To start off, I was thinking of how this is oddly enough my “Christmas” entry, it now being the 24th of December. Mick Karn? Mistletoe? Fretless basses? Christmas pudding? What’s in store?
Of course Mick Karn was the bass player of the band Japan, a group that definitely grew on me a bit later than other bands from this period but in the end have been one of those that I likely listen to the most. Born out of a group of working class, childhood friends from south London — they started out as a later 70s experimental “glam rock” influenced entry that was seen as out of step at the time as punk rock exploded in their city, and then quickly moved into their electronic dance inflected work on their 1979 third album Quiet Life (with some tracks such as “Life In Tokyo” produced by Giorgio Moroder) and from there into more unique, uncharted territories with 1980’s Gentlemen Take Polaroids and 1981’s Tin Drum — all being released in very quick succession and moving them miles away from their peers musically, and in turn inadvertently influencing other bands at the time, most notably Duran Duran (at least in terms of presentation).
It was likely their experimentalism within the pop structure that made them stand out, their absorption of various far reaching influences and their aloofness — which I think has more to do with them just being in their own world. Obviously there’s the standout, instantly recognizable playing of Mick Karn‘s fretless bass, but also the interesting synthesizer sounds of Richard Barbieri and the technical, effortless polyrhythmic drum styles of Steve Jansen — a drummer with an underrated technique that I’ve really started to appreciate in more recent years.
Japan were sort of a group isolate — they weren’t part of any scene, rejected being connected to any particular popular scene happening at the time and as fast as they rose they had broken up by 1983 due to interpersonal issues and creative differences within the band. There’s more I could go on about Japan here but we’ll save that for another time.
Unlike a lot of musicians in bands from that time who peaked and then following that tried to continue emulating any previous success, the various members of the band delved more into experimental and less pop-oriented music in the years and decades that followed in their various solo projects and collaborations. Bass player Mick Karn was one of the first from the group to do so, with his 1982 debut album Titles, with it’s strange, illustrated geometric cover and even more stranger music contained within.
Born in Cyprus to Cypriot parents as Andonis Michaelides, the whole family moved to London when he was young. And with Titles Karn really moves away from Western music styles and into what might be called eastern influences — probably music he was familiar with growing up. Probably the only track on this album that has any mainstream “pop” leanings might be “Trust Me”, featuring a rather rubbery bassline from Karn as well as his vocals.
Other tracks feature other strange and slithery fretless bass workouts accompanied by abstract synthesizers as well as numerous more “traditional” instruments, such as saxophone, oboe, bassoon, African flute and others that one might relate more to an orchestra than a solo artist from a “new wave” musician.
I love this album though as it just sounds on its own and on a weird atmospheric sonic plane. Plus it’s just Mick Karn let loose in a studio to do his own thing unhinged.
Two or three years ago during the holiday season, while trying to avoid putting together a playlist of sleighbell-saturated usual Christmas classics — most of which drive me nuts over the holiday season due to be subjected to them in various private and public places — for whatever reason I decided that Titles sort of sounded like a Christmas album to me and I just played it in full. It’s a fun listen, puts me in a good mood and it’s an album you can awkwardly “air bass” to while serving up the festive scran or drinking that mulled wine.
It’s not too far of a stretch really. Take a track like “Lost Affections In A Room” with it’s sparkly ambience from which underlaid is a rather traditional sounding melody on Karn‘s bass, starting off in a higher octave and then double-tracked in a lower octave. Having less in common with his previous band Japan, to me it sounds like it has a style perhaps more in common with the then contemporary work of a British composer like Michael Nyman, especially his soundtrack work for numerous Peter Greenaway films in the 1980s.
Other tracks on the album are the dreamy, hazy ballad of “Sensitive”, the abstract fractured bass work of “Tribal Dawn” and the fevered “Moroccan market” vibe of “Saviour, Are You With Me?”. For whatever reason there’s more a faraway holiday season vibe on these tracks than some of the popular music contributions to Christmas that are the audio equivalent of eating a bag of sugar and then subsequently getting a massive headache.
Following Titles Karn released a second solo album called Dreams Of Reason Produce Monsters in 1987 which has to me a darker, more sombre tone. I remember picking this one up a number of years ago while back visiting Canada at a cool little record store in Victoria BC. While the album has more palatable adult pop compositions like “Buoy” with Karn’s former bandmate David Sylvian on vocals, it also has some interesting classical-influenced work, such as the melancholy choir-based track “Answer” (again, for me, a somewhat Christmas choir vibe here?) that closes out the album.
In between these two albums Karn also collaborated with Bauhaus‘s Peter Murphy as Dali’s Car for a single album called The Waking Hour in 1984. A music video was produced for the track “The Judgement Is The Mirror” that involves Murphy and Karn wearing black suits, suspiciously wandering around ruined streets with the central plot device being a giant laserdisc.
Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s released more guitar driven solo albums before succumbing to cancer it the beginning of 2011. The long-running London club Electric Dreams did a Mick Karn tribute night shortly after his passing which I went to while living there. It was a celebratory event, playing a lot of rarities from his back catalogue. A final, posthumous Dali’s Car album was released shortly after this that Karn and Murphy came together for shortly before called Ingladaloneness (2012).
Karn‘s bass playing in the early years of the 1980s was pretty influential as it seemed like around 1983 he was in demand as a session player, or many other pop bands at the time seeming to go for that rubbery fretless bass sound. Let’s call 1983 the year of “The Great Bass Fret Shortage”. Of course most listeners can pick out Karn’s playing like a sore thumb, as it’s one of a kind!
Plus Mick Karn being interviewed on a UK children’s TV show in the early 80s: