Photo credit: Adi Newton
“… cuts across boundaries” - MOJO
“… still sounds powerful, a glimpse of the early industrial sound before the movement became codified into a genre” - UNCUT
“… an avant-garde exhibition of atonal electronics, skronking saxophone and jagged guitars interspersed with Adi Newton’s malevolent whispers” – ELECTRONIC SOUND
“…testament to an era of experimentation that paved the way for so much that followed” - BLITZED
“…an important document” – CLASSIC POP
“a vital rediscovery—an album that helped define the early intersections of industrial, post-punk, and proto-EBM” - IGLOO MAG
CLOCK DVA announces the remastered reissue of Thirst, due to be released on double thirst-red vinyl, CD and digitally on June 5, 2026. The album, which follows the remastered release of their debut, White Souls in Black Suits, features single mixes of “4 Hours” and "Sensorium” alongside new remixes by the current iteration of Clock DVA.
Listen to “4 Hours” HERE.
“4 Hours” was the sole single at the time of the original release. One of The Face and Rockerilla’s Singles of the Year 1981, it went on to be one of NME’s Best Indie Singles Ever and Blow Up’s 100 Songs to Remember.
Thirst – originally released in 1981– is a stone-cold post-punk classic. While still retaining the sharp experimental edge of their debut, White Souls in Black Suits, Thirst stretches out and offers up some cleaner and more hooky moments as it moves away from pure improvisation. “Between White Souls and Thirst, the guitarist changed from David Hammond to Paul Widger,” explains Newton. “David introduced the perfect guitar sound for DVA, whereas Paul brought in a more rhythmic style more towards early Ry Cooder. The material we were developing was a more defined series of pieces, more structured and exact than the improvised works on White Souls.”
45 years on from its original release (on Fetish), it’s a record from the era that sounds like no other. There’s jazz-inflected post-punk, helped by Charlie Collins’ wonderfully inventive sax playing, but also nods to more Beefheart-esque wonky grooves - aided by Newton’s raspy growls - while tracks like "4 Hours" also hit home the group’s real knack for incorporating catchy songcraft with the infectious song containing an almost new wave shimmer.
Thirst was the first evidence of what would soon become a customary part of Clock DVA’s evolution: they never made the same record twice. No copies or dilution but instead ceaseless progression. “We set out to form a new sound combination,” says Clock DVA’s Adi Newton. “To combine acoustics and electronics, merging the German electronic wave with the edge of The Stooges, the avant-garde of the French GRM Musique Concrète, and the pioneering audio-visual creativity of The Velvet Underground. To create a harder form of electronic music with real energy.”
Clock DVA, who formed in Sheffield in 1978, quickly proved to do just that. Also inspired by science fiction, Russian constructivism and beat literature, they soon created a unique sonic alchemy that for the best part of the last half century has proven to be an endlessly influential reference point across everything from post-punk to EBM via industrial and techno.
On the way, they fostered a fierce reputation as one of Sheffield’s most ferocious live outfits who could melt minds and charge the atmosphere of a room like few others. The stage was also a means for the group to explore with their burgeoning visual presence, which has since become a staple part of their identity and is something they are considered as pioneering for as their sonics. “For me it was always a staging, like theatre,” Newton explains. “We have developed visuals throughout the DVA history, from using 8mm film and 35mm film slides in the early days and via the earliest digital computer graphics back in 1987 with the Amiga B2000 to the present day with visual artists we have worked with, along with our own creations.”
Thirst features Adi Newton (voice, clarinet, manipulated tapes, piano, modified guitar, EMS Synthi E), Steven J Turner (bass / treatments), Charlie Collins (saxophones, African flute, African thumb piano), Paul Widger (guitar) and Roger Quail (drums). The album was recorded at Jacobs Studio in Surrey, produced / engineered by Ken Thomas and Clock DVA, and the album’s unforgettable artwork was by graphic designer and typographer Neville Brody OBE (The Face, Arena, Cabaret Voltaire, Depeche Mode).
Thirst is set for release on The Grey Area of Mute on June 5, 2026. Pre-order the album HERE.
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