Search - Charles Hayward :: Switch on War

Hayward was a founding member of the seminal UK group This Heat, then later formed Camberwell Now. Switch On War was originally issued in 1991 and is now reissued on its original label, after a long vacuum of unavailability. Switch on War a dream state synthesis of nights watching live TV coverage of the 1st Gulf War, the reduction of colors to an electron midnight blue, the long periods of nothing really happening, the contrasting landscapes, (the desert, the city at night, the newsroom), the sudden hurtling through space, through a doorway, a camera on the nose of a missile, the bearing of silent witness slowly turning into complicity and mute acquiescence. At the back of the mind the thought that all this would soon be reduced to snapshot memories, archive, newsreel, history. Originally devised as a performance for the Club Integral, in South London, at the height of the military activity, Switch on War was a harsh and brutal response to the media coverage of the conflict informed by a grotesque and disconcerting anti-music aesthetic heavily influenced by the disorienting, overloaded sound world of Space Invaders arcades. Sub Rosa. 2005.