Radio Massacre International
Encyclopedia
Radio Massacre International are a trio of British musicians, Steve Dinsdale (Keyboards and Drums), Duncan Goddard (Keyboards and Bass), and Gary Houghton (Guitar, Synth). They specialize in improvisational experimental electronic music
, utilizing vintage synthesizers and sampled sounds alongside electric guitar
. They are also leading exponents of the mellotron
keyboard. More recently they have begun to incorporate Bass Guitar and Drums by varying degrees in an attempt to stretch musical boundaries within the confines of a three piece. Their music has been described alternatively as ambient music
, space rock
, Krautrock
, New Age
, Berlin School
, and various other terms, although the band itself prefers the label "organic music". Points of reference include bands ranging from Tangerine Dream
to "Rabbit"-era Chas and Dave
.
It was adopted as the main name for the band in 1990, as recording in the "DAS" style was wound up. There are 12 DAS "albums" although only the first was ever published (as a cassette album); some of the later titles feature other musicians and any plan to release these recordings would mean hunting down the participants to obtain clearance.
Steve, who is originally a drummer, went on to play in a couple of ‘scene’ bands after moving to London in 1988, while Duncan started to amass synthesizers, and recorded the first solo projects. When he finally found a space for him and Steve - who got disillusioned with the music business at that time - to work in, they recorded a first session in 1993, which was later released as “Startide”. Gary re-joined in 1994 with his guitar, and the band as we know it today was born.
Their first official release was the double CD “Frozen North” on Centaur in 1995. They also debuted Radio Massacre International as a live act at the Emma festival in Sheffield in the same year.
In 1996, they were invited to perform on MTV
s "Party Zone", making them probably the only band to play a live piece on the dance-orientated show that did not contain a single discernible beat. The same month they were the first electronic artists to play at the famous Jodrell Bank
observatory, in the shadow of the radio dish. This was later released as the humorously titled live CD `Knutsford In May'.
1997 saw them play at the famous (but now defunct) KLEMdag festival in Nijmegen, Netherlands
, in front of the band's largest ever live audience.The year 2000 brought appearances at the Alfa Centauri festival in Holland, and another visit to Jodrell Bank
. The band's music was also featured in the BBC
-TV programme “Don’t Look Down” about the 300 ft radio telescope.
The first Hampshire
Jam festival of electronic music in Liphook
in 2001 saw them appear together with other artists of the genre like Air Sculpture, Paul Nagle and Free System Project.
In November 2002, they played their first ever dates in the United States, at the Progwest Festival in LA and at The Gatherings Concert Series in Philadelphia. Furthermore, they appeared twice live on radio, on Alien Air Music on KXLU
in LA, and on Star's End on WXPN
in Philadelphia. True to form, the band released a 2CD collection documenting this tour (Solid States).
Further live events included the E-Live festival in Eindhoven, Holland in late 2003
and the Virtaa Arts Festival in Tapiola (nr Helsinki), Finland in early 2004. Manchester's The Night and Day Cafe
witnessed a 2004 collaborative performance which saw RMI and Can luminary Damo Suzuki
perform together for the first time.
A return visit to Philadelphia in 2004 at the invitiation of Chuck Van Zyl resulted in a recording contract with USA label Cuneiform Records
for which the debut release was 2005's 'Emissaries',a double CD which also featured a full colour comic strip story by artist Matt Howarth
Since 2003, they have given annual performances at the UK National Space Centre in Leicester
, performing with fellow artist Ian Boddy as a guest of the band on the last of these occasions in March 2006. RMI then released the `Septentrional' CD on Boddy's DiN label which was again characterised by a collaborative spirit, with Boddy treating and remixing the material.
In December 2006, they finally released the long awaited 6 CD compilation "Lost in Space", a career retrospective but containing entirely unreleased material from 1987 to 2003.
In September 2007 they released two CDs. The first, "Rain Falls in Grey" is a release which the band describe in the sleevenotes as "a way of saying goodbye and thanks to a genuine one off", referring to Syd Barrett
. The cover art for this release was drawn by Daevid Allen
, famous as a member of the group Gong (band)
. The second release, "Blacker" was on their own Northern Echo record label. The albums were launched with a rare UK show featuring album guest Martin Archer
Once again they visited the East Coast of the USA in November 2007, and played a well-received series of radio sessions and live shows in a variety of contexts, augmented on occasions by Premik Russell Tubbs and Cyndee Lee Rule.
In February 2008 they completed recording of their first film soundtrack, entitled `City 21' due for release in September 2008 by the Knossus Project.
In June 2008 they played NEARfest
in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA, their most high profile appearance to date.
In October 2008, they played again at the E-Live festival in Eindhoven.
October 2009 saw their second appearance at the Hampshire Jam Festival in Liphook, Hampshire.
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
, utilizing vintage synthesizers and sampled sounds alongside electric guitar
Electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
. They are also leading exponents of the mellotron
Mellotron
The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in the early 1960s. It superseded the Chamberlin Music Master, which was the world's first sample-playback keyboard intended for music...
keyboard. More recently they have begun to incorporate Bass Guitar and Drums by varying degrees in an attempt to stretch musical boundaries within the confines of a three piece. Their music has been described alternatively as ambient music
Ambient music
Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...
, space rock
Space rock
Space rock is a subgenre of rock music; the term originally referred to a group of early, mostly British, 1970s progressive and psychedelic rock bands such as Hawkwind and Pink Floyd, characterised by slow, lengthy instrumental passages dominated by electric organs, synthesizers, experimental...
, Krautrock
Krautrock
Krautrock is a generic name for the experimental music scenes that appeared in Germany in the late 1960s and gained popularity throughout the 1970s, especially in Britain. The term is a result of the English-speaking world's reception of the music at the time and not a reference to any one...
, New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
, Berlin School
Berlin School of electronic music
The Berlin School of electronic music, or just Berlin School, was a development of electronic music in the 1970s, shaped by Berlin-based artists like Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream and Ashra....
, and various other terms, although the band itself prefers the label "organic music". Points of reference include bands ranging from Tangerine Dream
Tangerine Dream
Tangerine Dream is a German electronic music group founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The band has undergone many personnel changes over the years, with Froese being the only continuous member...
to "Rabbit"-era Chas and Dave
Chas and Dave
Chas & Dave are an English pop rock duo, most notable as creators and performers of a musical style labelled "rockney", which mixes "pub singalong, music-hall humour, boogie-woogie piano and pre-Beatles rock 'n' roll"...
.
Name
The unusual name dates back to the early 80s, and the trio's early experiments with primitive sounds. The name was coined by Steve to describe cathartic sessions by the band, working away from traditional write/arrange/rehearse methods. Lacking anything but the most basic equipment, the band plugged keyboards & guitars straight into a cassette deck for a more abrasive sound than that achieved with the (mostly borrowed) equipment used in the making of their early recordings as "DAS". Therefore, there is no deeper meaning in the name.It was adopted as the main name for the band in 1990, as recording in the "DAS" style was wound up. There are 12 DAS "albums" although only the first was ever published (as a cassette album); some of the later titles feature other musicians and any plan to release these recordings would mean hunting down the participants to obtain clearance.
History
The history of the band dates back to the late 70s, when Steve and Duncan went to school together. They formed the band “DAS” with Gary, and recorded 12 albums between 1979 and 1987, most of which were never released.Steve, who is originally a drummer, went on to play in a couple of ‘scene’ bands after moving to London in 1988, while Duncan started to amass synthesizers, and recorded the first solo projects. When he finally found a space for him and Steve - who got disillusioned with the music business at that time - to work in, they recorded a first session in 1993, which was later released as “Startide”. Gary re-joined in 1994 with his guitar, and the band as we know it today was born.
Their first official release was the double CD “Frozen North” on Centaur in 1995. They also debuted Radio Massacre International as a live act at the Emma festival in Sheffield in the same year.
In 1996, they were invited to perform on MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
s "Party Zone", making them probably the only band to play a live piece on the dance-orientated show that did not contain a single discernible beat. The same month they were the first electronic artists to play at the famous Jodrell Bank
Jodrell Bank
The Jodrell Bank Observatory is a British observatory that hosts a number of radio telescopes, and is part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester...
observatory, in the shadow of the radio dish. This was later released as the humorously titled live CD `Knutsford In May'.
1997 saw them play at the famous (but now defunct) KLEMdag festival in Nijmegen, Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, in front of the band's largest ever live audience.The year 2000 brought appearances at the Alfa Centauri festival in Holland, and another visit to Jodrell Bank
Jodrell Bank
The Jodrell Bank Observatory is a British observatory that hosts a number of radio telescopes, and is part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester...
