Soul Possession

Annie Anxiety had already cut a single, "Barbed Wire Halo," for Crass Records when the 17-year-old New Yorker encountered Adrian Sherwood and his partner of the time, Kishi Yamamoto. Together, the trio schemed over what would emerge as one of the most abrasively delicious albums of the age, the stinking Southern blues-fired jungle-dub of Soul Possession. According to Anxiety, the album sessions were conducted in sleepless bursts of two or three days at a time, "living on Guinness and cheese sandwiches." She continues, "There'd be different people coming in, they'd leave, and we'd take one multi-track off and then we'd work on a Prince Far I multi-track...." The musicians on the album itself were drawn from the ranks of Crass, but the overall mood of the record is not too far removed from that conjured by Sherwood alongside Ari Up and Judy Nylon, ensuring that it has remained a firm favorite despite more than 20 years of unavailability. ~ Dave Thompson