Excavate!: The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall

Review To 50,000 Fall Fans: please buy this inspired & inspiring, profound & provocative, beautiful & bonkers Book of Revelations, choc-stock-full of loving Acts by true Apostles, simultaneously both the scrapbook you wished you'd kept and a portal to futures & pasts, known & unknown, & a Fantastic Celebration of this Nation's Saving Grace. -- David Peace Mind blowing . . . There is so much to be enjoyed in this brilliant book. -- Tim Burgess This is a container sized treasure trove bursting at the hinges with strangeness and wonder. Charting the magical head on collision of artistic and the industrial, this book guides us through the labyrinth of Mr Smith's mind, and takes us to a deeper understanding of the band that kick started a cultural chain reaction. I strongly advise you to buy it. -- Maxine Peake [The Fall have] already piled up much in the way of memoirs and analyses, as if in an attempt to exhaust and deflate it.Excavate! is testament to the power such an effort sets out to rationalise, domesticate and destroy, placing The Fall in the hidden heart of the last 40 years of contemporary art. -- Dan Barrow ― The Wire As jagged and as curveball-hurling as peak-period Fall, Excavate! is a box of tricks, lovingly curated . . . tantalising . . . Through a succession of essays to a cornucopia of ephemera from Christmas cards and fan club missives ("Fall interest never higher, much to chagrin of SMITH"),Excavate! unpicks Smith's physical and intellectual world . . . It Is surely what [Mark E. Smith] would have wanted. -- John Aizlewood ― i Gives readers a look inside the brilliant and briar-y mind of frontman Mark E. Smith. . . [the] excerpts from Excavate! offer a unique window into the Fall's legacy. -- Brenna Ehrlich ― Rolling Stone A bit like a eulogy and a lot like pornography for Fall fans. This is not in the pejorative . . . True to the Fall, EXCAVATE! hurtles downward into the psychogeography of Smith's gospel, flinging hot and strange shrapnel in its wake . . . gorgeous. -- Mina Tavakoli ― The Washington Post There's much fun to be had . . . punctuated by fabulous ephemera, vintage interviews and carbon-copied originallylyric sheets. -- Ian Harrison ― Mojo I adore Excavate!, because it is the only Fall book that has the range of a Fall album, and we are two dozen books into the commentary at this point. -- Sasha Frere-Jones ― Bookforum An insane hardback fanzine of found items from one of Mark E. Smith's carrier bags and essays by a really fascinating variety of people. . . this whole book is the most wonderful, unashamedly intellectual, pretentious, ridiculous, exciting hymn to this incredible group. -- Andy Miller ― Backlisted Podcast This collection of ephemera and essays strives to pin down the mightiest post-punk phenomenon of them all, taking a psychogeographical creepy crawl around Smith's hometown and investigating - among other topics - his "new puritan" work ethic and love/hate relationship with "professionalism". -- Jim Wirth ― Uncut This wide-ranging anthology of scholarly essays, sleeve artwork, lyric sheets and other ephemera is a satisfying reminder of Smith's scabrous wit, unique visual style and rich literary hinterland. -- Classic Rock A thoroughly engrossing, insightful and immersive trawl through the wonderfully strange Fall-world. -- Record Collector [Delivers] vivid portraiture of and perspectives into the environments that shaped Smith and his art . . . admirably bold . . . I thoroughly enjoyed Excavate! and learned a lot. For fans of this incomparable band, I'll say Tessa Norton and Bob Stanley's curatorial achievement is indispensable. -- Joseph Neff ― The Vinyl District The ultimate compendium to the British post punk-punk band . . . the book forgoes a straight forward history or rock bio template in favour of presenting the full experience of the Fall. ― Aquarium Drunkard Mark E Smith provided me with an alternative education, looping me into Camus, and Arthur Machen, and W