“Both Mark Stewart & The Maffia albums, Learning to Cope With Cowardice and As The Veneer Of Democracy Starts To Fade are visceral, evil-sounding records. Sonically they’re innovative, groundbreaking. The message is so important, what Mark was talking about, it’s happening now. All of his fears, his paranoia, have come to light. I didn’t realise till later that the Maffia was the Sugar Hill Gang. I never understood that link. There was Doug Wimbish, bass player, Skip MacDonald, guitarist, and Keith LeBlanc, drummer. They played on all the Sugar Hill records and basically became the backing band for Mark Stewart and for loads of On-U Sound stuff. I was weaned on to those records by hip-hop and they still have a hip-hop mentality. They resonated with me really strongly then and they’re still incredibly powerful pieces of music. They’re on Mute — so it’s not quite an On-U Sound record but it is pretty much an On-Sound record!”
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