. The band's music was also featured in the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
-TV programme “Don’t Look Down” about the 300 ft radio telescope.
The first Hampshire
Hampshire
Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...
Jam festival of electronic music in Liphook
Liphook
Liphook is a large village in the East Hampshire district of Hampshire, England. It is 4.1 miles west of Haslemere, on the A3 road, and lies on the Hampshire/West Sussex border.Liphook has its own railway station, on the Portsmouth Direct Line....
in 2001 saw them appear together with other artists of the genre like Air Sculpture, Paul Nagle and Free System Project.
In November 2002, they played their first ever dates in the United States, at the Progwest Festival in LA and at The Gatherings Concert Series in Philadelphia. Furthermore, they appeared twice live on radio, on Alien Air Music on KXLU
KXLU
KXLU is an FM radio station broadcasting out of Loyola Marymount University in southwest Los Angeles, California. It was first on the air in 1957, and recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. It is a non-commercial college radio station that plays many styles of music broadly classified under...
in LA, and on Star's End on WXPN
WXPN
WXPN is a non-commercial, public radio station operated by the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia that broadcasts a music radio format called adult album alternative , along with many other format shows supported all with an indie slant...
in Philadelphia. True to form, the band released a 2CD collection documenting this tour (Solid States).
Further live events included the E-Live festival in Eindhoven, Holland in late 2003
and the Virtaa Arts Festival in Tapiola (nr Helsinki), Finland in early 2004. Manchester's The Night and Day Cafe
The Night and Day Café
The Night and Day Café is a cafe bar and live music venue located on Oldham Street, Manchester, opposite Piccadilly Records and between Magma Design Bookstore / Vinyl Exchange and Café Pop/ Dry Bar...
witnessed a 2004 collaborative performance which saw RMI and Can luminary Damo Suzuki
Damo Suzuki
, universally known as Damo Suzuki , is a singer best known for his membership in the German krautrock group Can.-Biography:As a teenager, Suzuki spent the late 1960s wandering around Europe, often busking....
perform together for the first time.
A return visit to Philadelphia in 2004 at the invitiation of Chuck Van Zyl resulted in a recording contract with USA label Cuneiform Records
Cuneiform Records
Cuneiform Records is an independent record label based in Silver Spring, Maryland.The label releases a mixture of musical styles, including progressive jazz, modern fusion music, progressive rock, the Canterbury Scene and electronic music...
for which the debut release was 2005's 'Emissaries',a double CD which also featured a full colour comic strip story by artist Matt Howarth
Matt Howarth
Matt Howarth is an American comic book writer/artist known for such series as Those Annoying Post Bros, Savage Henry, Star Crossed, and Bugtown....
Since 2003, they have given annual performances at the UK National Space Centre in Leicester
Leicester
Leicester is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest...
, performing with fellow artist Ian Boddy as a guest of the band on the last of these occasions in March 2006. RMI then released the `Septentrional' CD on Boddy's DiN label which was again characterised by a collaborative spirit, with Boddy treating and remixing the material.
In December 2006, they finally released the long awaited 6 CD compilation "Lost in Space", a career retrospective but containing entirely unreleased material from 1987 to 2003.
In September 2007 they released two CDs. The first, "Rain Falls in Grey" is a release which the band describe in the sleevenotes as "a way of saying goodbye and thanks to a genuine one off", referring to Syd Barrett
Syd Barrett
Syd Barrett , born Roger Keith Barrett, was an English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and painter, best remembered as a founding member of the band Pink Floyd. He was the lead vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter during the band's psychedelic years, providing major musical and stylistic...
. The cover art for this release was drawn by Daevid Allen
Daevid Allen
Daevid Allen , sometimes credited as Divided Alien, an Australian poet, guitarist, singer, composer and performance artist is co-founder of psychedelic rock groups Soft Machine and Gong .-Biography:In 1960, inspired by the Beat Generation writers he had discovered...
, famous as a member of the group Gong (band)
Gong (band)
Gong is a Franco-British progressive/psychedelic rock band formed by Australian musician Daevid Allen. Their music has also been described as space rock. Other notable band members include Allan Holdsworth, Tim Blake, Didier Malherbe, Pip Pyle, Gilli Smyth, Steve Hillage, Francis Moze, Mike Howlett...
