Woo (music group)
[1] The name of the band, Woo, refers to the sound of a musical saw, an instrument the brothers' uncle Fred used to play.
[2] Their grandfather, a drummer in the Royal Marines, and their uncle Ivor, a Jazz musician, played an instrumental role in the musical development of the Ives brothers.
Mark dictated notes and chords to Clive and the band left the recorder on, hence comments from each other and background noises became part of the songs.
Clive realized that the audio signal of Mark's acoustic instruments could be delivered directly to the synthesizer and its sequencer.
Organic, unpredictable, mysterious things would happen when we allowed the technology to be set free, especially when Mark’s instruments were being treated through the sequencers and synths.
[3] Woo tried to translate their different emotional states spontaneously and composes pieces that could evoke dream-like atmospheres, for example - Parisian cafés, Russian music and imaginary landscapes .
With a brand new creative impulse, Woo kept creating endlessly, and recorded hundreds of tunes over a period of five years.
In 1981, an old school friend of Clive, who had become an artist manager, submitted the music of the band to Mike Alway at Cherry Red Records.
The band then chose several tracks for its first album from the previous five years recordings, and it was released under Woo’s Sunshine Series label.
In 1982, during the new wave and punk era, Woo released their first album, Whichever Way You Are Going You Are Going Wrong, with 10 instrumental tracks and one song sung by Mark.
Mark studied theosophy and Krishna consciousness, while Clive started practicing Shiatsu in parallel with their musical creations.
In 1989, It's Cosy Inside,[1] which Woo had already created in 1983, was released in the US as well as in Europe, and gave the band the opportunity to get some exposure on the other side of the Atlantic.
With Orwell’s vision looming towards us, the fear of nuclear war, conspiracy theories of the Illuminati, the apparent demise of the Love Generation—and with that loss, the reaction to the increasing awareness of all that is wrong in the world manifesting in suburban London with anarchy and Punk—and the increasing gulf between rich and poor with the Thatcher Government … Yeah, we were buying into an apocalyptic vision. "
Throughout the 20 slow-tempo tracks, which are sometimes accompanied by lyrics but for the most part instrumental, Mark's guitar and clarinet, as well as Clive's keyboard layers, shine in an oneiric mood.
Influences for this album are very diverse: Native American mythologies, extra-terrestrial life, Tibetan culture, Steven Spielberg's movie 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and above all, universal love.
This album, featuring 26 tracks, is very atmospheric and once again with a broad range of influences, and titles including Nazca Lines, Man on the Moon, Voices in the Night and Orbit Unknown.
The band reckons its true strength lies in the way they work in the studio, and that its intimate music comes from an alchemy between the two members that does not translate into live performances.
In 1995, the band published a new album with 7 tracks, "Live from Venus", produced by Dave Goodman, sound engineer of the Sex Pistols.
Following the critical success of this reissue, the band was contacted by the English label Emotional Rescue for a more comprehensive re-issue of its back catalogue.
When the Past Arrives,[6] the new album featuring 14 tracks, was released on Drag City / Yoga Records in 2014, scoring a 7.7 out of 10 on Pitchfork.
The bands cites as main influences: Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, Yes, Todd Rundgren, The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Brian Eno, Frank Zappa, Sergei Prokofiev, Stan Getz and Lionel Hampton.
