Paul Smith is probably best known as the founder and manager of Blast First, the British alternative record label that released artists such as Sonic Youth, the Butthole Surfers, Big Black and Dinosaur Jr. in the UK. He continued to manage the artists and work in the music industry when Blast First was bought by Mute Records. Now he runs the very small label "Blast First Petite" on which he develops and sometime releases stuff that was refused by Mute's Blast First, including Rivulets and HTRK. He now has an exclusive contract with Pan Sonic. In 2002 he produced a multimedia performance event at the Barbican to mark the release of Iain Sinclair's book London Orbital. The event featured a diverse range of artists from the literary and music worlds including J.G. Ballard and Bill Drummond.
Paul Smith also produced the final British tour of Ken Kesey, taking him on a bus tour around festivals in summer 1997. He is also known for King Mob, a record label of spoken word performances by famous counter-culture authors from the beat generation to Iain Sinclair and Stewart Home.
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Sonic Youth was an American rock band based in New York City, formed in 1981. Founding members Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo remained together for the entire history of the band, while Steve Shelley (drums) followed a series of short-term drummers in 1985, rounding out the core line-up. Jim O'Rourke was also a member of the band from 1999 to 2005, and Mark Ibold was a member from 2006 to 2011.
Lee Mark Ranaldo is an American musician, singer-songwriter, guitarist, writer, visual artist and record producer, best known as a co-founder of the alternative rock band Sonic Youth. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Ranaldo at number 33 on its "Greatest Guitarists of All Time" list. In May 2012, Spin published a staff-selected top 100 guitarist list, ranking Ranaldo and his Sonic Youth bandmate Thurston Moore together at number 1.
MC5, also commonly called The MC5, is an American rock band from Lincoln Park, Michigan, formed in 1963. The original band line-up consisted of vocalist Rob Tyner, guitarists Wayne Kramer and Fred "Sonic" Smith, bassist Michael Davis, and drummer Dennis Thompson. MC5 was listed by VH1 as one of the most important American hard rock groups of their era. Their three albums are regarded by many as classics, and their song "Kick Out the Jams" is widely covered.
The Raincoats are a British experimental post-punk band. Ana da Silva and Gina Birch formed the group in 1977 while they were students at Hornsey College of Art in London.
Mute Records Ltd. is a British independent record label owned and founded in 1978 by Daniel Miller. It has featured several prominent musical acts on its roster such as Einstürzende Neubauten, Depeche Mode, Erasure, Fad Gadget, Goldfrapp, Grinderman, Inspiral Carpets, Moby, New Order, Nitzer Ebb, Yann Tiersen, Wire, Yeasayer, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Yazoo, and M83.
James Sclavunos is an American drummer, multi-instrumentalist musician, record producer, and writer. He is best known as a drummer, having been a member of two seminal no wave groups in the late 1970s. He is also noted for stints in Sonic Youth and the Cramps, and has been a member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds since 1994. Sclavunos has led his own group the Vanity Set since 2000.
Enigma Records was a popular rock and alternative American record label in the 1980s.
Dirty is the seventh full-length studio album and second double album by American rock band Sonic Youth, released on July 21, 1992 by DGC Records. The band recorded and co-produced the album with Butch Vig in early 1992 at the Magic Shop studios. The sound on Dirty was inspired by the popularity of grunge music at the time, and has been described by Billboard magazine as avant-rock. Some songs on the album mark the first appearance of three guitars in a few Sonic Youth songs.
Band of Susans was an American alternative rock band formed in New York City in 1986 and active until 1996. It originally consisted of Robert Poss (guitar/vocals), Susan Stenger (bass/vocals), Ron Spitzer (drums), with Susan Lyall (guitar), Susan Tallman (guitar), and Alva Rogers (vocals). The band would undergo several permutations over the years, usually involving three guitarists. Poss, Stenger, and Spitzer were the band's core members throughout its duration. They originated in the New York noise rock scene, but due to their layered guitar sound were sometimes seen as the American counterparts to the UK shoegazing bands and also drew influence from modern experimental composers Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca.
Monte Cazazza is an American artist and composer best known for his seminal role in helping shape industrial music through recordings with the London-based Industrial Records in the mid-1970s.
Roger Charles, better known by his stage name Wayne Wonder, is a Jamaican reggae artist. While his early recordings were dancehall and reggae, he later moved towards hip hop and rap. His most popular single is the 2003 hit "No Letting Go".
Deltasonic is a British record label based in Liverpool, England. Previously joint ventured with Sony Music, it is now totally independent. It was formed by Alan Wills, the former drummer with Liverpool bands Shack and Top, and associated with the 'Cosmic Scouse' and 'Scallydelica' music scenes.
Chris Carter is an English musician, best known for being a member of Throbbing Gristle and the duo Chris & Cosey, both with his longtime partner Cosey Fanni Tutti.
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. Lewis's "Manifesto" begins with the words "BLAST First ENGLAND".
Bruce Clifford Gilbert is an English musician. One of the founding members of the influential and experimental art punk band Wire, he branched out into electronic music, performance art, music production, and DJing during the band's extended periods of inactivity. He left Wire in 2004, and has since been focusing on solo work and collaborations with visual artists and fellow experimental musicians.
Sonic Unyon Recording Company is an independent record label based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Their former retail store was located on Wilson Street near James Street North. The label has put out releases by bands including Tristan Psionic, Sianspheric, Shallow North Dakota, Eric's Trip, Hayden, Chore, Frank Black and the Catholics, A Northern Chorus, Raising the Fawn, Teenage Head and Voivod.
Big Stick is an American musical duo formed in New York in 1985 by John Gill and Yanna Trance. Known mostly for their unconventional approach to songwriting and recording, Big Stick's music varies and jumps through different genres and categories, touching on punk rock, industrial music, and art rock and brutally simple performance style.
Kumo is a British musician and composer, the pseudonym of Jono Podmore who was born in 1965.
Goo is the sixth full-length studio album by American alternative rock band Sonic Youth, released on June 26, 1990 by DGC Records. For this album, the band sought to expand upon its trademark alternating guitar arrangements and the layered sound of their previous album Daydream Nation (1988) with songwriting on that was more topical than past works, exploring themes of female empowerment and pop culture. Coming off the success of Daydream Nation, Nick Sansano returned to engineer Goo, but veteran producer Ron Saint Germain was chosen by Sonic Youth to finish mixing the album following Sansano's dismissal.
Sean McLusky is a British music promoter, nightclub impresario and film producer.
