe Strummer’s reductionist retro rejiggering of
the Clash on
Cut the Crap.
Strummer may have been intent on shedding every experimental element of
the Clash’s prime, but Jones, in collaboration with longtime friend filmmaker Don Letts, picked up where
Sandinista! left off, anchoring
BAD in dance and rap, building the group’s debut on layers of samples and drum machines. As is often the case, what was once forward-looking seems inextricably tied to its time in retrospect and the clanking electro rhythms, Sergio Leone samples, chicken-scratch guitars, bleating synths, and six-minute songs of
This Is Big Audio Dynamite evoke 1985 in a way few other records do. Nevertheless,
BAD’s boldness remains impressive, even visionary, pointing toward the cut-n-paste masterpieces of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and since Jones did not abandon his innate gift for hooks -- if anything, he found ways to create rhythmic hooks as well as melodic ones -- it’s quite accessible for an album that is, at its core, avant-rock. [Legacy’s 2010 double-disc expansion of
This Is Big Audio Dynamite remasters the original eight-track LP and adds a second 12-track CD. Befitting
BAD’s futuristic dance bent, almost all of these are 12" remixes of the album’s singles -- “Medicine Show,” “E=MC2,” and “The Bottom Line” -- including no less than four previously unreleased mixes -- and there’s also the outtake “Electric Vandal,” plus the B-sides “Albert Einstein Meets the Human Beatbox” and “This is Big Audio Dynamite,” with every last one of these 12 songs extending the modernist sampledelia of the album proper.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine