Here follows the current (and updated) “biography” from Ambivalent Scale on Eyeless In Gaza:
After releasing experimental/industrial tapes of Antagonistic Music/Dissonance (as Migraine Inducers), Martyn Bates formed Eyeless In Gaza in 1980 as a duo with Peter Becker. Eager to explore musical territories that veered crazily from filmic ambience to rock and pop, industrial funk to avant-folk styles, the duo steered hungrily and rapidly through several albums that culminated in the reflective swan songs of Rust Red September and Back From the Rains, whilst chalking up along the way hundreds of concerts all over Europe and several best selling Independent Chart singles and albums.
In February 1987, citing a need to explore fresh territories and musical configurations/situations, Eyeless In Gaza suspended activities, leaving behind an eclectic legacy and influential body of work that whilst being recognised by peers and contemporaries has yet to be fully acknowledged by the press.
Post-Eyeless, Peter Becker worked with Indie doyens In Embrace before briefly eschewing music concerns to teach computer skills. Bates, meanwhile, avidly pursued a solo career, covering a wide and varied remit … including collaborations to the soundtracks of Derek Jarman’s’ The Garden and The Last of England, as well as a series of solo albums that saw Bates armed with a 12-string acoustic guitar investigating traditional troubadour stylings whilst moving further and further from that particular context with each successive release.
Collaborations with This Mortal Coil’s Deirdre Rutkowski followed rapidly (recordings later abandoned), as well as troubled flirtations with bands Cry Acetylene Angel and Hungry i (possibly, in some respects Bates is too much of a control freak; “if I work with more than one person at a time, then something about what I do becomes invisible”). Bates, incidentally, continued to carve out a fevered solo career, beginning with a 2-volume solo set, in 1994/95, on the Bruxelles based Sub Rosa label – song settings of James Joyce’s Chamber Music poems – and shortly after going onto explore markedly different territory on the Italian Musica Maxima Magnetica label with Scorn/Painkiller mainstay M.J. Harris entitled Murder Ballads (Drift); folk forms meet isolationist with chillingly eerie results (followed by two further volumes, Passages, and Incest Songs). Bates’ later solo releases are the song-based Mystery Seas, Imagination Feels Like Poison, and 2002’s Dance of Hours – a return to a simple context of voice/organ; stark, denuded songs and a very personal territory.
1991 saw Bates and Becker inexorably drawn together again to work with self-styled Poet Anne Clark, contributing to and writing for her album The Law is an Anagram of Wealth. This collaboration helped precipate a permanent re-union for Eyeless In Gaza in 1993, for the Fabulous Library Cd. Initially starting life as a Becker solo work (with Elizabeth S.), an invitation for Bates to contribute saw the album take on a hitherto unexplored aspect of Eyeless; with fresh impetus and enthusiasms for exploration and experimentation re-located, a permanent re-union was decided upon. Low-key “live” gigs followed in Holland, Belgium and Germany, embarked upon as something in the nature of an experiment, given that E.I.G. is felt by the duo to be pretty much of a “studio animal” these days, preferring to work within the controllable confines of the Ambivalent Scale studios in Nuneaton, Warwickshire – although this is a perspective which is altering of late, with EYELESS playing a ‘secret’ gig in the Isle of Wight in November 2004 (and also announcing London dates for July 2005).
1994 saw Eyeless In Gaza side-stepping much of the “pop” sensibility of Fabulous Library with a 2nd post re-union album Saw You In Reminding Pictures – essentially an album of spontaneous improvisations recorded in June of that year. Practically a continuation of the Pale Hands I Loved So Well vein of E.I.G. stylings, the music is richly lyrical and evocative, with much use made of non-verbal vocalisations, clattering percussion, keyboard drones and acoustic instrumentation. As ever with Eyeless, rich vocal melody is to the fore of the music and mix. Recorded mainly “live” at Ambivalent Scale, good use is made of subtle tape manipulation and “live” recording techniques, resulting in a compelling and intriguingly dense web of sound.
This music, however, was not “ambient” in the then current “Chill-Out” or even “Isolationist” usage of the term – being instead a vividly filmic music with a direct lineage having more to do with Eyeless’ own individualistic personal path of development than with an interest in any current musically fashionable mores. To paraphrase the Cd sleeve notes, on this release, much as they do throughout their illustrious catalogue: “Eyeless volunteer imaginary soundtracks, soundscapes for the reminding pictures in us all.”
1995 saw Eyeless relaunch the Ambivalent Scale label in co-operation with World Serpent Distribution initially with a sister/companion release to Saw You In Reminding Pictures entitled Streets I Ran, once again focusing on the improvisational. November 1995 brought Bitter Apples – a Cd of material with an emphasis this time strongly shifting the balance from the previous two releases onto the re-investigation of Eyeless’ own particular brand of song and avant-folk. Geared towards a live performance bias Bitter Apples focuses on the vocal/bass/guitar/drum axis – albeit in a distinctive and individualistic Eyeless mode, perhaps closest to their Drumming the Beating Heart/Rust Red September period in approach. Bitter Apples draws on folk, improvised and European traditional musics all combined with a fresh take on Eyeless’ own personal backgrounds of pop and art-punk ethics. An eclectic blend of melody and rich lyricism – the rawer side of which July 1996s’ All Under the Leaves, the Leaves of Life both continues and yet expands upon.
