CRASS' Feeding Of The Five Thousand Remix Project reaches its third stage with the 12" Normal Never Was 3.
The release features a new remix of the Crass classic 'Banned From The Roxy' by Grammy-nominated DJ and producer Steve Aoki, and a new version of the controversial spoken-word piece 'Asylum' by Japanese outsider musician Mikado Koko, which is being premiered exclusively by Vive Le Rock!
With a background in theatre, music and dance Koko has spent the past few years as a club music producer, incorporating elements of Japanese traditional music. She now focuses on avant-garde poetry reading related to feminism and gender equality. She released album Ru I U Ta in 2019 and The Japanese Rimbaud in 2020.
The inclusion of 'Asylum' on The Feeding Of The Five Thousand originally led pressing plant workers to refuse to handle the album, forcing the track to be removed. The track was re-recorded as 'Reality Asylum' and released as a stand-alone single, drawing the attention of the Met Police's vice squad and threats of prosecution.
Says Crass' Penny Rimbaud, “Mikado Koko is a ground breaking Japanese artist and musician stretching the boundaries of feminism and the avant-garde, no wonder, then, that she was drawn to remixing 'Reality Asylum' and thereby proving the universality of the liberationist cause.”
“I have learned and discovered so many things from Crass," says Koko. "DIY ethic, anarchism, feminism, graffiti, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Cage, Stockhausen, and more. So I wanted to do a remix showing my respect. As I have been a fan of the iconic vocal of Eve Libertine, I selected ‘Asylum’ and made a poetry/glitch/impro style remix.”
As previously reported, late last year Crass made the original separate track stems of their seminal album The Feeding Of The Five Thousand available as free downloads with the intention that anyone interested could come up with new remixes of the tracks.
The 12" Normal Never Was 3 will be released in a limited coloure vinyl edition on 21 August by Crass Records via One Little Independent. All proceeds will be donated to the domestic violence charity Refuge.
Pic by Tony Mottram