A Rock To Cling To - History

History

Disco Inferno was formed in Essex in the late 1980s, by schoolboy musicians Ian Crause (guitar and vocals), Paul Wilmott (bass), Rob Whatley (drums) and Daniel Gish (keyboards). Initially Crause shared the guitar playing/singing role with a fifth (and unnamed) group member who was eventually ousted . Gish left shortly afterwards to join Bark Psychosis, leaving the band as the trio lineup they would retain until the end of their career.

The band took on the name Disco Inferno as a joke, naming themselves after the classic dancefloor track by The Trammps, which was as far from the sound of the band themselves as could be imagined. (Years later, when established as a credible alternative rock act in Britain, the band found themselves losing potential American bookings due to American agents being discouraged by the name. Crause would later describe this situation as "a joke which had long since gone sour.")

The three-piece Disco Inferno recorded the single, *"Entertainment/Arc in Round" with record producer Charlie McIntosh. Their first album, Open Doors, Closed Windows, was released in 1991 on Ché and received positive reviews. The album was characterized for having influence of late 1970s post-punk bands, particularly Joy Division and Wire. Disco Inferno's manager, Michael Collins, had previously managed Wire during the 1970s. The band's next release was the "Science" EP. (All three of these early 1990s releases would later be collected on the 1995 compilation album, In Debt).

By 1992, the band changed their approach. Willmott would later recall that "("Science") got some slightly better press, but were still playing to the bar staff most nights in any venue that would let us play. We were frustrated, ambitious and wanted to make an impression. Bands that we liked were using samplers and there seemed to be no reason apart from the financial that we shouldn't look to use them. We were listening to "Blue Lines", "Loveless", "Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld"; open to possibilities. We were conscious of the clone indie kid and wanted to be anything but tribal. We had been together just over three years and collectively were getting nowhere; it became a shit or bust moment. At least we would die trying."

In 1992, the band released "Summer's Last Sound", which saw the band's increasing use of samples.combined with traditional instruments - particularly Wilmott's bass. This approach continued on the EPs "A Rock to Cling to" and "The Last Dance". In a 2011 interview, Crause explained "From '92 I had become hell-bent on innovating cos things like Public Enemy and Young Gods blew my mind, but it's when it's allied to a human perspective that technical innovation holds its artistic power otherwise it's just a technical exercise. That's what a lot of that post rock is, as I understand it. So while I tried consciously to innovate... my instincts led me to value the other side of things and that's the essence of the band's appeal, I think. We had both sides... Most of these other what are now called post-rock groups, I think they regarded us as a kind of tinker-toy group because of the pop songs and the sampling so there was little chance of them deciding to follow us in the sampling - no critical consensus had been built for them to aspire to it - we kind of got ours from Public Enemy, who were too black and the Young Gods, who sang in French, for fuck's sake! And it wasn't seen as 'serious' enough, perhaps meaning it wasn't seen as commercially viable enough... who knows. Anyway, I did it 'cos I had the ideas."

The band's musical approach reached its peak on their second album D.I. Go Pop. The album's music was harsh and concise, with the melody on the eight tracks often carried by the bassline, while an array of samples (including running water, breaking glass, car crashes, fax machines) built the musical collages. After D.I. Go Pop the band opted for restraint on "Second Language", which also featured a new-found optimism in Crause's lyrics. The band's next single, "It's a Kid's World" sampled the drumbeat from Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" and added in a series of old children's TV themes.

Despite critical acclaim, Disco Inferno attracted little commercial success. With the band still barely out of their teens, combined artistic and financial pressure began to erode their sense of common purpose and loyalty, and the band split acrimoniously prior to the release their final album, Technicolour was released in 1996.

After the split, Ian Crause formed Floorshow who recorded some material for an unreleased album which was to be called 'The Vertical Axis'. Some of these songs later appeared on his solo singles in the early 2000s ("Elemental" and "Head Over Heels"), which featured drummer Ritchie Thomas (Dif Juz, The Jesus and Mary Chain). Crause would then spent the best part of a decade away from music and eventually left the UK to move to Bolivia. He returned to music in late 2012 with a long-form single release on Bandcamp called 'The Song of Phaethon': inspired by both Greek mythology and British involvement in the Second Gulf War, it also resurrected Disco Inferno's sample-heavy textured approach.

Paul Wilmott formed Transformer, who recorded a cover of Wire's "Outdoor Miner", which appeared on the Wire tribute album, Whore (1996), before joining the short-lived London Records-signed trip hop band Lisp.

In 1999, the Tugboat label released the "The Mixing It Session", which featured six instrumental tracks the band had recorded for radio, while One Little Indian reissued D.I. Go Pop and gave Technicolour a belated US release in 2004.

In September 2011, One Little Indian Records released a compilation called The 5 EPs, featuring tracks from all five now out-of-print EPs released between 1992 and 1995. The compilation had previously been available as a bootleg.