“A love letter to life, full of arrestingly beautiful songs in which Stewart revels in the glorious absurdity of humanity, the most accessible album of his career” – Uncut
Mark Stewart’s eighth solo album, completed shortly before his untimely passing, The Fateful Symmetry, is out now on limited edition red vinyl, CD and digital.
Listen to ‘This Is The Rain’ HERE, a lustrous, tender ballad co-produced with Pop Group comrade Gareth Sager, the track features Bristol cohort Janine Rainforth (Maximum Joy) on backing vocals. Here Stewart composes a poetic, Blakean hymn to renewal; an unabashed song of hope amid contemporary turbulence: “a world upside down and backwards / this is the rain that washes and heals in glory”.
The album also includes the singles ‘Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime (Bébe Durmiendo Cumbia Bootleg)’, ‘Neon Girl’, and ‘Memory Of You’, tracks which involve close collaborators and admired affiliates. ‘Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime’ is mixed by Adrian Sherwood (On-U Sound), while ‘Neon Girl’ is co-produced with Youth (Killing Joke) with backing vocals by Gina Birch (The Raincoats), while ‘Memory Of You’ is another Youth co-production, this time with backing vocals by Hollie Cook.
Watch the animated video for ‘Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime (Bébe Durmiendo Cumbia Bootleg’, with images by long-time collaborator Peter Harris, created by Katie King HERE
Last week, a striking new stencil appeared in Bristol – a life-sized image of Mark Stewart at the Harbourside, in close proximity to Banksy’s ‘Girl with a Pierced Eardrum’. The graffitied stencil is the work of local artist Stewy, whose work appears in “psycho-geographic” locations intrinsically linked to the subject. Stewy’s portraits capture “artists, politicians, rebels, non-conformists and outsiders from mainstream society”. Some of these icons include Nye Bevan, Mary Wollstonecraft, Benjamin Zephaniah, Tony Benn, Patti Smith, Ian Dury, John Cooper Clarke, and now Mark Stewart.
In conjunction with the release of the album, two events take place in July in London and Bristol. Both events will exhibit Mark Stewart‘s BombArt series, a collaborative project with Peter Harris, described by Stewart as “an embassy for the imagination”. The events will also feature unseen art pieces and archival material by Mark Stewart, as well as previously unseen photos by legendary Bristol photographer Beezer and more.
London’s Farsight Gallery will be hosting the exhibition at their central London space on 4 Flitcroft Street WC2H 8DJ from 16 -18 July (16 July from 6-9pm, 17 – 18 July from 12-6pm – free entry). Gareth Sager (The Pop Group) will be doing a special performance at the event. Sign up for tickets for the Private View on 16 July HERE.
Bristol will then host the exhibition at the “Mad Max meets The Good Life” setting of Rockaway Park as part of a weekend of musical and artistic homages to Stewart from 25 – 27 July. Musicians from Bristol taking part are DJ Milo [aka DJ Nature], Smith & Mighty, Pinch, Gareth Sager of The Pop Group, Tessa Pollitt of The Slits, and Janine Rainforth of Maximum Joy, with more to be confirmed. The event will be on a donation basis, with proceeds going to Help Bristol’s Homeless charity, whose flagship project converts shipping containers into secure accommodation for those sleeping rough. More information on the event HERE.
Across an illustrious career of pioneering music with The Pop Group, Mark Stewart & Maffia and as a solo artist, Stewart has produced a seminal body of work, galvanised by the DIY ideals of punk, radical politics, protest movements, theory, philosophy, technology, art and poetry. With The Fateful Symmetry, Stewart’s abiding legacy as a ‘revered countercultural musician’ (The Guardian) is sustained, with an album as fearless and visionary as his best work.
Testifying to Stewart’s prolific, unrelenting ingenuity, and signifying one of his most intimate, empowering statements, The Fateful Symmetry is an astonishingly expressive and innovative record; a fierce and beautiful manifesto for a better world. The inimitable, titanic Mark Stewart: never normalised, always extraordinary.

THE FATEFUL SYMMETRY TRACKLISTING
- Memory Of You
- Neon Girl
- This Is The Rain
- Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime (Bébe Durmiendo Cumbia Bootleg)
- Stable Song
- Twilight’s Child
- Crypto Religion
- Blank Town
- A Long Road