Ut originated from New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

's downtown No Wave

No Wave

No Wave was a short-lived but influential underground music, film, performance art, video, and contemporary art scene that had its beginnings during the mid-1970s in New York City. The term No Wave is in part satirical word play rejecting the commercial elements of the then-popular New Wave genre...

 scene in December 1978. The inheritors of the fertile collision between rock

Rock music

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...

, free jazz

Free jazz

Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...

 and the avant garde that first manifested itself in the Velvet Underground, Ut soon became a serious force within the New York music scene.

History

Ut's members are Nina Canal, Jacqui Ham and Sally Young. They were joined briefly by filmmaker Karen Achenbach in 1979 before resuming as a three-piece and relocating to London in 1981. Ut toured the UK with bands such as The Fall and The Birthday Party

The Birthday Party (band)

The Birthday Party were an Australian rock band, active from 1973 to 1983.Despite being championed by John Peel, The Birthday Party found little commercial success during their career...

. Originally releasing albums on their own label Out Records, the band became a favourite of John Peel

John Peel

John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...

 and recorded several sessions for his show before joining forces with Blast First

Blast First

Blast First is a sub label of one-time independent record label, Mute Records, founded in approximately 1985. It was named after a phrase taken from the first number of the radical Vorticist journal Blast, published by Wyndham Lewis in 1914...

 in 1987.

In Gut's House was originally released in 1988 and made NME

NME

The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...

's Top 50 that year. The Washington Post noted "With In Gut's House, Ut has scraped and droned one of the finest underground rock albums of the year....The tightly woven, firmly focused sound...is rich, spooky, urgent and quite unexpectedly beautiful."

In 1989 the band recorded and released the album Griller, engineered by label-mate Steve Albini

Steve Albini

Steven Frank Albini is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, audio engineer and music journalist. He was a member of Big Black, Rapeman, and Flour, and is currently a member of Shellac...

, who shared Ut's raw aesthetic. In March 1990, Ut played their last concert in Paris.

After the band's breakup

Sally Young went on to form the band Quint and released the CD Time Wounds All Heals on Southern Records.

Jacqui Ham formed Dial with Rob Smith and Dominic Weeks (Furious Pig

Furious Pig

Furious Pig were a British band, active briefly during the post-punk era, composed of Martin Kent, Stephen Kent, Jonathan Davis and Dominic Weeks. They formed in Totnes Devon, and initially employed traditional rock instruments, but largely rejected these in favour of a mostly a cappella style,...

, Het). Dial have released three CDs on Cede Records: Infraction, Distance Runner and 168k

Nina Canal continues to create music and most recently participated in Rhys Chatham's 100 Guitars project.

Reunion

Ut played a short, unannounced reunion show in London in July 2010. In November 2010 the band mounted a brief tour of the east coast of the United States.

In popular culture

Ut is one of the many bands mentioned in Le Tigre

Le Tigre

Le Tigre is an American electroclash band, formed by Kathleen Hanna and Johanna Fateman in 1998. It also featured Sadie Benning from 1998 until 2001, and JD Samson for the rest of the group's run...

's single, Hot Topic.

Discography

• UT Live [tape] (Out) 1981
• UT EP (Out) 1984
• Confidential 12" (Out) 1985
• Conviction (Out) 1986 ( Out/Blast First) 1987
• Early Live Life (Blast First) 1987
• In Gut's House (Blast First) 1988 (reissued 2006)
• Griller (Blast First) 1989 (reissued 2006)

External links

• official band site
• Trouser Press page discussing UT
• The Memory Tax, a film by Karen Achenbach featuring music by Quint.
• High-Voltage Humans, 2006 article about resurgence of No Wave featuring new interview with the members of UT.
• Ut interview from Warped Reality (2006) (first of three parts)