I might try and pass myself off as a smart-arse and know-all, but a fair chunk of what appears in postings within this little corner of t’internet is gleamed from other sources.
The research can be time consuming and deadly dull given that I’m often just looking to clarify one small point which is often buried away within screeds of stuff that I already knew. Every now and again, I do come across something which gets me mumbling along the lines of ‘I had no idea about that’ and I end up going off to find out more – such as when I read that a band called Infantjoy had been in existence in the middle part of the first decade of the 21st Century.
Let me rip off a bandcamp page to provide the skinny:-
Infantjoy is literally a musical collaboration between cellist/percussionist James Banbury and conceptualist/percussionist Paul Morley. They met whilst compiling a remix edition of the Art of Noise album The Seduction of Claude Debussy – Morley as a member of the Art of Noise whose contribution to the group was somewhere between making the tea and dreaming the whole damned thing up, Banbury as an ex member of the Auteurs entering a strange new world as a programmer and string arranger with his heart forged by Sheffield electropop and his mind made up by modernism.
They decided that their first musical act as Infantjoy, once they had decided they would be Infantjoy, should discreetly and indiscreetly acknowledge the composer who suggested that you play a piece of his music by ‘wondering about yourself.’ or by ‘opening your mind’ or by being ‘as light as an egg’ – Erik Satie, a major influence on Debussy and Eno, the former triggering most modern music, and the latter re-routing most post-modern music. They wouldn’t consider Paris, but make up their own city, with its own streets, and its own lighting, and its own river, and its own people muttering in the dark about the time Satie was alive, and livid, and of course extremely unlivid.
Great to see that Paul Morley never lost the knack for great commentary on something he was involved in – entertaining and bamboozling in equal measures!
Debut album Where The Night Goes, was released in June 2005 by Sony BMG who clearly had high hopes that the haunting electronica chamber pop would find more than a niche audience. In the end, it didn’t even achieve that and they were let go soom after, although they continued to have belief in their vision and continued to release material on their own ServiceAV label, including the album With in 2007.
Here’s a track from the debut:-
mp3 : Infantjoy – Ghosts
It’s a cover of the Japan single and the lyric is delivered by Sarah Nixey who had been part of Black Box Recorder alongside Luke Haines, a former sparring partner of James Banbury.
Sarah Nixey would also release a number of solo singles on ServiceAV, including this take on a Human League number:-
mp3 : Sarah Nixey – The Black Hit of Space
There’s just something so alluring, erotic and sensual about the way that woman sings……..
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 