. The second release, "Blacker" was on their own Northern Echo record label. The albums were launched with a rare UK show featuring album guest Martin Archer
Once again they visited the East Coast of the USA in November 2007, and played a well-received series of radio sessions and live shows in a variety of contexts, augmented on occasions by Premik Russell Tubbs and Cyndee Lee Rule.
In February 2008 they completed recording of their first film soundtrack, entitled `City 21' due for release in September 2008 by the Knossus Project.
In June 2008 they played NEARfest
NEARfest
The North East Art Rock Festival, or NEARfest for short, is a multi-day event celebrating the resurgence of progressive and eclectic music in the United States and around the world. The event is held annually in early summer in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, approximately one hour north of Philadelphia...
in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA, their most high profile appearance to date.
In October 2008, they played again at the E-Live festival in Eindhoven.
October 2009 saw their second appearance at the Hampshire Jam Festival in Liphook, Hampshire.
Discography
The band has been incredibly prolific, largely due to the improvised and lengthy nature of their musical explorations, releasing over 30 albums over the past decade or so.| Album | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Frozen North | 1995 | |
| Republic | 1996 | |
| Knutsford in May (Live) | 1997 | |
| Burned & Frozen | ||
| Diabolica | Recorded in 1994 | |
| Organ Harvest | ||
| Gulf | 1998 | |
| A Bridge Too Far (Live) | Recorded in 1997 | |
| Borrowed Atoms | ||
| Live at the October Gallery (Live) | Ltd. edition for visitors of the concert only | |
| Bothered Atmos | 1999 | Sequel to Borrowed Atoms |
| Upstairs Downstairs (Live) | 2000 | |
| Been There Done That (Live) | Recorded in 1997 | |
| The God Of Electricity | Recorded in 1994 | |
| Zabriskie Point | ||
| Planets in the Wires | 2001 | |
| Startide | Recorded in 1993 | |
| Maelstrom | 2002 | Recorded in 1999 |
| Greenhousing | 2003 | |
| Solid States (Live) | ||
| E-Live 2003 (Live) | ||
| People would really like Space Rock if they would only give it a try (Live) |
2004 | |
| Walking on the Sea (Live) | ||
| Hog Wild (Live) | ||
| Emissaries | 2005 | |
| Septentrional | 2006 | |
| Lost in Space 6 CD Boxed Set | ||
| Rain Falls in Grey | 2007 | |
| Blacker | ||
| October Gallery (redux) | Download-only release of complete 1997 concert | |
| Antisocial | 2008 | Download/CD-R release of 2005 concert |
| Fast Forward | Sampler covering bands entire recorded output | |
| Philadelphia Air-Shot | Live set fron WXPN's Star's End Star's End Star's End is a weekly, five-hour-long New Age music radio show broadcast by 88.5 WXPN, the University of Pennsylvania's radio station, in Philadelphia. It is the second longest-running show of its type in the world, after Hearts of Space.-History:... Radio show 14 November 2007 |
|
| Rain Falls In A Different Way | Companion set to Rain Falls In Grey | |
| E-Live 2008 | 2009 | |
| Liphook Variations | Download-only release, CD release possible in mid-2010 | |
| March 2000 | Download-only release | |
| Time & Motion | 2010 | |
| Lost In Transit 7 CD Boxed Set | Limited edition release of selected live performances from 2004–2007 | |
| City21 | 2011 |
RMI Solo Albums
- Steve Dinsdale - New Church (2009)
- Steve Dinsdale - On The Other Side (2010)
RMI on Various Artists Compilations
- Adrenal - Hollow Words (1996) Radio Music Intermission
- Synth Music Direct - Compilation Disc 1 (promo) (1997) Prototypes and Patents
- Is there anybody out there? (1998) RMI-Pyramid
- Concerts At Jodrell Bank (2000) 1CD of RMI Live at Jodrell Bank/Alfa Centauri Festival
- Hampshire Jam Preserved (2001) Pipe / Everybody Say Yeah / Roxette lost in Liphook
- E-dition CD sampler #4 (2004) Nucleotide Diversities (excerpt)
- E-dition CD sampler #8 (2005) The Emissaries Suite
- Awakenings 2005 (2005) Sherwood's Special
- Star's End 30th Anniversary Anthology (2007) Philadelphia Rain
- Resonance: The Echoes Living Room Concerts vol. 13 (2007) Gibraltar