THE Pop Group, who welded together funk, reggae, jazz, dub and punk, have always packed a ferocious punch in the musical ring.

While few would have predicted that the post-punk goliaths would ever reform, now they have reconvened after a gap of 30 years, and their leader, Mark Stewart, one of music’s most innovative artists, remains a formidable, free-thinking force.

“Matt Groening, the cartoonist and co-creator of The Simpsons, asked Iggy Pop to reform the Stooges and for me to get the Pop Group back together again, and that’s how it happened,” said Stewart.

“I thought it was a mad idea, like digging up an old corpse.

“Then everything changed overnight. When I met Gareth Sagar (Rip, Rig and Panic and Pop Group) again it was like a fizzing firework exploding.

“There was all this mad alchemy in the studio. It was like ‘pow’, suddenly we were making all this brilliant new music together and I would never have believed it.

“It’s like nothing we’ve ever done before with the Pop Group.

“We’ve got a brand new album coming out next year called The Alternate and it is mind-blowing music. “ This being The Pop Group, the tour has a political edge too: the shows have been organised in support of the Campaign Against Arms Trade and in honour of their re-released album We Are Time, plus a new rarities collection, titled Cabinet of Curiosities.

“People say my music is political, so is everyone else in the world blind when they look at the obscene inequalities in the way the corporations are destroying the world’s resources,” added Stewart. “Music, though, is like an umbrella which can give you a little solace and make you feel like you’re not the only lunatic or the only outsider in the world.

“We thought from punk that everybody was equal, the people on the stage were no more important than the people in the audience.

“I see my role only as important as someone making a carpet or fixing an engine or putting a shoe on a horse, but music will always be my nutrient.

“It’s a time of incredible change in the world, and I’ll keep using the Pop Group as a battering ram and an antidote to what’s going on in the world.”