Rote Kapelle were a post punk/indie pop

Indie pop

Indie pop is a genre of alternative rock music that originated in the United Kingdom in the mid 1980s, with its roots in the Scottish post-punk bands on the Postcard Records label in the early '80s, such as Orange Juice, Josef K and Aztec Camera, and the dominant UK independent band of the mid...

 band from Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, active during the 1980s. The band members included musicians who were also members of Jesse Garon And The Desperadoes

Jesse Garon And The Desperadoes

Jesse Garon and the Desperadoes were a Scottish band formed from around, and within, the Edinburgh indie-pop scene of the mid-1980s. The band had a distinctive guitar-jangle sound with male and female vocals...

, and The Shop Assistants

The Shop Assistants

Shop Assistants were an indie pop band from Edinburgh, Scotland, formed in 1984, initially as Buba & The Shop Assistants. After achieving success with independent releases they signed to Chrysalis Records sublabel Blue Guitar, releasing their only album in 1986...

.

History

The band was formed in the early 1980s by Andrew Tully (vocals) and Marguerite Vasquez-Ponte (vocals), both of whom would also form Jesse Garon and the Desperadoes, with Chris Henman (guitar), Ian Binns (keyboards, also a member of The Staircase), Malcolm Kergan (bass), and Jonathan Muir (drums). The band's debut release was The Big Smell Dinosaur EP in late 1985, after which they were signed by Marc Riley

Marc Riley

Marc Riley is a British musician, alternative rock critic and radio DJ on BBC 6 Music. Formerly a member of The Fall, he had his own record label, In-Tape, and also worked as a record plugger...

's In-Tape label. Tully described the band's sound in 1987 as a blend of noisy post-punk and anorak pop. Vasquez-Ponte was also a member of a third band, The Fizzbombs, alongside the Desperadoes' Angus McPake and The Shop Assistants' former drummer Ann Donald. They released two further singles and two more EP

Extended play

An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...

's, one of which featured tracks from their Peel Session, before splitting when Vasquez-Ponte joined the re-formed Shop Assistants. An LP, No North Briton, was released in 1990.

Discography

• The Big Smell Dinosaur 7" EP (1985) Big Smell Dinosaur
• "These Animals are Dangeroos" 7" (1986) In-Tape
• It Moves But Does It Swing? 12" EP (John Peel Sessions) EP (1987) In-Tape
• "Fire Escape" 7" (1988) In-Tape
• San Francisco Again 12" EP (1988) In-Tape
• No North Briton LP (1990) In-Tape

External links

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/sessions/1980s/1986/Nov09rotekapelle/Rote Kapelle Peel Session details at 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...
  
  's Keeping It Peel site]
• Rote Kapelle at Last.fm
• Rote Kapelle at discogs.com