The Anti-Group is Adi Newton's parallel research-multimedia project: the part of his overall position that operates outside the band-shaped catalogue Clock DVA documents. Conceived in 1978 with Steven Turner alongside the original Clock DVA founding, dormant until Newton activated it in 1984 after the Polydor-period Clock DVA dissolution, continuously active 1985–1996, reactivated 2009 with Jane Radion Newton. The Bureau files TAGC at Tier II for the catalogue's sustained four-decade scope, the distinctness of its working mode from Clock DVA proper, the structural role it played as the through-line that made Clock DVA's discontinuous shape possible across two full hiatuses, and the academic placement the project has acquired through Reed's Assimilate (2013) and later scholarship.
The acronym is double-coded and worth opening with. T.A.G.C. stands for The Anti-Group Communications; the four letters also encode the four nucleotides of DNA (thymine, adenine, guanine, cytosine). The double coding is consistent with the project's later subject matter (genetic information, communications theory, mind-control research, cybernetics) and characteristic of the Newton method: nothing is named once where it can be named twice and made to refer to both meanings simultaneously. The Bureau notes that the double-coding is itself part of the catalogue's position; reading the project simply as a band acronym misses half of what the name is doing.
The 1978 conception alongside Clock DVA is the chronologically odd detail that most contemporary accounts miss. The project was Newton and Turner's original idea at the same moment as Clock DVA, intended as the parallel research and multimedia track to the band-shaped working unit. Turner's 1981 death and the active Clock DVA / Polydor period kept TAGC dormant for six years; Newton only activated it after the 1983 Clock DVA dissolution provided the working space the project had originally required. From 1984 onward TAGC took over the research and multimedia programme that Newton had been carrying inside Clock DVA proper, and Clock DVA itself went dormant for the first time. The 1985–1996 TAGC active period is the catalogue's Era I window; it overlaps with Clock DVA's 1987–1993 Era II reformation, with Newton operating both projects alongside from 1987 onward.
The TAGC method differs from Clock DVA's in several specific respects. Where Clock DVA is a band-shaped working unit producing records under fixed line-up contracts, TAGC is open-membership: an interdisciplinary collective grouping musicians, visual artists, film-makers and theoreticians under a shared name, with the personnel rotating per project. Where Clock DVA produces albums in record-cycle release patterns, TAGC produces audio recordings as the documentation of a larger research and performance programme: the record is one output, the live performance another, the multimedia installation another, the theoretical liner notes another, and the project is the sum. Where Clock DVA addresses its subject matter (cyberpunk, technological intrusion) through song-shaped material, TAGC addresses its subject matter (ambisonics, psychoacoustic ritual, Wilhelm Reich and orgone research, mind-control, J.G. Ballard, pataphysics, Lovecraft-adjacent cosmologies) through extended-form ritual audio, ambisonic compositions and theoretical-research documentation. The two projects use the same operator but produce structurally different outputs.
The 1986 ICA performance Fabricata Illumunata is the period landmark and one of the more documented industrial-period live events. Per the Electronic Sound school-of-electronic-music column account, the show was "still the strangest show I've ever seen": in the round (no stage), the audience huddled in the centre of the space, the invitations were printed cards with ribbons hanging from them and dead flies embedded in drops of wax. The dead-flies-in-wax invitation is one of the better-circulated period anecdotes about TAGC and a useful entry point into the project's relationship to event-design and audience-disorientation as part of the working programme. The Bureau notes the ICA as one of the two London venues that hosted Newton's most-significant 1976–1986 events (the other being the October 1976 Throbbing Gristle Prostitution exhibition that Newton attended at the start of his career).
The Era I recorded catalogue is anchored by the Meontological Research Recording series. Record 1 (1988, Sweatbox; Rob Deacon's label) and Record 2 (Teste Tones) (1988) are the period's most cited recordings; both use the "Meontological Research" framing that later became one of the catalogue's defining titular gestures. The cover of Record 1 shows what looks like a sound experiment being carried out on a human subject; per the Electronic Sound account, the headgear was shot for the cover using the inside of a safety helmet rather than any actual research apparatus. The Delivery (Anterior Research Recordings ARR 006), Digitaria (the ambisonic album), Burning Water (film and soundtrack), The Disscussion Anti-Theatre piece (with Dual 16mm Film and Soundtrack), Ha/Zulu, ShT, Big Sex and Iso-Erotic Calibration (1994) round out the Era I catalogue. The 1994 Iso-Erotic Calibration is widely held as one of the period's more-accessible TAGC entries; the album subject matter is human sexuality, treated through the same theoretical framework that the rest of the catalogue applies to mind-control and psychoacoustic ritual. The Cold Spring Records vinyl reissue announced in December 2024 for early 2025 release is the first major catalogue reissue programme to reach the physical-format market outside Newton's own ARMComm infrastructure.
