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Way back in the pre-pandemic late summer of 2019, Penny Rimbaud, working alongside One Little Independent Records (OLI), came up with the idea of making the stem tracks of Crass’ iconic first album, ‘The Feeding of the Five Thousand’, freely available to all and sundry to play with in whatever way they wished. The reaction was immediate from key DJs, producers and the general (yet dissenting) public alike, all taking a bash at reworking the material which to many had been so important in their formative years. It wasn’t long before OLI’s offices were being flooded with results, all of which in some way or another expressing the prescient nature and righteous anger of the original tracks. It was at this point that it became obvious that much of what was being sent in deserved notice, so a series of 12” vinyl singles was planned, one side featuring known producers (Richard Russell, Aoki, Youth etc.), the other side being handed to unknowns. And then the pandemic hit in, and the picture changed. As the grim reality of Covid-19 began to take its toll, Rimbaud and Co began to look around for ways of giving practical help, and the remix project seemed the obvious answer. The whole project should be given a working title, ‘Normal Never Was’, and all profits made through releases should go to Refuge whose work in helping victims of domestic violence was growing incrementally under the restrictions of lockdown. And so it was that the 12” singles hit the market, sold out almost immediately and meanwhile directly aided Refuge.

By the beginning of 2021, over two hundred remix tracks had been forwarded to OLI and the number was growing daily. It was at this point that it was decided that a double CD release should be made from a selection of the available tracks, each CD having the same running order as Crass’ original album. That was the easy part, but putting it together was altogether a different matte.......
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