By the beginning of the 1990s, The Fall were barely recognisable from the band who’d given the world ‘Live At The Witch Trials’ just over a decade earlier. Mark E. Smith’s fearless approach had steered the band down broader musical avenues, far beyond their punky roots, and the line up of The Fall that delivered the brilliant ‘Extricate’ album in 1990 were a hugely sophisticated musical unit. The flirtations with a Manchester influenced indie sound and a few dance oriented beats on tunes like ‘Telephone Thing’ from that album, and the synth based sounds on tunes like ‘The Mixer’ and ‘Sinister Waltz’ (from the following year’s ‘Shift-Work’) may have lost them a few fans, but regular coverage in the music press and a desire to stay contemporary won The Fall new admirers. By the time of the recording 1993’s ‘The Infotainment Scan’, The Fall’s “90s sound” had really found its feet.
Thirty one years after its original release – and some eighteen years after it gained an excellent 2CD expanded edition via Castle Communications – the 2024 6CD edition of ‘The Infotainment Scan’ aims to be the definitive release. In terms super deluxe reissues, the multi-disc tome is fairly comprehensive, and certainly compiled with as much love as previous reissues in the Cherry Red “Fall Sound Archive” series. As albums go, it’s never been as lauded as ‘Hex’ or even the genre-shifting ‘Frenz Experiment’ – the record which spawned the hit ‘Hit The North, Part 1’, and could be seen as laying the groundwork for the early 90s Fall sound – but it’s another Fall disc that offers huge entertainment value.
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Decades on from its original release, ‘Infotainment’ holds up wonderfully, despite often feeling like a product of its time. From the beginning of ‘Ladybird’ with its back-masked noise and manipulated rhythms, it’s obvious that this album is another in a series of experiments where the band refuse to be stylistically held back. The arrangement has a great rhythmic energy, and the relentless drums offer a perfect backdrop for Mark’s combination of spoken and drawled vocals. The track’s biggest appeal, though, comes from its brave contrast. A very 90s rhythm is overlaid with a world of garage rock guitars, drawing heavily from a landscape of 60s garage rock. Everything ends up more akin to The Sonics with a makeover than a Joy Division or Gang of Four throwback, but at all times, it sounds resolutely Fall-like. Similarly, ‘Past Gone Mad’ celebrates the early 90s rave scene by placing a distant sounding MES over a massive drum loop, building upon something that would’ve easily pleased the Hacienda crowd, and a similarly busy cover of ‘Lost In Music’ – arguably ‘Infotainment’s best known four minutes, especially outside of Fall fan circles – brings more of a fun feel, without feeling like a cheap novelty.
Offering something else with a club-ish quality, ‘Service’ is dominated by keyboards and bass parts that sound like a 1987 New Order pastiche, further coloured by ugly synth horns. If not for MES mithering about a world of mundane things, this wouldn’t be recognisable as The Fall at all. Heading into a world of obtuseness, the minimalist ‘Light/Fireworks’ re-employs the loops and back-masked noise, and MES uses the mechanical backdrop to share a pointed spoken performance about Chinese explosives. According to the Annotated Fall website, this is one of the band’s more experimental pieces. In actuality, it sounds like a complete and accessible piece if compared to ‘Room To Live’s notorious ‘Papal Visit’.
It’s when cranking the guitars and laying on the acerbic humour that this album really excels, however. ‘Glam-Racket’ throws out massive guitar grooves that sound like the works of Chapman and Chinn regurgitated by The Wedding Present, whilst ‘The League of Bald Headed Men’ captures a similar weightiness, but tempers the guitar riffs with an unexpected Duane Eddy twang. Becoming a staple of the 1993 tour, it’s one of those numbers where you get a sense of The Fall being a full band, and not just a vehicle for Smith’s whims and rants. The more adventurous ‘Paranoia Man In Cheap Shit Room’ has an intro which appears to ape the melody from U2’s ‘Bullet The Blue Sky’ before branching off into an abrasive and repetitive guitar riff that captures a pleasingly live sound. It’s not all balls out anger, however; this tune really benefits from a muscular bass groove, and Steve Hanley’s playing brings a busy style that’s complex without being showy. His natural tone offsets the track’s angrier elements brilliantly.
Elsewhere, the jangling throwback ‘I’m Going To Spain’ allows guitarist Craig Scanlon a chance to share an unexpected shimmering tone on a tune that sounds like a lop-sided La’s, and best of all, ‘It’s A Curse’ offers a definite highlight when a buzzsaw guitar sound and reverbed noise recreates something that sounds like Neu!’s classic ‘Hallogallo’ through a Fall filter. Here, MES spits venomously about “ephemeral whinging” and appears to have a fixation with toenails during an (admitted brilliant) performance that borders on self parody. There are at least six reasons why ‘Infotainment’ is a great record, but this track offers a cast iron reason why owning a copy is essential.
The album sessions and further promotion also garnered a wealth of bonus materials. The first bonus disc from the 2024 Cherry Red box reproduces the old 2006 bonus disc in its entirety. That means you’ll find various single versions, three different instrumental backing tracks for ‘Lost In Music’ and a really ugly ‘Instrumental Outtake’. The assorted singles – including alternate takes for songs that ended up on the LP itself, alongside the frenetic garage rocker ‘Why Are People Grudgeful?’ – play very well as an accompaniment to the main event. Less fortunate, the ugly instrumental – a hacked out, weirdly toned swamp blues-ish jam – is definitely for fans only. Somewhere between, a pair of instrumental demos for ‘Glam-Racket’ and ‘Service’ provide a couple of very welcome insights into works in progress.
The real treats from the previously released two disc set (now making up half of disc three), naturally, come from the assorted BBC Sessions. The obligatory appearance for Peel (dated 13/3/93) is undeniably great. The ever sharp ‘Ladybird’ leads the charge, and sounds much like the album take, but with a more prominent guitar. MES is in sharp form, spitting phrases with venom, sounding like the perfect counterpoint to Craig Scanlon’s edgy playing, before an even sharper ‘Strychnine’ asserts the band’s garage rock chops. It isn’t quite as visceral as a couple of renditions from that era’s gigs, but it’s easy to imagine this might’ve won over any potential doubters who happened to catch Peel on the night the session eventually aired. The mellower ‘Service’ shows The Fall finding more of an ominous groove – more so than the studio take – and ‘Paranoia Man’, on this occasion, appears to capture the era’s fusion of garage rock and Manchester proto-bagginess brilliantly.
A second session for Mark Goodier a couple of months later shows off a very different Fall. ‘Glam-Racket’ showcases an all together more accessible band capable of weilding a tight riff, but that’s pretty much thrown into turmoil with an angry ‘War’ with a world of tribal drums underscoring slurred phrases and squalls of feedback that sound like b-movie UFOs. In terms of capturing the early 90s Fall at their more obscure, this is utterly superb. A jangly ‘15 Ways’ proves, again, how this line up of The Fall could bring huge melodies when called upon to do so, and its great to hear a vibrant recording of a number that had yet to be afforded a proper studio recording, but it’s quickly outshone by ‘A Past Gone Mad’ with MES and band exploring something more dance oriented. It doesn’t have the perfection of its studio equivalent, but in terms of showcasing yet another side of the band, it does a fine job. In fact, although you’ll find stronger sessions for Peel – the band’s natural home – if this Goodier session is considered important for any reasons, decades after the fact, it’ll be for how these four tracks demonstrate four different aspects of a truly versatile band. For any non-fans listening at the time, it would be nice to think the short showcase was a genuine ear-opener.
In terms of a no flab experience, the 2006 double disc edition of ‘The Infotainment Scan’ has always felt like a complete and comprehensive listen, so it’s great to have that reproduced verbatim here. As comprehensive a listen as those discs are, though, there are fans whom will always want more, and that’s pretty much where this 6CD set comes into play, despite the remaining material not always being drawn from the most perfect of sources. Huge Fall fans will be used to wading through bootleg material hoping to find some gold, and although this takes a little more patience in that department, the live stuff found shared between discs 3-6 within this box set certainly isn’t without merit.
Perhaps the biggest draw here for the Fall completist is the inclusion of the (incomplete) live set from Hallam University in Sheffield. This section of the 1993 gig was held in the university archive and actually released as a FLAC download, but this marks the first time the half hour recording has been issued as part of a physical release. The intro makes the source sound raw and echoey at first, then bass heavy, but the quality of the recording is actually excellent. This is made very clear a couple of bars into a really buoyant version of ‘Why Are People Grudgeful?’ where a clangy, almost garage rock-esque rhythm guitar bristles against a fantastically busy bassline. The repetitious groove runs rings around its studio equivalent, even with MES being a little low in the mix and occasionally sounding like a self parody-ah. Things warm up far more during ‘Ladybird’ when a busy, clattering rhythm tips the hat to the double drum set up of ‘Hex’, and the guitar tones come across with an especially dirty sound.
A spoken word intro on ‘Glam-Racket’ gives the listener an opportunity to hear the audience and the drunken roars appear to be in favour of Smith’s various bursts of anger, and the ensuing performance is very different to the studio cut. The riffs attack with about four times the force, transforming the Slade-T.Rex homage into something that sounds like MC5 in glittered platform soles, and Smith’s once spoken vocal is transformed into a world of drawled shouts that capture the moment with a genuine venom. The once shimmering, almost shoegaze-esque ‘I’m Going To Spain’ fares far less well on this occasion. Without the studio production adding a great tone to the guitar, the riffs sound thin and unfinished, and the unbalanced end mix from the desk occasionally threatens to make MES redundant. Things improve by the second verse, but the stripped down feel of the arrangement often results in something that sounds massively disappointing compared to the rest of this set.
When this set makes time for keyboard heavy sounds, as per the jerky ‘Free Range’ where loud synth blasts challenge a distorted bass for the most memorable element, and the even bleaker ‘League of Bald Headed Men’, this line up of The Fall still manage to sound threatening. This is due in no small way to the music’s mechanised heart appearing at odds with Smith’s intermittent shouting. Even ‘Lost In Music’, a track that should feel like an obvious novelty in the live setting, captures a tight band with more of a groove than most of The Fall’s 80s line ups would ever have imagined. MES always provides that vital link to the past, of course, and even at times when he could openly take the piss leading this old disco number, he treats it like an integral part of the band’s musical journey.
Part avant garde rhythmic noise, part indie rock in hefty boots, helmed by a drawling man who appears to be free forming, this gig captures the ’93 Fall on fire; it shares the sound of a band that’ll thrill fans and frighten the unlightened. There are better Fall live recordings out there, but as a record of still new material being road tested in front of a keen audience, this is (mostly) great.
The Hallam recordings serve as an excellent warm up for the contents of discs 4, 5 & 6, which bring together two more complete live sets from 1993. Both have been previously issued as official bootlegs from Cog Sinister, but obsessive fans will likely welcome their inclusion here, especially with the older CDs being harder to find.
A seventy eight minute show from Batschkapp, Frankfurt – 11/10/93 – is very clearly from an audience source, but despite a heavy echo, is actually a very good boot. The slight distortion present throughout gives tracks like ‘M5’ and ‘Strychnine’ a genuine rawness, and although the finer points of the latter can sometimes be lost in the noise, the recording gives a definite feeling of “being there”. In some ways, that imperfect sound gives bits of ‘I’m Going To Spain’ more of an edge too; the guitar sound occasionally has the feeling of something that could cut glass, but the down side of everything being sourced from the middle of a crowd with no real separation is that it makes the vox and keys sound especially atonal on this night. Maybe some fans will love that, of course, but it’s never an easy listen.
In comparison to the Hallam show, the no-frills recording source presents ‘Ladybird’ with a blusterous, more natural edge, conveying the busy sounds of the then current Fall at full pelt, whilst the huge sounding ‘Glam-Racket’ is dominated by guitar and snare drum. Those elements, combined with MES in huge voice, make this one of a solid set’s genuine highlights. A mystery “instrumental interlude” finds the band banging through buzzing riffs that capture some of Smith’s love for old rockabilly numbers, albeit dressed in ragged garage rock finery, and for those interested in audience antics, this allows a moment or two to eavesdrop on what sounds like a rather restless crowd before a decidedly mid-tempo ‘The Mixer’ offers atonal post punk for all, and in a rather abrasive manner.
Despite the rough feel, there are obvious highlights here: in addition to the relentless ‘Strychnine’, there’s an especially raucous ‘High Tension Line’ (again dominated by snare), a ‘Big New Prinz’ where a world of angular and atonal guitar work runs riot, and an angry ‘Free Range’ which, through the echo, sounds like archetypal early 90s Fall – a band absolutely brimming with life, offering a strangely dance-able groove whilst countering anything too accessible with the feeling that MES could derail everything in a heartbeat. The punchier elements of this set are so impressive, that by the time the inevitable Sister Sledge cover rolls around, it actually feels more like the novelty misfit you’d expect it to be.
A complete live show from Texas (11th September 1993, previously available as part of ‘Take America’, a Cog Sinister box set of CD-rs) is much rougher. The audience sourced recording makes Mark and the band sound really echoey. The bass is quite prominent, as are the drums, and its usually clear what’s being played, but Smith is often swamped by the music. On most tracks, his vocal bleeds through in a fairly indistinct way, and if you didn’t know what you were listening to, nothing he says would be particularly audible.
That said, for those who’ve waded through a world of Fall boots over the years, there are certainly worse recordings out there (not least a couple from the vast ‘1970s’ box set), but frustratingly, there’s a better one in circulation – from a Canadian show, just a month previously – so it’s a pity that couldn’t have been licenced, liberated or loaned for this reissue. Still, for those who value the idea of a historical document over perfection, there are some reasonably cool moments waiting to be discovered. The opening aborted take of ‘M5’ – forced to a halt by MES claiming he “can’t fucking hear anything!” – gives some idea of the loose show which follows. ‘Idiot Joy Showland’ sounds more like a brilliantly shambolic garage rock jam, with Mark’s mic giving off feedback whilst the rhythm guitar attacks something that sounds like a frantic skiffle groove, and the always sharp ‘Strychnine’ is heard in the guise of a punky treat, with a brutal snare drum repeatedly cracking its way through a wall of noise.
Better sounding,‘Ladybird’ presents a superb drum and bass led intro allowing an insight into an incredible rhythm section, before the arrival of the guitar makes the recording sound a little swampy. Although the finer points of MES’s contribution aren’t as obvious as the other shows in this set, he sounds suitably angry, sneering the lyric in the direction of a small crowd of ardent US fans. There are also moments where a simpler arrangement allows the average recording to work a little more in the show’s favour, as with a chunky ‘Free Range’ where MES barks over a clattering drum and huge indie-punk guitar line, ‘Glam-Racket’ casting a spotlight on some hefty rhythm guitar, and ‘High Tension’ capturing a hard edged garage rock sound that feels relatively urgent even when heard in such a lo-fi way. The synth dominated numbers are about as raw as you’d expect, but even so, ‘A Past Gone Mad’ has a relative urgency, even though MES might as well be shouting through the dressing room door at times, and despite ‘Lost In Music’ not really fitting the mood of the rest of the set, it appears to be greeted warmly by those lucky enough to be present.
Despite having some enjoyable moments, this Texas show is the least essential part of this set. Fact is, you’ll almost certainly have several comparable live sets from the early 90s. You’ve already heard two better ones in this box set by the time you reach disc five. It’s probably best to consider this a freebie, chucked in with the more important material. If you’re the kind of fan who “must get them all”, of course, the upgrade from CD-r to a factory pressed silver disc will seem important in its own way.
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If you’ve never owned ‘The Infotainment Scan’ in any of its previous editions, you might be better off tracking down the old double disc set, then possibly upgrading to this later as, in many ways, it’s more of a fan only affair than some of the previous super-deluxe reissues. However, in marrying some essential 90s Fall studio material with three discs worth of live stuff – ranging from the genuinely excellent to the workmanlike – this reissue provides a solid overview of a great year in the band’s long and complex history. Even if this multi-disc set never feels quite as vital as Cherry Red’s ‘Country On The Click’ 5CD extravaganza, it still offers a lot of great stuff. Flawed as it may be in places, in terms of a super-deluxe send off, hardcore supporters will certainly consider this six disc edition worthy of the shelf space.
Buy the box set here.
August/September 2024