THE MEMBRANES | FESTIVALPHOTO
| THE MEMBRANES The Membranes are an influential 80’s UK post punk band who recently reformed for the ATP festivals in the UK at the request of firstly My Bloody Valentine and then Shellac. They are one of the handful of reformed key underground bands from the period who have seem less concerned with living up to a past legacy than establishing a completely different one- believing that their style of music is about going forward. In the eighties they released a series of critically acclaimed records that were John Peel favourites and were noise pioneers along with contemporaries like Einsturzende Neubauten, Swans, The Fall and Sonic Youth and have been quoted as an influence by bands as diverse as Big Black, Godflesh, Mercury Rev, Lambchop, Atari Teenage Riot, Wedding Present, Napalm Death and punk and metal bands worldwide interested in the band's totally original music. The new Membranes will release an epic double album in spring 2015 where they have stretched their sound from noise to neo classical, from drones to jagged riffs to hypnotic grooves perfecting a new way transforming the grosteque into grandeur, making beautiful music and hypnotic noise. Their upcoming double album Dark Matter/Dark Energy conjures up primal forms of power that lie in noise rock and the most melancholic of classical musics. This is a record about life and death and the universe and it concerns itself with space itself and was sparked by a chance meeting between band frontman John Robb and the head of the CERN project who were working on the Higgs Boson project -entwined into the album is the death of a close relative and the record loos at eternal space and the death of close ones with a powerful and epic music that reaks thunder and lightning, fire and brimstone with the hunter and the hunted and the hunter and the hunted of the inevitability of nature. the inevitability of nature. The Membranes came out of Blackpool and made a powerful and dark music despite their surroundings. They may not have come from Berlin or New York but were living proof that the darkest and most powerful of musics can come from anywhere as they tried to make rock'n'roll sound as ugly as possible while still retaining the rhythms and forms that made it rock'n'roll with a bass driven fury. Their music may have been noisy but not pure noise - there has always been something far smarter going on in there than mere thrash. Frontman John Robb edits the influential UK music and culture blog Louder Than War and is an author with best selling books about punk rock as well as being a TV and radio pundit The Membranes formed out of punk and DIY culture in the late seventies and then went on their own path. They also spearheaded a whole British underground scene of noisenik bands in the eighties known as the Death To Trad Rock scene. The band reformed a couple of years ago, after being asked to play ATP festival by My Bloody Valentine, to play music on their own terms. They are still inspired by punk rock but believe music has no boundaries. The new music weaves noise, drones, found percussion, feedback, discord, melody, free jazz, dub, dark dub, free punk, heavy rhythms, classical music, orchestras, percussion, near silence, death to trad rock noise and freedom into a unique whole of beauty and noise and enjoys all the contrasts. The new album will see music from string quartets to dark dub to classic noise in a groundbreaking release- Dark Matter/Dark Energy. The gigs went to so well that the band are working on the album built around the Universe Explained gig they did last year where they got Higgs Boson scientists to explain the universe before the Membranes played a set to finish which was a sellout show- many venues and festivals are interested in this as well. Since their return the band have been playing festivals across Europe and 2015 sees many more festivals being offered. The band will be releasing the double album Dark Matter/Dark Energy on Cherry Red records. There is also a dark cartoon being being made about the Membranes as a feature film. 
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Covered gigs: 2018-05-25 The Membranes (Bearded Theory 2018) 2017-09-11 The Membranes (Kb - Malmö) 2014-12-20 The Membranes (12 Bar - London) 2014-05-23 The Membranes (Bearded Theory 2014) |
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