Well they started in about 1995 ish in Doncaster. At this stage they
only
did things on an Amiga 1200. The first track they ever did was called
Hereafter Lies... featuring lots of Siouxsie and the Banshees samples and
also some vocal samples from Nire and Duncan. It was written by Duncan
as Derek didn't have an Amiga at that time so he had to settle for producing
the track. The track still holds up fairly well today though it would be a
little hard to do live in it's current form. After a time they came up with
a name for themselves "Brothers Of Vengeance" this lasted very little time
before it was decided it was a pathetic name. A new name was sought.
Eventually the name Jan Doyle Band arrived. Jan Doyle in case you are
wondering was the name of a character in a series of stories and plays Derek
and Duncan wrote. There will be a fact file type thing somewhere around
here about her. After a while Derek was frustrated at the nature of their
music being impossible to play live. He had been learning how to play his
bass guitar and had been yearning for an opportunity to do so. He had also
been in the group Rit-C for some time also who had been doing music that
could be performed live since they started only they were a synthesiser only
band. Info on Rit-C can be found at Rit-C's homepage
. Derek suggested to Duncan that they should have an attempt at doing tracks
live. So one night round at Duncan's house they set up with a bass guitar,
a 4 Track tape recorder (used as a mixer), a Casio home keyboard (to provide
percussion with it's keyboard=percussion setting) and a microphone to do
vocals and also pick up the piano which just so happened to be in the corner
of the room. The Curator (as Alex seems to want to be known) then joined in
to provide the playing of the percussion. Derek got his bass ready, Duncan
got ready to play the piano and then the first recording for the album later
to be known as The Axis Syndrome began. A whole new style then developed for
the Jan Doyle Band and the ability to play live was achieved. It was the
start of salvation for music.
The Axis Syndrome turned out to be a rather dark album much to the
pleasure of the band members. It is in a way a concept album but not in what
I believe to be the traditional sense of a concept album. It is an album
with a concept but features lots of tracks as apposed to long tracks which
change a lot. It has been described as being ultra goth by some and very
dark by many and rather good fun by the band. The band then progressed on to
make their album New Songs. A mixture of different types of songs with no particular
theme to the whole yet in the lyrics you may see some connections. Some of it is
based upon the story that Duncan is writing. The album is still fairly dark but has a
much more electronic feel to it. Of course we love it, but will you? Should you wish to
have a copy of any of our albums mail us with your address or ask for our address
so you could maybe send a tape for us to record them onto. Axis Syndrome lasts 60
mins as does New Songs. Hopefully there will be some samples of the songs here
by the time you read this so you can make up your own mind as to whether you want
it or not. Anyway that's enough history, the future is with Welcome To Jhenge an album due for completion sometime 1998.
