Mark Stewart - The Fateful Symmetry Mark Stewart

The groundbreaking, enduringly influential artist Mark Stewart presents his eighth solo album ‘The Fateful Symmetry’, a vital masterwork completed shortly before his untimely passing in April 2023.

Across an illustrious career of pioneering music with The Pop Group, Mark Stewart & The Maffia and as a solo artist, Stewart has produced a seminal body of work, galvanized 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 his 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 normalized, always extraordinary.

Following the sold-out red vinyl edition, Mute has been requested by fans to press a black vinyl edition. Arriving on the one year anniversary of the album’s original release, reminding us of Mark's unique and enduring talent.

“Mark Stewart is my hero” - Daddy G (Massive Attack)

“A fearsome vocalist and unbelievably exciting frontman to whom I am deeply indebted”- Nick Cave

“Bristol would be a very different place artistically and politically if it not been for Mark’s influence on all of us” - Geoff Barrow (Portishead)

“As commanding as he ever was as frontman of The Pop Group, and as sentimentally wounded as a torch singer.” – The Wire

“The Fateful Symmetry finds this political / music-making radical at his most approachable and reflective” – MOJO

“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

"Subversive, capricious, and eternally unwilling to allow an inch of distance between himself and his audience—in all the ways that count, the man who says goodbye on The Fateful Symmetry is indistinguishable from the one we’ve known all along.” – Bandcamp Daily Album of the Week

"Stewart knew what he wanted, and his clear vision keeps things cohesive across the various producers and sessions.” – Brooklyn Vegan

“…a true original demonstrating his complex individuality to the end.” – The Arts Desk

VINYL

New pressing on retro black vinyl
Includes 2 page insert