"Blending avant pop and jazz melodies over bass and drum lines rooted in funk and dub reggae, Moonshake walk on the edge of chaos with fine precision."
"Turningthe back on the facility resolutely, Moonshake is announced by a style disorientating"
"This
is music
of stunning
depth, width and force, utilizing anything they can get ahold of, be
it samplers, very expensive electric guitars or what they ate for breakfast.
You'll hardly find a more personal, passionate and exquisite racket
even if you spend tonsa money on Eartha Kitt, Moondog and Nurse With
Wound records. And play them all at the same time"
NEW GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE
"What
Moonshake
illustrate is
pop
music's ability to adapt to new systems -- really, to what hip-hop has
done to notions of music's production -- while keeping its essential
shapes. "
JASON
ANDERSON
"One
pithy, grimy swathe
of sampledelic songcraft"
DAN
CHINN
Misfit City
Moonshake was a unique freak musical phenomenon. It is an absolute mystery how David Callahan, Margaret Fiedler, bassplayer John Frennet, drummer Mig and producer Guy Fixsen found each other and got along well enough to actually start a band together. It's a mystery because you can sense the tension of the band in the music they make. Everything seems to bursting at the seams, it's because of the acidic vocals of David, the sharp explosions of guitar and samples, the ever shifting beats of the 17/18th rhythms and the creeping whispering singing voice of Margaret.
Moonshake was about life, relationship and society gone horribly wrong and there was never a band who was able to translate it to music better than them (or maybe Cop Shoot Cop). After one album and a minialbum the tension became too great, Margaret left with Guy and John, David continued Moonshake but all the tension was lost after the split.
PJOE.NETLondon based Moonshake formerly with Too Pure (previous home of Seefeel, Stereolab, PJ Harvey, and Faith Healers) signed an exclusive worldwide recording contract with C/Z Records in the Fall of 1995.
Originally the brainchild of songwriters Dave Callahan and Margaret Fiedler, Moonshake had their domestic introduction with the release of Eva Luna on the New York Matador label. Fiedler departed shortly after the release of the 1994 EP, Big Good Angel (also released on Matador) to form Laika.
Their subsequent LP, The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow was released in the U.S. by American Recordings after being available in the UK for over a year.
The first release written solely by Dave Callahan, The Sound features P.J. Harvey and Katherine Gifford (Stereolab) guesting on extra vocal duties. This also marked the first appearance of master saxophonist Raymond Dickaty who more recently lent his services to Lush, Stereolab, and Gallon Drunk. Raymond stayed on as a full member and became an integral part of the new Moonshake.
The new material has a simpler feel yet retains all the quirkiness and the many hybrids of musical styles present in older incarnations of the band. Samplings of grinding industrial clamor, saxophones affected by surreal sources, and a cool sneer that echoes John Lydon are standard fare.
Blending avant pop and jazz melodies over bass and drum lines rooted in funk and dub reggae, Moonshake walk on the edge of chaos with fine precision.
Earning the distinction of being C/Z's first British signing and also our first band without guitar, this band is very special.
(blurb nicked from CZ Records )
The experimental pop outfit Moonshake was led by Dave Callahan, the onetime frontman of the C-86 group the Wolfhounds; after several years away from the music scene, he resurfaced in early 1991, placing an ad in Melody Maker calling for bandmates. Among those who responded were vocalist Margaret Fiedler, bassist John Frenett and drummer Michael Rother, and within just four days of their formation, Moonshake -- so named after a track on Can's Future Days LP -- entered the studio to record their debut EP First for Creation Records. After jumping to the Too Pure label, the group resurfaced later in 1992 with the Secondhand Clothes EP, followed shortly by the Beautiful Pigeon; the full-length Eva Luna -- a brilliant collision of breakbeats and guitar noise drawing influence from disparate sources ranging from dub to krautrock to hip-hop -- brought their prolific year to a close.
After the 1993 EP Big Good Angel EP, Fiedler -- who shared vocal and songwriting duties with Callahan -- and Frenett quit to form Laika; adding new bassist Matt Brewer and saxophonist Raymond M. Dickaty, Moonshake recorded 1995's The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow, a radical departure from previous efforts which almost completely eliminated guitars in favor of a vast palette of samples. After 1996's Dirty & Divine, Callahan relocated from London to New York, a move which hastened Moonshake's mid-1997 break-up.
JASON
ANKENY
All
Music Guide
Synth samples,
serpentine riffs from
an electronically treated saxophone, dub-inflected bass, and a collage
of man- and machine-made rhythm tracks -- that's the foundation upon which
David Callahan has been building Moonshake for the past five years. Like
Stereolab, whose former member Katherine Gifford duets with Callahan on
the hypnotic opening track of Dirty & Divine, Moonshake got
their start blending organic guitar drones and synthetic keyboards. But
when founding Moonshaker Margaret Fiedler went off to form Laika in 1994,
she took the guitar with her, leaving Callahan to push his cinematic vision
of the urban landscape further into the realm of skewed sampling.
