Sounds Making 'Grrrrhh' Noises: a Red Square biog.

The 2009 release by FMR Records of ‘Thirty Three’ documented the early years of Red Square, a remarkable, pioneering British group that originally formed in 1972 and broke up in 1978, before re-forming in 2009 as a result of renewed interest in their extraordinary history.

Though largely forgotten for 30 years, Red Square were a key link bridging the worlds of psychedelic rock and avant-jazz. The group also had a fierce, ideological commitment to total improvisation delivered through very big speakers. There was an almost proto-punk quixotism about their railing aural assaults on the mainstream: very few people thanked them for it, and the music on ‘Thirty Three’ was considered far too extreme for release at the time.

Since reforming Red Square have gigged regularly and released two new albums. Recent dates have included the Vortex, Resonance FM, Darkstar at the Dogstar, Oxford's Klub Kakofanney, Southend's Culture As A Dare Fringe Festival, Utrophia's Cwm Festival, the Tinderbox Festival, Oxford Improvisors, Chatham's Brutally Honest Club and Brighton's On The Edge.

They have attracted critical acclaim for both their live and recorded work, and were recently the subject of an in-depth feature by Frances Morgan in the journal Loops.

Live, Red Square remain a unique, exhilarating sonic experience, and sound like nothing you've heard before. Their new album 'UnReason: Red Square Live At The Vortex' is now available.

The groundwork for what became the Red Square sound was laid when Jon Seagroatt & Ian Staples began a musical collaboration in Southend-on-Sea, Essex in 1972, following encounters at a number of experimental music workshops.

Staples, fresh from the London underground scene, had been gigging regularly at the legendary Middle Earth Club in London with Ginger Johnson's African Drummers, alongside, amongst others, Pink Floyd and Mark Bolan. He was working with tape multi-tracking, noise, psychedelia and action painting. Staples’ electric guitar playing was a revolutionary blend of Hendrix and Beefheart, with the sonic palettes of Derek Bailey and Stockhausen.

Seagroatt, galvanized by the explorations of Johns Coltrane and Tchcai, Evan Parker, Steve Lacy, Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler, also drew freely on groups such as Can, Faust, Weather Report, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Soft Machine.

Both were also heavily influenced by developments in contemporary 'straight' music.

From the beginning of their collaboration they determined to improvise all of their music. Within a year they found a kindred spirit in drummer Roger Telford, a committed exponent of the free-jazz style of kit playing being pioneered at the time by Milford Graves and Sunny Murray.

The combination of electric guitar, amplified bass clarinet and drum kit gave Red Square a unique sound palette to explore, as well an instantly recognisable group sound.
The line up of Seagroatt, Staples and Telford remained constant throughout the band's six year history, as did the original commitment to total improvisation, but, given the group's wide range of influences, their improvisations drew as much on avant-rock as they did on jazz or contemporary improvised music.

Staples became adept at unleashing cunningly atonal guitar riffs, which referenced metal without ever becoming metal. These onslaughts were critiqued and counterposed by Telford's coruscating, densely-textured polyrhythms. Seagroatt moved between the two, weaving sinuous cats-cradles of fractured melody in the liminal space where metal met jazz.

Live, the group was often punishingly loud (one story recounts that a Red Square set drowned out Cliff Richard who was playing at a venue half a mile away!). Despite the support of luminaries such as Miles, then writing for NME, they frequently enjoyed a combative relationship with audiences. Their enthusiasm for playing inappropriate venues (including folk clubs and pub-rock dives), and their willingness to engage forcefully with hecklers led to a number of hurried back-door exits from gigs, and presaged the arrival of punk a few years later.

As well as their now legendary semi-squatted 'residency' in a vast, condemned Victorian hotel in Westcliff-on-Sea, Red Square played innumerable gigs (four in one day on one occasion!), benefits and student occupations, and gigged with Henry Cow, Red Brass, David Toop & Paul Burwell and Lol Coxhill. They were also active in Music For Socialism.

They released two cassette-only albums, 'Paramusic' and 'Circuitry', the latter being a live recording of a gig with Henry Cow in Southend. Tracks from both of these albums are included on 'Thirty Three'.

Red Square were in many respects years ahead of their time, and methods and sounds that they pioneered have since become common practice amongst experimental and avant-rock musicians.

Jon and Ian continued to work together after the original break-up of the group, gigging and releasing albums under the names of B So glObal, Omlo Vent and Miramar for a number of labels including Chillum, Fo Fum and Emergency Broadcast. Jon formed a writing partnership with singer Bobbie Watson which led to the formation of the trip-hop band Drift, and, later, to the punk-jazz inflected Colins of Paradise, whilst Ian developed an extensive catalogue of solo material as the Visitor.

Having been approached by FMR to release their old material, the band so enjoyed trawling through the reels of tape to choose album tracks that they decided to re-form. The group are now back gigging, some thirty years after last playing together as Red Square, and recording new choice cuts of elemental, genre-defying, avant-rock and outer-limit free-jazz rampaging.

As well as their commitment to the re-formed Red Square, the group members are also involved in other projects. Jon is a member of legendary psych-folk weirdlings, Comus, and the fusion band Consortium, Ian is a successful painter, and Roger is active in the Oxford Improvisors collective, playing with Pat Thomas, Tony Bevan and Pete MacPhail’s Nostromo.