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Sunroof!

Sunroof!

Sunroof! has been played on NTS in shows including Perfect Sound Forever, featured first on 24 March 2014. Songs played include Gold Carnation Legacy, Silver Zero and The Sea Is Maine S.S..

There are two bands named Sunroof.

Sunroof! is the work of prolific, Bradford-based guitar-abuse legend Matthew Bower, who has been active on the experimental / post-punk / noise underground for over 25 years, releasing over 60 albums under a variety of pseudonyms. Bower’s vast discography of visceral, free drone-rock is one of the most formidable of its kind - a monumental / labyrinthine effort to get your head around, with continual shifts and dynamic reverses between - and even within - his various projects rendering it virtually impossible to pin down.

Bower first surfaced in the UK power-electronics / noise scene in 1982, when his band Pure, after just one limited cassette release, evolved into Total. By 1987, Total itself had mutated into Skullflower (including guitarist Stefan Jaworzyn and drummer Stuart Dennison), whilst remaining as Bower's solo project. Skullflower differed from many of the bands around them in their preference for more traditional instruments and in employing massive volume and tenuous, near-formless structures still loosely tied to rock. Various lineups included members of Ascension, Terminal Cheesecake, Whitehouse, Total, Ramleh, Breathless, and Coil. Whilst Total began as a less rock-based and calmer, ‘isolationist’ / ‘ambient’ counterpart, the dynamic then reversed with Total's later releases often considerably noisier and more chaotic than Skullflower's. Having shut down in 1996, Bower returned Skullflower as a solo vehicle in 2003. Other projects he has currently running include Hototogisu (with Marcia Bassett), and Mirag, which sees him working material of a vaguely black-metal nature.

Total was retired in the late ‘90s when the Puff Daddy-affiliated R&B group laid exclusive claim to the name, and Bower continued on from 1999 under the new name Sunroof! If anything, more wilfully diverse and leaning towards the ecstatic, Sunroof!’s trajectory has shifted from bubbling, transcendental pulse to coruscating feedback, jerky freeform soloing to sweet-shimmering dream-haze with traces of acid-damaged British folk, and brain-blitzing high-pitched psychedelic drone. The project has included collaborators like Richard Youngs, Mattin, C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core), Sunburned Hand Of The Man's John Moloney and Marc Orleans, Vibracathedral Orchestra’s Mick Flower and Neil Campbell, and Phil Todd (whose Anna Planeta project also featured on a FatCat split 12”).

Sunroof (without an exclamation point) are Daniel Miller (founder of Mute / The Normal / Silicon Teens) and producer, engineer and artist Gareth Jones. After four decades of friendship and collaboration, they released their debut album, Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 1 in 2021, followed by Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 2 in 2023. The two artists met in late 1982 when Miller asked Jones to work with him on what became Depeche Mode’s Construction Time Again. After the band had gone home for the day, they stayed on in the studio on to work on their own sessions, a practise that continued throughout the decades. By the mid-nineties Sunroof had emerged as remix project, reworking the likes of Can, MGMT, To Rococo Rot, Kreidler and Goldfrapp, and appeared on a compilation paying tribute to Neu!.

Finally coming together to record their work together, the duo have been performing rare live shows – each release and performance evoking the classic sound of some of the earliest electronic experiments, with the spirit, energy and discipline of improvisation while retaining a feeling of modernity through their creator’s constant explorations in electronic music. description comes from https://mute.com/artists/sunroof/

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Sunroof!

Sunroof! has been played on NTS in shows including Perfect Sound Forever, featured first on 24 March 2014. Songs played include Gold Carnation Legacy, Silver Zero and The Sea Is Maine S.S..

There are two bands named Sunroof.

Sunroof! is the work of prolific, Bradford-based guitar-abuse legend Matthew Bower, who has been active on the experimental / post-punk / noise underground for over 25 years, releasing over 60 albums under a variety of pseudonyms. Bower’s vast discography of visceral, free drone-rock is one of the most formidable of its kind - a monumental / labyrinthine effort to get your head around, with continual shifts and dynamic reverses between - and even within - his various projects rendering it virtually impossible to pin down.

Bower first surfaced in the UK power-electronics / noise scene in 1982, when his band Pure, after just one limited cassette release, evolved into Total. By 1987, Total itself had mutated into Skullflower (including guitarist Stefan Jaworzyn and drummer Stuart Dennison), whilst remaining as Bower's solo project. Skullflower differed from many of the bands around them in their preference for more traditional instruments and in employing massive volume and tenuous, near-formless structures still loosely tied to rock. Various lineups included members of Ascension, Terminal Cheesecake, Whitehouse, Total, Ramleh, Breathless, and Coil. Whilst Total began as a less rock-based and calmer, ‘isolationist’ / ‘ambient’ counterpart, the dynamic then reversed with Total's later releases often considerably noisier and more chaotic than Skullflower's. Having shut down in 1996, Bower returned Skullflower as a solo vehicle in 2003. Other projects he has currently running include Hototogisu (with Marcia Bassett), and Mirag, which sees him working material of a vaguely black-metal nature.

Total was retired in the late ‘90s when the Puff Daddy-affiliated R&B group laid exclusive claim to the name, and Bower continued on from 1999 under the new name Sunroof! If anything, more wilfully diverse and leaning towards the ecstatic, Sunroof!’s trajectory has shifted from bubbling, transcendental pulse to coruscating feedback, jerky freeform soloing to sweet-shimmering dream-haze with traces of acid-damaged British folk, and brain-blitzing high-pitched psychedelic drone. The project has included collaborators like Richard Youngs, Mattin, C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core), Sunburned Hand Of The Man's John Moloney and Marc Orleans, Vibracathedral Orchestra’s Mick Flower and Neil Campbell, and Phil Todd (whose Anna Planeta project also featured on a FatCat split 12”).

Sunroof (without an exclamation point) are Daniel Miller (founder of Mute / The Normal / Silicon Teens) and producer, engineer and artist Gareth Jones. After four decades of friendship and collaboration, they released their debut album, Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 1 in 2021, followed by Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 2 in 2023. The two artists met in late 1982 when Miller asked Jones to work with him on what became Depeche Mode’s Construction Time Again. After the band had gone home for the day, they stayed on in the studio on to work on their own sessions, a practise that continued throughout the decades. By the mid-nineties Sunroof had emerged as remix project, reworking the likes of Can, MGMT, To Rococo Rot, Kreidler and Goldfrapp, and appeared on a compilation paying tribute to Neu!.

Finally coming together to record their work together, the duo have been performing rare live shows – each release and performance evoking the classic sound of some of the earliest electronic experiments, with the spirit, energy and discipline of improvisation while retaining a feeling of modernity through their creator’s constant explorations in electronic music. description comes from https://mute.com/artists/sunroof/

Original source: Last.fm

Tracks featured on

Most played tracks

Gold Carnation Legacy
Sunroof!
VHF Records2001
Silver Zero
Sunroof!
VHF Records2003
The Sea Is Maine S.S.
Sunroof!
VHF Records2003
Extinction Fantasy
Sunroof!
FatCat Records2008
Star Sound
Sunroof!
VHF Records2001
Pink Horse Sweat
Sunroof!
VHF Records2002