Dirty & Divine relies equally on Callahan's skills as a noirish
storyteller with a taste for minimalist poetry, a tasteful arranger, and
a restrained crooner. (Imagine the Fall's Mark E. Smith with a Cole Porter
fixation and a much better voice.) His muse is the seductive ebb and flow
of mechanized city life. He serenades industrial girders and the machines
that put them there in "Cranes," swings from a 21st-floor balcony
in "Up for Anything," and celebrates a life of crime in "House
on Fire." Each of these is set against such a compelling groove that,
for the first time, Moonshake sound like a band rather than an experiment
in sonic architecture.
MATT ASHARE
'Dirty and Divine'
Boston Pheonix
David Callahan revient en 1992 avec Moonshake (titre d’un morceau de Can), groupe formé avec Margaret Fiedler (guitariste, chanteuse et claviériste, née aux Etats-Unis), une ancienne collaboratrice d’Ultra Vivid Scene, le bassiste John Frenett et le batteur Mig Moreland. Tournant résolument le dos à la facilité, Moonshake se signale par un style désorientant, rappelant Can et Public Image Limited, et des compositions proches du collage où se mêlent samples, guitares stridentes et rythmiques dub. Le chant est partagé entre Callahan, souvent proche du glapissement, et Fiedler, dont les paroles murmurées évoquent l’aliénation au quotidien. Le groupe publie Eva Luna en 1992 pour le label Too Pure. L’année suivante, Fiedler et Frenett partent fonder Laïka (nom de la chienne envoyée dans l’espace par les Soviétiques en 1957) avec Guy Fixsen, producteur d’Eva Luna. Depuis, les deux groupes ont progressé dans des registres assez similaires, Laïka ayant cependant opté pour un style plus coulant et intimiste, comme en témoigne son second album Sounds Of The Satellites (1997). L’année précédente, Callahan, qui jouit d’une certaine réputation auprès d’un public d’étudiants américains, a sorti Dirty & Divine, le troisième album de Moonshake, chez C/Z, un label de Seattle.
VINCENT
LAUFER
Dictionnaire Du Rock 2000
I Moonshake sono una formazione britannica formata nel 1991 dai cantautori Dave Callahan e Margaret Fiedler (cresciuta a Chicago), i quali si contendono anche le due anime della loro musica: atmosferica e colloquiale quella del primo, sperimentale e poetica quella della seconda. I due si possono permettere le schermaglie stilistiche grazie all'apporto di una sezione ritmica di prim'ordine, fantasiosa e assordante, creativa e disinvolta, come se fossero Wobble e Bruford (il bassista John Frenett e il batterista Mig). Fin dall'inizio i Moonshake si affermarono come uno dei pochi gruppi in grado di raccogliere l'eredita` di formazioni rivoluzionarie come Pere Ubu, Pop Group e Rip Rig & Panic, formazioni che disintegravano la forma-canzone del rock e ne facevano un semplice plasma di suoni ispirati a ritmiche e melodie apparentemente folli. Rallentata ad arte l'operazione (poiche' l'era non ha piu` la nevrosi punk), e preso in mano un dizionario dei generi neri, i Moonshake compirono un'operazione analoga.
PIERO
SCARUFFI
More...
"The
$urp!us isn't a
softer option. Buchuele's honeyed German burr and Callahan's street-toughened
croon swop leads, or wind bleakly intimate harmonies around each other,
but bitter tangs of danger and distress sound warnings in the warmth."
DAN
CHINN
Misfit City
2003 - Callahan in collaboration with Anja Buechele and a few helpers in London. Anja (writer and occasional contributor to Mute Magazine) provided vocals for San Diego hardcore/jazzers Upsilon Acrux in the past.
Project extends to club nights and live music. More soon...
Website for latest news of what's up.
The $urp!us seem closest to the heart's strange cruelties, following David Lynch, Michael Haneke, or Werner Fassbinder into the dark zones. Though "A Stab To The Heart" (a sharp brooding shimmer of guitar, Can-warped hip-hop beats, and Buchuele's splintered Chinese synth) shows Callahan expressing more tender feelings, and tenderer wounds. Tenderest of all is "Strange Lovers", in which The $urp!us almost infringe on Belle & Sebastian's turf.
A soft lo-fi acoustic guitar, a toy glockenspiel, a thumping foot and a lone accordion sample - thrown twisted over one shoulder - is all they need to sketch a portrait of a gentle, unlikely and covert relationship where trust has flowered in another bleak landscape. More...
DAN
CHINN
Misfit City
