Since their formation in 1977 Mark Perry’s group Alternative TV have moved far away from their more direct punk rock beginnings into all manner of other areas of music that have sometimes themselves drawn from improvisation, free jazz, industrial and electronic music. Direct Action, Alternative TV’s first studio album since 2015, initially appeared as an LP on Fourth Dimension Records in 2024 before its being reissued on CD in February 2025. This witnessed the group presenting six instrumental tracks which steadily rip apart all expectations as they shed all allusions to rock music in favour of the kinda sonic mutilations that once helped 1979’s classic (and Nurse With Wound list endorsed) Vibing Up the Senile Man (Part One) stumble into weird and wonderful shapes. It is here that the group emphasised a shift to a space tentatively explored in the past before now becoming firmly embraced as the group marry guttural electronics to sounds most artists would consign to the bin. Via Perry’s long perfected mastery of pulling together disparate strands to create something entirely alchemical and invigorating there’s not only a unique stamp to the ATV story at work here but also something defiantly outside most contemporary music that has more in common with AMM, Throbbing Gristle, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, This Heat and Jandek than anything immediate or accessible.

Alternative TV’s entirely own take on post-punk experimental noise promises to go to places previous appearances at the label events have only touched on. Do not expect to be greeted with any of the songs that helped define them in the early years.