Wallflower (band)
Encyclopedia
Wallflower were an alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...

 band from London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. They were active between 1994–1998, and released two EPs and a 10" single.

Influences

Initially heavily influenced by the likes of Faith No More
Faith No More
Faith No More is an American rock band from San Francisco, California, formed originally as Faith No Man in 1981 by bassist Billy Gould, keyboardist Wade Worthington, vocalist Michael Morris and drummer Mike Bordin. A year later when Worthington was replaced by keyboardist Roddy Bottum, and Mike...

, Tool
Tool (band)
Tool is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1990, the group's line-up has included drummer Danny Carey, guitarist Adam Jones, and vocalist Maynard James Keenan. Since 1995, Justin Chancellor has been the band's bassist, replacing their original bassist Paul D'Amour...

 and Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam is an American rock band that formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1990. Since its inception, the band's line-up has included Eddie Vedder , Jeff Ament , Stone Gossard , and Mike McCready...

, Wallflower soon acquired a considerably wider range of more progressive and eclectic influences, including Nick Drake
Nick Drake
Nicholas Rodney "Nick" Drake was an English singer-songwriter and musician. Though he is best known for his sombre guitar based songs, Drake was also proficient at piano, clarinet and saxophone...

, Robert Fripp
Robert Fripp
Robert Fripp is an English guitarist, composer and record producer. He was ranked 42nd on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and #47 on Gibson.com’s "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time". Among rock guitarists, Fripp is a master of crosspicking, a technique...

, Tortoise
Tortoise (band)
Tortoise is an American post-rock band formed in Chicago, Illinois, in 1990.-Music:Tortoise's almost entirely instrumental music defies easy categorization, and the group gained significant attention from their early career. The members have roots in Chicago's fertile music scene, playing in...

, Slint
Slint
Slint was an American rock band consisting of Brian McMahan , David Pajo , Britt Walford , Todd Brashear and Ethan Buckler...

 and Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...

, and also took influence from many aspects of contemporary art and poetry. The band's later work took a somewhat more experimental turn, with many experiments with song structures, alternative instrumentation (including using AM radios, various percussion instruments, steel pans
Steelpan
Steelpans is a musical instrument originating from The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago...

, and more usage of effects processing) and live improvisation.

Members

  • Andrew Cannon - vocals, percussion, keyboards
  • James Hounsell - guitar
  • Russell Wark - bass guitar
  • Jon Steele - drums and percussion


The band was originally formed in 1992 under the name Jesus Freaksign. After multiple lineup changes, the band consolidated their lineup and changed their name to Wallflower in 1995.

Live performances

The band became regulars as such London venues as the Hope & Anchor in Islington, The Dublin Castle in Camden, The King's Head in Fulham and The Orange in West Kensington, as well as playing shows further afield, including support slots with Imogen Heap
Imogen Heap
Imogen Jennifer Jane Heap is a Grammy Award-winning English singer, composer and songwriter from Havering, Essex. She is known for her work as part of the musical duo Frou Frou and her solo albums, which she writes, produces, and mixes...

, Breed 77
Breed 77
Breed 77 is a British band from the overseas territory of Gibraltar whose music is a fusion of alternative metal and flamenco.-Origin:Breed 77 comes from the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. Old Gibraltarian school friends, Paul Isola, Danny Felice, and Stuart Cavilla met up in London and...

 and The Crazy Gods Of Endless Noise. The band also played at the Marxism '96 event at the University College London ULU. Their live show was notable for the inclusion of much live improvisation, performance art and occasional use of projections.

Recordings

The band recorded the "Spooning Music" demo in 1994 (tracks included "Blackbird", "Cover Girl" and "Grace"), and followed it up with the "Uncovered" EP in 1995 (featuring the tracks "Underlay", "Yield", "She Steers, She Guides Us" and "The Way She Moves"). This EP was widely distributed among London's underground rock scene, and brought the band considerable recognition, including a review in the NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...

.

"Airmailed" EP

In 1997, the band recorded the "Airmailed" EP - this was released on 10" vinyl through the band's own Room Four Music imprint. The initial pressing of 500 copies sold well, and still command good prices on the used market. The title track was not widely distributed, but included airtime on the XFM
Xfm
Xfm is a brand of two commercial radio stations focused on alternative music, primarily indie pop, and owned by Global Radio.-History:Xfm was created in London in 1992 by Sammy Jacob, who later co-founded NME Radio in 2008. Xfm subsequently expanded to a network of four stations; there are...

 radio station.

Breakup and aftermath

Wallflower played their final show at the King's Head in Fulham in February 1998, due to the departure of founding member James Hounsell. The band did briefly search for a replacement guitarist, but eventually decided to disband, acknowledging that finding another guitarist who would fit with the band's chemistry would be difficult.

Subsequent to the split, Jon Steele went on to play with post-rock group State River Widening
State River Widening
State River Widening, named after the title of a Chinese propaganda photo, are a London based trio, comprising multi-instrumentalists David Sheppard and Keiron Phelan, along with drummer/percussionist Jon Steele....

, Andrew Cannon supervised music for the feature film Morvern Callar
Morvern Callar
Morvern Callar was the debut novel by Scottish author Alan Warner, first published in 1995. Narrated in the first person, it tells the story of Morvern, who wakes up near Christmas to find her boyfriend dead in the kitchen:...

 and Russell Wark was to later play for the alternative rock band 5th Man Down
5th Man Down (band)
5th Man Down were an alternative rock band from Croydon , UK. They released one full-length album, "Are We Harmless?" on part of who have signed acts such as Earthtone9, and independently released two EPs, "Pure" and "Root Mean Square" .-Influences:5th Man Down have been likened to bands such...

.
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