The 2005 Die Stadt unofficial release is the catalogue's documented rights-friction point. Psychoegoautocratical Auditory Physiogomy Delineated (Die Stadt maxi-CD DS67, 2005) was produced without Newton's involvement or approval; the release is credited to former TAGC collaborators including Andrew McKenzie of The Hafler Trio. The Die Stadt release is the structural parallel to the 1998 Nextera Buried Dreams reissue in Clock DVA's rights history; both involve ex-collaborator activity outside the operator's authorisation, both were treated by Newton as illegitimate appearances of the catalogue, and both remain in the documentary record as facts about the catalogue's post-departure history rather than as entries. The Bureau notes the McKenzie cross-reference: McKenzie's 1993 European-tour cameo with the post-Sign Clock DVA touring band and his later involvement in the 2005 Die Stadt TAGC release constitute the two documented Hafler Trio / Newton-catalogue overlaps.
The 1996–2009 dormancy was but not total; Newton continued working on Clock DVA Era III preparation and TAGC catalogue maintenance through the period without releasing new TAGC material. The 2009 reactivation, alongside the 2008 Clock DVA reactivation, was framed as a joint return of the two parallel projects under Newton's direction with creative partner Jane Radion Newton. Era II TAGC activity has been performance-and-exhibition oriented rather than record-cycle oriented: The Cube at WGT Festival Leipzig (10 June 2010), Wroclaw BWA art gallery (10 November 2011), the J.G. Ballard tribute at Paradiso Amsterdam (8-9 September 2012), The Cube at Incubate Tilburg (22 September 2013), inclusion in the Persuasion: Musique industrielle et contrôle mental exhibition at HEAD Geneva (April 2015), Berlin (2020), Los Angeles (October 2022). The 2015 Geneva exhibition deserves a particular note: by being included in a research exhibition explicitly titled "industrial music and mind control," TAGC was placed inside the specific academic-curatorial framework the project had been producing its theoretical research toward for thirty years.
The Era II founding recording is Meontological Research Recording 3: Transmission from the Trans-Yoggothian Broadcast Station. Recording sessions ran at Optofonica studio in Amsterdam with Maurizio "TeZ" Martinucci (the same Martinucci as the Era III Clock DVA partner since 2011) at the mixing desk; sessions completed 11 February 2019. The album was released in 2021 by NUKFM / Rizosfera with an Anterior Research Media Comm licence, in three limited editions ranging from 150 hardcover-and-USB copies through to 100 hardcover-and-USB copies, all signed by Newton; 8 tracks plus 8 accompanying videos plus rare live footage. Record 3 is the first TAGC studio album in 25+ years and the audio output of the most single TAGC recording session of the reactivation period. The title's "Trans-Yoggothian" framing references the Lovecraft cosmology directly; the cover and documentation place the album inside the H.P. Lovecraft-adjacent vein that has run through the project periodically since the 1980s.
The TAGC / Clock DVA structural relationship is the Bureau's closing reading. Two projects, one operator, four decades, two full hiatuses on the Clock DVA side and one full hiatus on the TAGC side, each project providing the working space the other did not. Where Clock DVA produces the band-shaped catalogue inside fixed line-up contracts, TAGC produces the multimedia-research catalogue inside an open-membership collective. Where Clock DVA documents its research through song-shaped material, TAGC documents the same research through extended-form ritual audio, ambisonic composition and theoretical liner notes. The two outputs are differentiable to a reader who knows the difference; they are continuous to a reader who knows Newton's overall position. The Bureau files TAGC separately from Clock DVA for the catalogue's distinctness of idiom, but cross-references the two projects extensively at both files. Tier II is filed on the catalogue's sustained scope, the distinct method, the through-line structural role, and the academic placement Reed's Assimilate has secured. The project remains active in 2026 under Newton and Radion Newton's joint direction.
Filed by Bureau editor · VAGO · c. the Anthropocene · last revised c. the Pleistocene era