Flour is the musical project and nickname of Minneapolis musician Pete Conway, who wrote songs and played bass guitar in the bands Rifle Sport and Breaking Circus until the mid-1980s. [1] [2] He released four solo albums on Touch and Go Records from 1988 to 1994 on which he plays most of the instruments himself. [1] Flour toured as a live band twice with a lineup that featured ex-Big Black guitarist Steve Albini on bass and former Breaking Circus percussionist Todd Trainer on drums before they went on to form the band Shellac. Flour's solo recordings feature the drum machine sound characteristic of Big Black, which was also toyed with by many other independent rock bands in the Midwest during that time period. Flour's third solo album Machinery Hill was described by Allmusic 's Richard Foss as "an oddball masterpiece of grinding guitar, fluid bass, hammering drums, and very creative ideas". [3]
In the mid-1990s, Conway was part of an all-bass trio, called Brits Out of America, along with Dana Cochrane of Mickey Finn, Amy Larson of Strumpet, and Ben Ivascu of Polica, STNNNG, Marijuana Deathsquads, etc. [4] In 1992, Conway performed as the bass player on the supergroup Pigface's "Fook You '92" tour.
Big Black was an American punk rock band from Evanston, Illinois, active from 1981 to 1987. Founded by singer and guitarist Steve Albini, the band's initial lineup also included guitarist Santiago Durango and bassist Jeff Pezzati, both of Naked Raygun. In 1985, Pezzati was replaced by Dave Riley, who played on Big Black's two full-length studio albums, Atomizer (1986) and Songs About Fucking (1987).
SSD was a straight edge hardcore band from Boston. They released two records as SS Decontrol and then formally changed their name to SSD. As SSD they released two more records with a heavy metal influenced sound. However, the group is often simply referred to, including all its periods, as SSD.
Agoraphobic Nosebleed is an American grindcore band. Its line-up has changed often over the years, with guitarist and drum programmer Scott Hull being the only continuous member. The current line-up includes vocalist Jay Randall, and Richard Johnson of Enemy Soil and Drugs of Faith, along with John Jarvis of Pig Destroyer and Fulgora on bass guitar.
Naked Raygun is an American punk rock band that formed in Chicago in 1980. The band was active from 1980 to 1992, along with reunion shows in 1997, and since 2006.
Hella is an American math rock band from Sacramento, California. The primary members of the band are Spencer Seim on electric guitar and Zach Hill on drums. The band expanded their live band by adding Dan Elkan on vocals, rhythm guitar, sampler and synthesizer and Jonathan Hischke on synth bass guitar for their 2005 tour. In 2006 they reformed as a five-piece line-up including Seim, Hill, Carson McWhirter, Aaron Ross & Josh Hill. In 2009, the band was reduced back to core members Hill and Seim.
Versus is an American indie rock band formed in New York City in 1990 by vocalist and guitarist Richard Baluyut, bassist Fontaine Toups and drummer Edward Baluyut. Richard Baluyut and Toups remained the two core members throughout the band's history. The band was noted for their marriage of indie pop songwriting and vocal harmonies to the "loud-soft" dynamics of grunge and alternative rock. They were also noted for their proficient and disciplined musicianship and for their credo of "meat, sports, and rock", none of which had much currency in the early 1990s American indie scene. The band was named after the Mission of Burma album Vs.
Breaking Circus was a post-punk band from the 1980s, based in Chicago and later Minneapolis, founded by guitarist and vocalist Steve Björklund.
Squirrel Bait was an American punk rock band from Louisville, Kentucky active from 1983 to 1987. Squirrel Bait's dense, moody, melodic hardcore sound, featuring pronounced tempo shifts, foreshadowed the grunge sound of the late 1980s as well as math rock. Squirrel Bait, along with Hüsker Dü, are often noted as precursors to the emocore sound that arose from the D.C. hardcore punk scene with bands like Rites of Spring, Beefeater and Fugazi.
