Background
Uniform are Wajid Yaseen, Alice Kemp and recently joined by Yoshi Shinagawa - 3 sound artists who have decided to buy back their souls from the devil who's apparently had enough of them....sticking to the old adage that the devil has the best tunes, their souls are now imbued with the strangest and most subtlest of contortions and so as a result, they now create a dark blend of fractured electronic soundscapes with the odd trombone and bowed guitar thrown in.....their current modus operandi is to collaborate with live art and movement specialists and have worked with the likes of Franko B, Gavin Bryers, Candoco, Athina Vahla, Gail Sneddon, Reza Aramesh, Dagmara Bilon and more....here's some background on the people involved in the latest album 'Protocol'
Wajid
Yaseen
- programming - Born in Manchester, England, Wajid's formative music education
fluctuated from the influence of his Asian family to the encompassing sound
of mid-eighties electro and extreme thrash of The Boredoms and Sonic Youth.
Re-locating to Sweden, he formed a punk band who performed using only damaged
and broken equipment. Re-locating to London several years later, Wajid joined
the group Fun-Da-Mental as bassist and unofficial noise-maker and toured
with them for two years. It was around this time he began work on the initial
archetype for 2nd Gen, a distorted electronic project and consequently released
the Noise Sculptures EP through Flo Records. It wasn't long before the Mute
label expressed an interest in 2nd Gen which gave Wajid the opportunity
to push his creative urge to much wider territories . Mute released the
overwhelming ‘Against Nature’ EP and followed on for his debut
album, 'Irony Is' . Skills and techniques sharpened, Wajid then went on
to release the ‘Flicknives’ album on the Quatermass label. He
has since produced the latest album for London industrialists Leechwoman,
and has remixed an eclectic array of bands including Depeche Mode, Robert
Miles, Venetian Snares and Hawkwind. He has also been involved with collaborations
with various choreographers, contemporary dance companies and live-art practitioners
such as Candoco, Athina Vahla, Franko B, Mara Castilho, Reza Aramesh and
Gail Sneddon, producing an array of work from installations to film to dance
theatre.
Alice
Kemp
-programming/trumpet/guitar/vocals - Born in London, Alice started playing
piano at the age of 4...by the age of 17 she was additionally playing the
cello, the bass and the guitar and had started various multitracking experiments
on raw tape...after having played in various punk bands, she created the
discordant and disquieting project Germseed...since then, she has collaborated
with the likes of Hilary Jeffery, Dual, Defeatist and Ringo Christ. She
is also part of the Performance Thanatology Research Society – her
official role being ‘the Conductor of the Poltergasmic Energies'....various
other stints have included making the sound for the Body Cartography Project
and also formed the electronics section of the ensemble for a rendition
of The Sinking Of The Titanic with Richard Hyde from Cera......she refuses
to give any more information
Yoshi
Shinagawa
- guitar/vocals/ - Born in Tokyo, Japan, audio and visual artist and noisician
living in Diss, Norfolk. As well as being an alert and quick photographer.
Yoshi had started musical dodge in 2000 under the name of Subdock, Dubsock,
and currently Ducksob after the architectural practice in London, built
a Walking bridge which is an inflatable bridge on the crossing River Themes.
His overall affection are improv workouts in site specific performance/acoustics
and joins to various bands such as Cau_cational betreet, Peni.5, AGN, Anal
garden, Kimberly clark, Zenjido-butsudan, Extractor fan, Holics, Vibration
white finger and the City electric factor... he has also involved with movie
project, Yamaneko-ishi and Diss waveney petanque club locally
Lydia
Lunch
- vocals - In the present decade to date, Lydia has undertaken repeated
tours of Europe and the U.S., and has giving spoken-word performances and
been featured at internationally prestigious events including the Portugal
Literature Festival, 10th Annual International Poetry Festival of Genoa,
Italy, Switzerland's Kulturzentrum, and the Barcelona Literature Festival
Centre de Cultura Contemporanea to name but a few. Her still photography
has been exhibited at galleries in Prague, Paris, Eindhoven, Detroit, Los
Angeles, San Diego, Melbourne, Australia and England. She has presented
academic workshops on spoken-word composition and performance in Brugge,
Belgium and Leipzig. Lunch has had a variety of short stories, essays and
book Introductions published by outlets ranging from the Princeton University
Press to Feral House to New Museum Anthology NYC to Rolling Stone Press.
