History tends to flatten the messy paths between post-punk and rave into a neat line, but Fini Tribe always lived in the knotty in-between. The Edinburgh collective’s first band-curated retrospective, The Sheer Action of Fini Tribe: 1982–1987, restores that complexity with tactile evidence: rehearsal-room scraps, BBC sessions, vinyl singles, and stage recordings that trace a restless six-piece feeling its way from cold-room art rock to proto-club alchemy. You hear the resourcefulness of a cash-strapped scene turning limitations into aesthetics, and a group whose ideas kept outrunning its tools until the tools finally caught up.
Those early cuts from the Curling and Stretching era are wiry and suspicious of chorus lines: knife-edged guitar figures, bass that stalks rather than struts, and talk-sung incantations that land closer to performance art than pop. “We’re Interested” tilts that vocabulary toward motion, swapping clatter for a steadier pulse and suggesting how this band would become dance-adjacent without losing its serrated humor. The Peel session is the box set’s living heart. Stripped of studio fog, tempos feel slightly quicker, the drum machines drier, and the vocals more conspiratorial; the songs’ skeletons step forward, proving how sturdy the writing was beneath the edits and collage.
By 1986’s “Detestimony,” the pivot is complete. Church-bell peals are looped into something both ritualistic and insurgent, with chant-like vocals riding a grid that’s rigid but never sterile; it’s industrial by texture and psychedelic by effect. The subsequent high-octane take on Can’s “I Want More” is no reverent museum piece. It underlines Fini Tribe’s ear for groove, soldering kosmische insistence to WaxTrax! bite and nudging the project firmly onto transatlantic dance floors. Sequenced against demos and live tapes, these moments don’t just show evolution—they argue continuity, the same contrarian instincts simply finding faster vectors.
Crucially, the set sounds cared for. The remastering keeps the tape-room air and hardware grit intact while gaining punch in the low end; kick drums thud, hand-played percussion pokes through the mix, and those infamous samples ring with unsettling clarity. The accompanying essays—by original member Andy McGregor, longtime ally Shirley Manson, and early champion Alastair McKay—widen the frame, locating Fini Tribe within a city too often pigeonholed and a lineage that runs from Throbbing Gristle and Wire to the first flickers of acid. The vinyl edition distills the narrative; the full three-disc set luxuriates in it. Either way, this is a persuasive correction to the official story: a reminder that in Scotland’s damp basements, long before big budgets and big room drops, a different future for dance music was already humming.