Squirrel Bait signaled the second coming of American punk – bands of little brothers and sisters who got to grow up on Black Flag and Hüsker Dü without a preparatory course in Supertramp. ... Like a hundred other little Düs across the country, Squirrel Bait managed to make a couple of records before spintering off to form five more bands. Unlike most of that punk rock loam, the members of Squirrel Bait chewed up their legacy and shat out something curious and consequential.
Ruthless Records was the name of a Chicago punk record label. Founded in 1981 by the Effigies, it was not a real business, but a name used by Chicago and Minneapolis punk bands from 1981 to 1990: Big Black, the Effigies, End Result, Naked Raygun, Rifle Sport and Urge Overkill. The Effigies operated the label from its creation in 1981 until 1984, when they found the label to be distracting from their priorities with the band. They handed the label over to Big Black founder Steve Albini, who ran the label until it dissolved in 1990.
David Michael Riley was an American musician who was the bassist in the punk rock band Big Black from 1985 until the band's dissolution in 1987. Riley moved to Chicago in 1982 from Detroit, where he had worked as a recording engineer. He played on Big Black's two studio albums, Atomizer (1986) and Songs About Fucking (1987), as well as their Headache EP (1987), several singles, and two live albums. After Big Black, Riley recorded tracks with several other artists before being incapacitated by a stroke in 1993, losing the ability to walk. He became a blogger, and published a book in 2006 titled Blurry and Disconnected: Tales of Sink-or-Swim Nihilism. He died in late 2019 from squamous cell carcinoma.
Eric Gaffney is an American songwriter and recording artist, and has been home recording on cassette since 1981. An active participant in the Western Mass hardcore scene, in 1983 he founded, wrote songs for, and drummed with Grey Matter, opening hall shows with Jerry's Kids, F.U.s, The Freeze, Big Boys, Raw Power, Adrenalin O.D., Siege, 7 Seconds, Outpatients, Pajama Slave Dancers, Da Stupids, and others.
Mouth of the Architect is an American heavy metal band from Dayton, Ohio, creating music influenced by and similar to Neurosis, Isis, Pelican, Cult of Luna, and various post-metal bands. They are signed to Translation Loss Records and have released five full-length studio albums and one EP to date.
Cravin' Melon is a rock band based out of Clemson, South Carolina, United States. The band is composed of Doug Jones, Jimbo Chapman, Rob Clay, Gary Greene, Chad Barger.
Bulldozer is the second EP by American punk rock band Big Black, released in 1983. It was their first release to feature an actual band performing, including Pat Byrne from Urge Overkill playing drums on some of the songs in addition to the Roland TR-606 drum machine that provided rhythm tracks on all of Big Black's records.
Racer-X is the third EP by American post-hardcore band Big Black. It was released by Homestead Records in 1985 and reissued by Touch and Go Records in 1992.
Rifle Sport was an American post punk band active in the 1980s and 1990s, from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Throb Throb is an album by American punk rock band Naked Raygun, released on Homestead Records in 1985. It was the first of the band's releases to feature the musicianship of John Haggerty whose guitar playing distinguished the band's sound during the 1980s. Quarterstick Records reissued the album in 1999, and added an early version of "Libido" as bonus material, which originally appeared on the Flammable Solid 7".
The Ice Machine is an album by Breaking Circus. It was released in 1986 by on Homestead Records.
Smokers' Paradise is an extended play by Breaking Circus. It was released in 1987 on Homestead Records. It is the first and only Breaking Circus release to feature second guitarist Phil Harder. It was intended as a full-length album with four songwriting contributions each from Björklund, Flour, and Trainer. When Homestead Records insisted that it be a six-song EP, Flour and Trainer's contributions were limited to one song each, while all of Björklund's songs appeared on the record.
Squirrel Bait is the first EP by the American punk rock band Squirrel Bait, released in 1985 through Homestead Records.