Vinyl Record
Rema-Rema - Fond Reflections
Rema-Rema - Fond Reflections on 2LP vinyl. A 2019 record available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel, Ireland.
2LP ยท 2019
Available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel.
Buyer notes: 2019 2LP, currently available from the Kilmorna Collection vinyl shelf. Pay for pickup in Listowel or ship within Ireland for EUR 5.50.
Fond Reflections is the 2019 Rema-Rema album that finally gives album scale to a band that originally existed as a sharp, brief shock in the first 4AD years. Rema-Rema formed around Marco Pirroni, Gary Asquith, Mick Allen, Mark Cox and Dorothy Max Prior, recorded the Wheel In The Roses EP, and had already split before that 1980 release made its underground impact. The later histories of its members lead toward Adam and the Ants, Mass, The Wolfgang Press and Renegade Soundwave, which makes this record feel less like a revival than an archaeological correction. Fond Reflections gathers the four EP tracks and adds related studio and live material from the same 1979 world, including Entry, No Applause and Murdermuzic. The result is raw but not primitive: Feedback Song, Rema-Rema, Instrumental and Fond Affections carry post-punk force, noise-rock pressure and a ritual atmosphere that helps explain why the group was remembered so intensely from so little output. Its 2019 arrival, roughly forty years after the band dissolved, turns an almost-myth into a playable document.
Fond Reflections matters because it restores depth to one of post-punk's most compressed stories. Rema-Rema were a short-lived group, but the members' later paths and the influence of Wheel In The Roses make this material a missing early map of abrasive, atmospheric British underground music.
For collectors, Fond Reflections is the Rema-Rema release that expands beyond the original EP without pretending the band had a conventional album career. It is especially strong for 4AD completists, post-punk historians and anyone tracing the prehistory of several later experimental British groups.
Early post-punk with grinding bass, dry drums, guitar abrasion, chant-like vocals, industrial edges, live-room menace and a murky atmosphere between punk residue and art-rock damage.
Recommended for: Collectors exploring the earliest 4AD-related underground releases; Listeners interested in post-punk that leans toward noise and ritual repetition; Fans tracing links between Rema-Rema, The Wolfgang Press, Mass and Renegade Soundwave.
When did Fond Reflections appear? Fond Reflections was released in 2019, decades after Rema-Rema's brief original activity around 1979 and 1980. Is Fond Reflections a newly recorded reunion album? No. It gathers the original EP material with related studio and live recordings from the band's short first life. Why is Rema-Rema important despite releasing so little? The group connected key early post-punk figures and left a small body of music whose abrasive atmosphere influenced later underground listeners.