Throughout the seeming ‘reflection’ period of 1997-1999, Eyeless In Gaza’s public profile in some respects can be said to have took something of a back seat, as Peter Becker busied himself to a lesser or (usually) greater degree with the recording/development & production duties behind several Martyn Bates’ solo works. These included the “seminal and classic” wyrd-folk album Imagination Feels Like Poison … not forgetting Bates’ U.S. release album Dance of Hours and the Bates/Anne Clark album of settings of Rainer Maria Rilke. Becker and Bates oversaw an extensive release and re-mastering programme of the Eyeless Cherry Red period recordings for Cd release – including several compilations. Bates put together two books of lyrics and notes for Stride Publications, while EYELESS worked on further collaborations to several of Anne Clark’s European Sony released albums – while also upholding their sustained ethos as regards contributing to several key compilation Cd’s released via a still-flourishing d.i.y/underground/alternative network – e.g. Ptolemaic Terrascope’s Alms release. Throughout this period, the duo continued to write, develop and record a vast body of studio works – amassing a working backlog of some hitherto unheard 100 plus pieces – work that continues to be transformed and re-modelled by the twin EYELESS workaholics, who have appropriately been dubbed by one particularly sympathetic journalist as “seemingly insatiable/indefatigable explorers of strange song and sonic hinterlands.”
2000/2001 saw Eyeless produce the wyrd folk/improvisational mix that is Song of The Beautiful Wanton – a work that eloquently draws together several key strands of Eyeless’ long and varied career – also constituting a ‘breaking away’ from their relationship of several years with World Serpent Distribution to release the album on the well-regarded US independent label Soleilmoon.
In 2002, Eyeless In Gaza were invited by Bill Laswell to contribute to the maverick Hashisheen project. These recordings saw Eyeless working together on a piece with Genesis P. Orridge – on an album which also featured new pieces by Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Techno Animal, Paul Schütze, Jah Wobble and William S. Burroughs. The year also initiated an exciting development for Eyeless, in the shape of a long-sought quest into the world of film soundtracks – with Eyeless supplying two pieces for Patrice Chereau’s film of Hanif Kureishi’s novel INTIMACY. The soundtrack also featured cuts by The Clash, The Stooges, David Bowie and Nick Cave.
Eyeless In Gaza/Lol Coxhill’s outré Home Produce collaboration album was realised and released in 2003, being perhaps the most “out-there” release to date from the band. Consisting in the main of what used to be known as “free-music”, this uncompromising release drew a deal of perhaps unexpected plaudits from magazines such as Wire.
2004 saw Eyeless tread the boards as a “live band” for the first time in many a long year, performing a successful ‘secret’ gig in the Isle of Wight – an event which presages future performances from the duo. Further film soundtrack work also featured on the band’s agenda in 2004, with the recording and completion of music for The Resurrection Apprentice, directed by filmmaker Dan McQuaid – colleague/collaborator of/with Larry Fassenden/Jim Jarmusch.
Early 2005 sees Eyeless attending to a flurry of varied and teeming activities, as befits a band who are set to celebrate their twenty-fifth year of activity. A 25th anniversary concert is proposed, and a series of ‘anniversary’ releases are being prepared for release on Cherry Red records for late June release. These releases comprise an overview ‘best of’ Cd released – No Noise – combing a distillation of the Cherry Red recordings and the subsequent Ambivalent Scale label releases. A DVD entitled Saw You In Reminding Pictures is also set for a special ‘25th Anniversary’ release – which includes footage of Eyeless performing at Le Havre in 1982 plus footage from the November 2004 gig. Eyeless are also presently working on a brand new CD, entitled Summer Salt/Subway Sun (set for August release), which promises to take the band into yet new territories – expanding upon their long romance with key aspects of a fragmented wyrd folk, and with ‘live performance mode’ song settings – while also threading the album throughout with several spirited e-guitar pieces akin to certain hybrid strands of Krautrock.
2005 brings, perhaps surprisingly, a wider interest in so-called wyrd-folk – or rather, as Eyeless themselves have long termed it, ‘avant-folk’. Bearing in mind the recent acknowledgement in certain quarters (e.g. The Unbroken Circle (page taken down Summer 2008)) of the Eyeless In Gaza’s long term partiality for this much understood form, and with the band garnering 25th Anniversary plaudits from such esteemed tastemakers as the likes of Alan McGee (McGee has written the sleeve notes to EYELESS’ forthcoming album No Noise), 2005 may well be the year that Eyeless In Gaza’s “eclectic legacy and influential body of work …” is finally recognised beyond a cloistered cognoscenti – to become at last fully acknowledged by the outside world of the broader media.
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Martyn Bates Biography
Martyn Bates Discography
Martyn Bates Interviews & Reviews
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