She co-edited and contributed numerous pieces to the Sex And Guts 4 anthology
which featured work from Nick Tosches, Hubert Selby Jr., Jerry Stahl, and
John Waters and co-edited Sin-E-Rama - Sleaze Sex Paperbacks of the Sixties
out October '04 on Feral House Books.
Lydia's involvement with cinema was further expanded when she was invited
by Asia Argento to operate as official still photographer for Asia's film
based on JT Leroy's The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things. Lydia also
narrated Cam Archer's award winning American Fame part 1 and 2, both of
which will be presented by the Sundance channel in 2006, after having been
featured at Raindance, the Tribeca Film Festival and AFI. She has also completed
voice overs for his latest project Wild Tigers I Have Known which was produced
by Gus Van Sant and will be released in the fall of next year.
Alan
Vega
- vocals - Alan Vega was born in Brooklyn, New York. He began his career
as a visual artist, gaining notoriety for his "light sculptures";
eventually he opened his own lower Manhattan gallery space, called the Project
of Living Artists. The Project served as a stomping grounds for the likes
of the New York Dolls, Television and Blondie, as well as the 15-piece jazz
group Reverend B., which featured a musician named Martin Rev on electric
piano. Soon, Vega and Rev formed Suicide, whose minimalist, aggressive music
— a fusion of Rev's ominous, repetitive keyboards and Vega's rockabilly
snarl — helped pave the way for the electronic artists of the future
Franko
B
- vocals/sleeve design - Franko B was born 1960 in Milan, Italy. He was
brought up in an Italian orphanage and was educated in a Red Cross school.
Since 1979 he has lived in London. After studying at Camberwell College
of Art in south London in 1986-7. He studied fine art at Chelsea College
of Art between 1987 and 1990. Since becoming a full-time artist he has worked
with a wide variety of media including video, photography, performance,
painting, installation, sculpture, music and mixed media since 1990.
An internationally acclaimed artist, whose work focuses on the visceral.
He uses his own blood as a medium. He makes his body into a canvas in an
attempt to portray 'the pain, the love, the hate, the loss, the power and
the fears of the human condition'. He has performed at the Tate Modern in
1999, the ICA, London in 1996, the South London Gallery in 1999 and 2004,
the Centre of Attention in 2000 and the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham in 2005.
He has exhibited work internationally in Zagreb, Mexico City, Milan, Amsterdam,
Antwerp, Copenhagen, Madrid , the prestigious Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena
in 2002 and the Copenhagen Contemporary Art Centre in 2003 as well as in
Vienna, Tate Liverpool, the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium and
the Crawford municipal gallery in Cork, Ireland. Franko B has lectured at
a number of well-known art schools including St. Martins School of Art,
New York University and the Courtauld Institute of Art. He has been the
subject of two monographs, 'Franko B' (Black Dog Publishing 1998) and 'Oh
Lover Boy' (2001) and has published a photographic project entitled 'Still
Life' (2003). He has been the subject of numerous books, articles, reviews
and television programmes.
Dälek
- vocals - Dälek are a two-piece hiphop-outfit from New Jersey. Will
Brooks (a.k.a. MC Dälek) is responsible for lyrics, Alap Momin (a.k.a.
The Oktopus) is the producer. Their open-mindedness towards musical influences
was boundless from the beginning.
Hsi-Chang Linaka (a.k.a. Still) used to handle turntables, but left Dälek
in summer 2005
Terry
Edwards
- sax - Born in Hornchurch, Essex, England on August 10th, 1960
Learnt trumpet & piano at school. Started playing guitar at thirteen.
Was given a saxophone on my 18th birthday
Went to the University of East Anglia from 1979-82 to get into a band. Managed
to do that and come away with a degree in music as well
First releases made with The Higsons (1980-86) - details in the sessions
catalogue. Formed Butterfield 8 with 'Young' Mark Bedford in 1987
Having been in several bands and played many sessions, 1991 saw the first
solo releases on Jacko Boogie's STIM label, actively encouraged by the aforementioned
Mr Bedford. 1991-present has seen a prolific musical career take in an unfeasible
amount of diverse work both as a session player (stopped counting the number
of releases once they'd got into three figures), live performer (stopped
counting the gigs once they'd got into four figures) and solo artist both
with & without sidesmen The Scapegoats