The Clay People is an industrial rock band based in Albany, New York. Singer-programmer Daniel Neet has been the only constant member throughout the band's history, leading the group as its sound has evolved to incorporate gothic, industrial and metal influences. Neet is also a member of the band Iron Lung Corp.
Originally known as "Clay People," the group added "The" to their name with the release of a self-titled 1998 album, marking a change in direction toward a less-synthetic/sampled approach to live performance with a lineup featuring Neet, Brian McGarvey (guitar), Mike Guzzardi (guitar), D. Patrick Walsh (bass) and Dan Dinsmore (drums). The Clay People (1998 album) was produced by Neil Kernon for Slipdisc Records (a Mercury affiliate); Kernon also worked with Queensrÿche and David Bowie, among many others. It was the band's most commercially successful release, and songs from the record were included in the soundtracks to films Strangeland and Universal Soldier: The Return, as well as on the soundtracks to several video games.
The band went on hiatus in the early 2000s as members pursued solo and side projects or launched new bands, including Idols Never Die and Black Incorporated featuring both Guzzardi and Dinsmore. A new album from The Clay People, Waking the Dead, was released on May 22, 2007 via Overit Records with a lineup featuring only Neet, Dinsmore and McGarvey from the 1998 band.
Alongside the new release was a music video for the album's first single, "Supersonic Overdrive," directed by Jay Bender of Phobic Films.
In June of 2012, The Clay People reformed to perform the Jamie Duffy memorial show "Coldwaves". This show would include a line-up never seen before of the who's who of the industrial scene including long time friends Acumen Nation, 16 Volt, Chemlab, Die Wazau, Hate Dept., Go Fight, I:Scintilla, Cyanotic, and members of the Revolting Cocks. This show would make The Clay People active again putting them back into the studio.
Read more about The Clay People: Members, Discography
Famous quotes containing the words clay and/or people:
“You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. And not only it, but the institutions upon it are plastic like clay in the hands of the potter.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“But it isn’t only the terror everywhere, and the fear of being conscious of it, that freezes people. It’s more than that. People know they are in a society dead or dying. They are refusing emotion because at the end of very emotion are property, money, power. They work and despise their work, and so freeze themselves. They love but know that it’s a half- love or a twisted love, and so they freeze themselves.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)