A.R. Kane would possibly simply be the best indie rock group you’ve by no means heard. However again of their late ’80s prime, the band didn’t lack for consideration and acclaim. Centered across the core of Alex Ayuli and Rudy Tambala, with assist from producer-mentor Ray Shulman, singing sister Maggie Tambala, and numerous musician pals, A.R. Kane recorded for the mighty unbiased labels 4AD and Tough Commerce, garnered rave evaluations and canopy tales from the British music press, and topped the UK indie chart with their debut album, 69. As half of the choice supergroup M/A/R/R/S, they even scored a No. 1 UK pop hit with the pioneering sample-based dance monster “Pump Up the Quantity.” Alongside their friends My Bloody Valentine and their private idols Cocteau Twins, A.R. Kane provided essential DNA for the shoegaze style, whereas their experimental strategy to guitar soundscapes influenced early post-rock.
So why has A.R. Kane’s profile pale on the subject of subsequent accounts of what went down between post-punk and Britpop? Partly it’s as a result of they by no means toured extensively, like My Bloody Valentine did, nor did they reform to cement the legend and the legacy (like MBV and others have carried out). It’s additionally as a result of their information have solely been sporadically accessible in current a long time. That modified earlier this month, with the discharge of A.R. Kive: a remastered field set of their core work from 1988-89, with essays by the late Greg Tate and Neil Kulkarni, plus a fan feast of details about the group. And 69 and its poppier follow-up “i” are additionally accessible on streamers like Spotify and Tidal for the primary time.
As somebody who wrote about A.R. Kane of their heyday, I jumped on the probability to talk with Rudy Tambala for the primary time in three a long time. After he and Ayuli went their separate methods within the mid-’90s, it’s Tambala who remained most energetic in music with teams like Sufi and Jübl, and he’s been the driving drive behind the A.R.Kive mission. “A few of the earliest releases aren’t on this field, however Up House!, 69 and “i” —to me, that’s the physique of labor, the inventive sorcery,” says Tambala by Zoom from his residence in Cambridge, England. “I view it as a cultural legacy that hasn’t been appreciated. We don’t get the credit score—and I would love it! The influence that we had—and will nonetheless have—is gigantic.”
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Pitchfork: Again within the day, A.R. Kane didn’t speak a lot about being Black British operators in a fairly white indie scene. Nor did journalists like me who cherished the band play up that angle.
Rudy Tambala: Proper at first, we received stung—one of many first interviews, the journalist described us as “the Black Jesus and Mary Chain.” We grew up in Stratford, East London… we’re an English band! And it wasn’t like we had been doing hip-hop or taking part in reggae. We had been taking part in the music we fucking cherished—on guitars, noisily. Equally, when Greg Tate and Vernon Reid [of Living Colour] despatched us a letter inviting us to hitch the Black Rock Coalition, we had been like, “No, we’re not going to ghettoize ourselves.” We refused to be categorized in any method, form, or kind. And one of many classes was race. However, over time, you mellow. And there’s no level in denying it—it’s not going to go away.
A.R. Kane cherished being an enigma, so not speaking about backgrounds appeared a part of the mystique. However your backgrounds are attention-grabbing: Alex’s household got here from Nigeria, your dad was from Malawi. That’s West Africa and East Africa—fairly totally different cultures.
Nigerians are extra totally different from Malawi than Germans are from Irish! So there’s no connection, besides that we each had dad and mom from Africa. Everybody in Malawi appears to be like precisely like me–small, skinny. We’ve received a sure lifestyle. However my mum, she’s a third-generation immigrant from Holland. Her ancestors fled Holland due to Jewish persecution. So I’ve received Dutch, Jewish, German, and a few Irish on my mum’s aspect.
That feeds into my music lineage, as a result of I grew up listening to waltzes—my mum cherished Strauss and Austro-Germanic tradition. Blasting the Blue Danube each Saturday afternoon! Which is why there’s 3/4 time in some A.R. Kane songs. In the meantime, my oldest brother can be taking part in ska and reggae. There was a interval of my brothers and me going out on the soul scene, dancing to jazz-funk. Whereas Alex’s brother labored on the reggae sound system Lord Creation Hello-Fi, so Alex had a deep background in dub and going to blues events. We had been each into post-punk and Public Picture Ltd, but additionally synth stuff like Japan. At college, by way of my greatest mates Dan and Julian, who later fashioned the shoegaze group Kitchens of Distinction, I heard prog rock. I’m discovering hashish, sitting in my room smoking and listening to Pink Floyd and Genesis. After a yr of learning biochemistry, I give up faculty and have become a whole dropout – doing Zen Buddhism, taking LSD, and listening to Hendrix and Velvet Underground.
Legend has it that the spark for A.R. Kane was you and Alex individually seeing Cocteau Twins on tv.
That was 1985–they had been doing “Pink Orange Pink” they usually seemed like they had been from one other planet. I rang Alex—and Alex, it turned out, was ringing me. As a result of his telephone was engaged, I went straight spherical to his home and mentioned, “Did you see that? Let’s begin a band.” All we had was Alex’s battered previous acoustic guitar. He taught me easy methods to play Intercourse Pistols’ “Fairly Vacant” and Pleasure Division’s “Ambiance”—the 2 influences on our first single “When You’re Unhappy.”
