this is the day...this is the hour...this is this!

Pop Will Eat Itself devoured everything in their path to create sixteen different flavors of hell in the sampled sonic synthesis and retrograde riffs of this grebo grab bag.  The group had formed in Stourbridge, England initially as From Eden and then became Wild and Wandering before taking on the name Pop Will Eat Itself from an article in NME.  They produced their debut EP 'The Poppies Say Grrr' with an indie guitar sound that featured Clint Mansell on vocals and guitar, Adam Mole on keyboards, Graham Crabb on drums, and Richard March on bass.  Another EP 'Poppiecock' was compiled with 'Grrr' on 'Now For a Feast'.  As they went back into the studio the group became increasingly interested in sampling.  Crabb joined Mansell on lead vocals and a drum machine called Dr. Nightmare took over for him.  Their full length debut 'Box Frenzy' revealed their new paradigm of eclectic samples melding rap with pop and rock in a raunchy wash of industrial beats that they coined "grebo".  

The Poppies got signed to major label RCA and began working on their next album with producer Flood (Mark Ellis) and a much larger studio budget.    'This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This!' became a sensation in underground circles and influenced the whole scene.  The album charted at number one hundred and sixty-nine in the US and twenty-four in the UK.  


Clint Mansell described their sound at the time:   "If you can like 'Blade Runner' and Foghorn Leghorn and Public Enemy and Hawkwind all at the same time, then you'd probably be into what we do...It's just a spontaneous thing you know what you like what you're listening to...what you write...We've never thought of putting limitations on ourselves like, as you say, 'white boys can't do this' or 'people from the midlands we can't do this or that'...It's just what we like and what inspires us...The first thing we liked was when run dmc and the beasties were in the public eye, they started using guitar stuff, which was kind of where we were at at the time, and it just kind of opened our eyes...I go through a line of old records and other people's records just playing them through quickly looking for the light bits of groove where there's light bits of sound you can get at or the beginning of records where nine times out of ten they're sparse and you can use bits; but I mean, most of the time you don't even know what the record is or it's something crap that you don't like; but there's a bit of sound which you can twist.  You can distort it, play it backwards...do anything to it and make it completely unlike the original...The more obscure the record tends to be, the better...There obviously is a line, it depends on what you're trying to do, I suppose.  Some people are trying to use bits of sound and put them together as a collage.  Other times the bits you steal are obviously... it's a big reference to the song you used.  Sometimes you have to pay royalties on the bit you used 'cause they're so blatant...depends on how blatant you are, I suppose."






http://www.popwilleatitself.net/pwei/


https://myspace.com/pweination/music/album/this-is-the-day...-8154567







'Can You Dig It?'   samples We Care a Lot by Faith No More   and   Black Is Black by Belle Epoque.  It went to number thirty-eight in the UK.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36nWNAvtwrw





'Wise Up Sucker' samples Funky Drummer by James Brown.  It hit forty-one in the UK.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxycYzogeys





'Def Con One' made it to number sixty-three in the UK and number thirty on the US modern rock chart.  It contains samples of eleven songs:   Hungry Heart by Bruce Springsteen,   I Wanna Be Your Dog by The Stooges,  Crazy Horses by The Osmonds,  Funkytown by Lipps, Inc.,    Etrange No. 3 (The Twilight Zone Theme) by Marius Constant,   Dancing in the Street by Martha and the Vandellas,   Time to Get Ill by Beastie Boys,   Right Now by The Creatures,   Beat Dis by Bomb the Bass,    Raising Hell by Run-DMC,   and My Mike Sounds Nice by Salt-N-Pepa.   
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7Wm4qXC_j4





 'This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This!'
full album:  



00:00 PWEI Is A Four Letter Word 
01:12 Preaching To The Perverted
05:35 Wise Up Sucker
08:52 Sixteen Different Flavours Of Hell 
10:19 Inject Me
14:09 Can U Dig It?
18:40 The Fuses Have Been Lit 
22:42 Poison To The Mind
23:40 Def Con One 
27:40 Radio P.W.E.I. 
31:17 Shortwave Transmission On "Up To The Minuteman Nine"
32:20 Satellite Ecstatica 
35:52 Not Now James, We're Busy
39:01 Wake Up, Time To Die
45:42 Wise Up! Sucker (12" Youth Mix)