Uniform

Uniform are Wajid Yaseen, Alice Kemp and 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…..they have released 2 albums to date with collaborations by Lydia Lunch, Dalek, Franko B, Terry Edwards, Alan Vega and Olga Naiman on their latest album, and have released various remixes and exclusive tracks on various compilations (see the discography) including a recent piece written for the up and coming album of covers and reworkings of music by Moondog to be released by SLRecords. Uniform are also involved in various sound-art installations and events (see Associated Projects) and information on new projects will be posted as they arise….here’s some background on the people involved….

The Band :

Wajid Yaseen – vocals/programming/various extended instruments – 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. His current side projects include an immersive sound art/performance installation titled Ear Cinema , the infamous destructivist nightclub Scrapclub , and is one half of the team behind the experimental record label Needlesoup.

Alice Kemp – programming/trombone/guitar/vocals/misc – Born to two members of Cornelius Cardew’s Scratch Orchestra in 1972, 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 bands, she created the discordant and disquieting project Germseed … since then, she has collaborated with the likes of Hilary Jeffery, Dual, Defeatist, Ringo Christ and the Performance Thanatology Research Society – her official role being ‘Conductor of the Poltergasmic Energies’ … various other stints have included modeling for artist Paul Watson, making sound for the Body Cartography Project and sound work with/for performance artists Mark Greenwood & Misha Horacek respectively … she has performed durational low-frequency ’séances’ in Devon (Dartington College of Arts 2006) Cornwall (Live Art Falmouth 2008) & Baltimore (Transmodern Festival 2008) under the heavy black veiled guise of  ‘Madame du Planchette de la Cloche’ … Alice took a Master’s Degree in Contemporary Music at Dartington (studying with musicologist Bob Gilmore & composer Gavin Bryars) and graduated in 2007 with distinction … two of her short stories have been utilized for Ear Cinema and she has written the text for a book of drawings by artist Liam Yeates … she has also been working with 2nd Gen for a number of years … Alice resides in deep dark Devon, UK  …

Yoshi Shinagawa - programming/guitar/cymbals - Born in Akita, lived in several places in Japan, audio and visual artist and noisician, living in 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 prototype on the crossing River Themes. His overall affection are improv workouts in site specific performance/acoustics and joins with various bands such as Cau_cational betreet, Wrong man, Peni.5, Agn, Anal garden, Kimberly clark, Zenjido-butsudan, Extractor fan, Colics, Vibration white finger , and City electric factor… he has also involved with a movie project, Yamaneko-ishi and Diss waveney pétanque club.

The Collaborators :

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. Dälek were officially on the map with the 1998 release of their first recording Negro, Necro, Nekros for Gern Blansten and critics hailed the trio as risk takers and pioneers for a new generation of hip-hop. From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots was released on Ipecac in 2002, and again the reaction to Dälek’s take on hip-hop was extraordinary. The people got it. Dälek toured the world. And the people came. And their peers took note. Upon Ipecac’s release of Absence in 2005, Dälek toured the States and stunned crowds with their live performance where emcee Dälek spits defiance with his words while Still laid quiver-worthy cuts on the turntable and Oktopus’ loops and beats packed the foundation under it all. The trio literally spent touring every nook and cranny of Europe. Three times. Live, their shows are intense events that often end in a shoved mic stand, a wrecked amp or aurally challenging feedback. In the past, Dälek has also shared stages with the equally loud labelmates Tomahawk and The Melvins, Grandmaster Flash, Faust (with whom they released the collaboration Faust vs Dalek), Pharcyde, De la Soul and KRS-1.

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