
Originally released in 1987, in the wake of the Miner's Strike which devastated Welsh communities, Cause For Complaint chronicles the events and effects of the strikes and the pit closures that followed. But the songs reach further than that, with universal themes of the working man's struggles against the oppression by governments, drawing on the likes of the story of Dic Penderyn, a man wrongly convicted and executed for the stabbing of a soldier during the Merthyr Riots. A folk hero who became a martyr.
While The Chartists, named after a previous uprising, were seen as a folk band, their heavier sound than acoustic folk accentuates the anger in their protest. There's a passion here that is undiminished despite the passage of time.
The real miracle is that this album is being made available again at all. With only a well-worn copy of the original vinyl and a cassette tape of a session performed for the BBC, recorded from the radio broadcast using a cassette recorder held close to a transistor radio. It doesn't sound like promising source material, but thanks to the use of the kind of AI technology pioneered by filmmaker Peter Jackson, miracles are possible.
The technology made it possible for original producer, Tony Williams, to take those recordings, separate out the individual instruments and voices, and eliminate extraneous noise before putting it all back together again. In doing so, he has revealed a great level of musicianship that may not have been as evident in that first pressing. The new release includes both the songs from the original album, and the previously unreleased tracks performed for the BBC.
Although only two of the members of the band on this recording are still performing, songwriter Wynford Jones, and multi-instrumentalist Geoff Cripps, I hope that this album brings their music to a new audience.
Steve Lockley
Artist:The Chartists
Album: Cause For Complaint
Label: Steam Pie
Tracks: 15