(Other bands played with during this period include Scritti Politti, The Birthday Party, Dolly Mixture, The Slits, Alternative TV, The Fall and Blurt.)
"The One That Won The War", par example, a personal favourite, damn near falls apart at the seams, with clattering whining guitar thrashes mating with probably the most essential bass phrase this side of any other Transmitters number you care to name.
"[1] NME's Paul Morley described the music as "feverish and jumpy" and stated "The Transmitters are the cheekiest group I've seen since The Mekons; the wackiest I've seen since Public Image (and almost as sinister).
Naturally, their music is of Velvets' ancestry; deceptively nonchalant, barely controlled, repetitive, erratic and intoxicating, presented with an odd, wry condescension.
Describing Quinn as "inscrutable", Morley also claimed that he had "the comedy timing of a Dave Allen, the detachment of a Devoto, the amused poise of a Mark Smith, the cool of a Sinatra.
(Under his real name of Christopher McHallem, he would retrain as an actor and spend three years in the BBC soap opera "EastEnders", playing the character "Rod Norman" between 1987 and 1990, before branching out into screenwriting.)
Chris Westwood reviewed the new band's concert at the Trafalgar, Shepherds Bush in Record Mirror, concluding "The ramshackle remnants of The Transmitters and Missing Presumed Dead have assembled in the name of fun, chaos and roo-beat enterprise.
The end – and beautifully unrehearsed – result is a temporary six piece, sax and flute and guitars and drums, that quite honestly asks questions of all our established and revered leaders.
There’s even a ska-like destruction of "Sugar Sugar", where everything is so bad but brilliant – guitars out of tune, vocals all over the shop – but the actual point of TPD lies not in their affected clumsiness but in transforming clever and demanding music into a touching, entertaining sort of hobby.”[5] Transmitters Presumed Dead soon transformed into the second Transmitters line-up of Sam Dodson (guitar), Sid Wells (bass), Dave Baby (saxophone) and Julian Treasure (drums, ex Fish Turned Human) with Mikel Lee leaving and Rob Chapman (lead vocals, ex Glaxo Babies) replacing Tim Whelan.
(In parallel, Mikel Lee (guitar, vocals), Julian Treasure (drums), Tim Whelan (guitar, vocals) and Ian Hawkridge (bass) came together as a reinvented Missing Presumed Dead, gigging and recording their own John Peel Session in the same year[7] which was produced by Bob Sargent and included a strong version of the original Transmitters song "0.5 Alive".)
Several more musicians passed through The Transmitters during this period – including guitarist Vince Cutcliffe and keyboard player Bob Sargeant (aka "the Hand of Borgus Wheems").
Reviewing a gig at Subterrania, London in 1988, Melody Maker's Chris Roberts claimed "Tim Whelan is the most restless man alive and demonstrates this by dancing like a young Jackson, pacing like Mark E Smith, and hurling himself at the floor like any-age Iggy.
He spits forth his topical angst ("there's a hole in the world") while his lanky henchmen beat manifold drums, extract Haitian war chants from keyboard thingies, and scratch shrill guitars like jaguars assaulting sandpaper.
Writing in Music Week, Dave Henderson described it as "like Stump never happened, wanton artiness, expressing-yourself tendencies and other such angles are exposed.” The band split up for the second time later in 1989.
Dodson and Daly also teamed up as Thaw, another electronica project blending urban trance techno with ancient vocal chants and "tribal rhythms".
Most recently, Dodson has teamed up with Neil Sparkes (ex-Transglobal Underground and a current Temple of Sound member) to form Loungeclash, whose debut album Dread Time Story was released on Warlock Records/Sony Red USA on 19 February 2008.
Circa 1991, Whelan and Lee reunited with Julian Treasure, Jim Chase and James McQueen in The Flavel Bambi Septet, a light-hearted Ealing-based world music band named after a gas cooker[9] and perform Arabic and Middle Eastern pop music standards, oriental classics, Russian polkas, Nigerian brass band favourites and Klezmer tunes.