From Last.fm
Biography
From the sleeve notes of the DVD 'Basti, Norwich, England':
Like some kind of hideous mythical creature bred in the wild
flatlands of Norfolk, Basti emerged into the underground pop
scene of the late 1980s like a virulent pox of straight-edge,
vegetarian, party-spoiling motherfuckers. Pleasant bands with
jangly guitars ruled the roost back then, but Basti, with their
fierce punk stomp, sampled chainsaw noise and bad attitude, didn't
fit in.
The band was an unwieldy seven-piece. They had two drummers -
a form of madness not witnessed since the Glitter Band in 1974
- two guitarists, two singers, one of whom played sax, while the
other hit a sampler with his fists, and a bass player. They made
a truly head-splitting racket that harnessed a frantic celluloid-inspired
faux rage, with songs inspired in part by their favourite films,
the rest a by-product of living together in an isolated bungalow
on the outskirts of Norwich where they rehearsed, wrote songs,
made films and lifted weights.
This weird art school/redneck isolation led to songs like New
York Seltzer, which would become their first, self-financed, release.
Its mangled hard-boiled Peter Gunn riff gave more than one critic
the idea that Basti was a product of the ghettos of America. The
song was actually about a brand of fizzy drink then being marketed
in the UK. Another song sharing this penchant for apparently mundane
subject matter was the early live favourite Sticky, a song about
things that are sticky, like Sellotape, taco mixture, warm Tarmac
and "situations". Further detailing of skewiff domestic
minutia came with Soap Opera, a song about a typical day in the
Basti household ("…always had to go to the bank first…")
The rest were mostly inspired by films: Ro Ro Ro was a paean to
Dirty Harry, E.E. was a delirious reading of disaster movies, specifically
The Towering Inferno, and Zombies paid homage to George A. Romero's
Dawn Of The Dead. Politics and cultural hysteria also provided
material for Basti songwriting; Man At CIA concerned itself with
American foreign policy (and Arnold Schwarzenegger), while Cub
Crush predicted the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and sampled
the Islamic call to prayer for good measure. The political insight
may have been simplistic ("That mad bastard sees only what
he wants to see…" they screamed about Ayatollah Khomeni, going
on to ask listeners what would happen if the west came under Shariah
law; "…ever wondered what would happen if the lights went
out and the advertising stopped?"), but it was delivered with
an urgency that gave Basti unstoppable momentum.
In 1988, still without a record deal, Basti toured Poland. When
they got back to Norwich, they were quickly signed first by a management
company, and then by Way Cool Records. All of Basti's mental chaos
was thrown into their debut album, enigmatically entitled B. It
was recorded in 1989 at Suite 16 in Rochdale, the studio formerly
known as Cargo, where The Fall, Joy Division and The Stone Roses
had all made records, and Basti were rubbing shoulders with studio
owner Peter Hook, buying Joe Bloggs clothes in Manchester and were
on the guest list at the Hacienda.
In the end, none of it got them anywhere. John Peel played their
records from time to time, they toured relentlessly, first in their
ex-local authority high-top yellow Ford Transit with a tail-lift
for wheelchairs, later in Cambridge United FC's former Ford Transit.
They shared bills with the likes of Richie-era Manic Street Preachers,
The Shamen, Mudhoney, The Prodigy and then-darlings of the indie
scene Curve. The NME and Melody Maker pretended to like them and
various major labels threatened to sign them for a while, having
mistakenly imagined them to be another cute Brit pop group in the
mould of Jesus Jones and EMF (two UK bands then enjoying the Number
1 and 2 spots in the US charts). But after four years or so, Basti
ground to a halt. With Way Cool Records folding, and no major label
coming in to pick up the pieces, morale collapsed. Despite Radio
1 airing an entire 30 minutes of Basti live the night before, three
members unspectacularly quit the band one Saturday in April, 1992.
A four-piece incarnation of Basti hobbled on for another year,
recording some demos for Island Records and touring with Meat Beat
Manifesto, but the band they called Basti was finished.
Basti - no one ever really knew what it was all about, least of
all the members of the band themselves. May the blessing of Allah
be upon them. |