Tonal D. | Tony Bravado | Interview

An underground UK-based multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and spoken word performer.

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Tonal D has been involved with a vast number of projects since the late 1970s. He was involved with MLR, Drug Squad, Crazy About Love, Innerpropriates, Fast Flowers, Wayward Sunns, Chud, Koven-oe, Goshpurt RSJ, 46,000 Fibres, Digital Satan, The Barretts, Diary, Milk Roar, Pink FA, Purple Implosion, Out For A Duck! & Anonions and many others and worked as a solo electronic artist.

He has collaborated with Fluxus poet John Plant and with Simon Wickham-Smith. He has also worked with the likes of Nik Turner, Scanner, Ashley Wales and Lol Coxhill. As a spoken word performer he collaborated with Howard Jacques providing music. Has also run some labels over the years…

You’ve been making music for decades, always remaining part of the psychedelic underground. Tell us about your background, what are some of the earliest influences for you?

I was born in Chelsea but spent my childhood in working class Fulham in the ’60s. Hymns at school was probably the first music I remember hearing outside of the TV/radio sets but it was too normal for me. I was wanting the weird and wonderful even then and I’ll say that it ALL started with hearing Pink Floyd’s ‘See Emily Play’ on the radio with its strange sounds. I wanted these strange sounds on every record thereafter but I realised sadly this was not the case. Seeing Hendrix on the Lulu show in ’68 blew my mind for the sheer anarchy. I think the next record to blow me away was Hawkwind’s ‘Silver Machine’ and then Roxy Music’s ‘Street Life’. This though is a time of so many great discoveries but I always appreciated a good pop song on Top of the Pops.

An important thing in my life was discovering a record player. This I did in a small box room in the house. That was a eureka moment! Sounds of magic out of a box blew my 10-year-old mind. There were loads of records there of what is now called the “old school” variety. They annoyed me but two records stood out – at full blast: ‘Sabre Dance’ by Love Sculpture and ‘Revolution’ by The Beatles. The sounds of those records excited me so much. I felt I could do anything after that!

At the age of 14, in school, we were asked to write about an industry. I thought of writing about the record industry! Especially how a record was made and its distribution. I can’t remember my marks for that project but I enjoyed the escape. Around this time my friends and I discovered Black Sabbath and I discovered Mott the Hoople, a few years up to discovering the Pink Fairies. They were “my band”. (My playing career could have been very short around this time. I was left alone with an amp and guitar by a mate as he answered the phone he said “plug the guitar in”. I then spent the next five minutes trying to plug the guitar lead into the wall socket! My mate told me the correct way after he saw me struggling to get electrocuted!

In 1975 I saw someone carrying a guitar. I approached him and learnt that he needed a bass player for his school band that was playing covers. It turned out he went to Westminster school, which meant me “leaving early” to get there on Thursday afternoons. We played mainly Bowie covers and some Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple for the lads! We had what I now know to be the campest singer in the world. His speciality song was ‘Sweet Transvestite’ from The Rocky Horror Show!

I asked them the name of the band. They said it was Deep Throat. When I asked my parents what that meant all I got was a rather embarrassed non reply! We played one concert in front of all the parents at a school evening. I often wonder what it sounded like!

Also, in 1975 I met a friend from primary school, Simon Bernal He was a great guitarist at 15. It was a joy to be with someone so talented. His house was full of musical instruments and I hung out there a lot. We eventually got a group together called Egypt, which on reflection was a very tight rock band playing a mix of covers and originals. Again it was a one off appearance at a school concert, this time in front of the pupils.

Prior to punk emerging fully I was going to free jazz/free music gigs at The White Lion in Putney. The music of John Stevens’ Away and Trevor Watt’s Amalgam left a big impression as to what is possible sonically and what audiences put up with! I can’t say I understood it intellectually then or now but the feeling of freedom was a “light bulb moment”. I saw the Spontaneous Music Ensemble SME at the ICA and that was wonderful. It took a lot of years of “training” and courage to enter that arena with those sorts of players!

Punk has to be mentioned here. I was waiting for something high in energy and with relevance to my life. I was weary of the white boy blues pub bands already and I wanted something that I could really relate to. The Pink Fairies and Motörhead were my heroes but it was a welcome relief when I saw people my age relating to what I felt. The turning point was hearing the energy of The Damned’s ‘New Rose’ 45…The Stooges blew them all away when I heard their first album.

I came across the word psychedelic and it intrigued me but I knew of no scene then or exactly what that all entailed! It was a weird enough word though! MLR were too! We jammed and improvised and recorded ad hoc. We had so much fun that a neighbour knocked on the door and said “Every night can’t be a rock and roll party!”. We proved him wrong! MLR was a perfect band in some ways because there was no desire to succeed in the conventional way. MLR never sent out a demo tape. We only played when invited and some gigs were a total experience but of course the best things were never recorded. Many people played with us. We would invite anyone to play along but the line-up stabilised…Sort of!

“Thank goodness for the free-thinking freaks”

In November ’77 I answered another ad in the Melody Maker that wanted a bass player into Pink Fairies, Motörhead. No bread heads! I went to visit singer Geoff and he played me tapes of what they had done and it was my sort of hard rock with a punk edge, with lots of attitude. I asked the name of the band and it was Drug Squad (!). I thought it an awful name but I was in what I thought was a proper band. They had never played a gig and I got us the first one. Geoff surprised me saying he didn’t want to play the usual venues up in London. His version of the underground was colleges out in the sticks. I think, with a change of name and a manager we could have gone a lot further than six gigs in two years. After he got the infamous Operation Julie single out in April 1980 Geoff gave up. (After we were ripped off for £218 by Raw Records, a couple of years earlier, who did not deliver the records we paid for). The album Perversion Street should have come out too but it took until 2010 to be picked up by a proper label, to be given the attention it deserved. The great drummer Stick Nöbils was my musical brother until mid 1992 when he went abroad.

I never felt part of any scene. The hippies thought me too punk and the punks thought I was too hippy! All so tribal then. Thank goodness for the free-thinking freaks! I just felt we were ploughing our own furrow really and actually getting things done in our own way.

So much happened in those formative years it’s impossible to write fully about and a lot of it is too bizarre for public consumption!

What is the driving force behind your music and was there a certain moment when you knew you wanted to do this for the rest of your life?

The “driving force” of why I play my music is the life force within me and the desire to be creative and to leave a mark on this crazy planet and to change the world. I gave up hoping on that last aspect long ago though! There was no “eureka” moment. I spent quite a few years trying to play guitar and gave up until I met Simon. I switched to bass in ’75 so I could get into a suitable band. I really wanted to play synthesiser and make weird noises, but they were always out of my price range.

One of the earliest bands (according to Discogs.), you were part of a noise rock group called Chud. Tell us about it, how did you get started?

I was at Rough Trade one day in 1988, looking at their notice board. I was looking for something different, out of my comfort zone and an ad caught my interest. I wish I could remember what the ad said. We arranged to meet. They played me demos and the sound they had was very different to what I was used to. The aim was not to please an audience in the conventional sense. We had slamming staccato drums, gut churning sub bass from me playing dissonant chords and likewise a guitar with a nasty trebly sound. Plus, they had assembled a continuous tape to be played throughout performances full of weird tripped out sounds. Topped off with Keith’s weird vocals. It was very powerful, not for the faint hearted. I think now that if Throbbing Gristle were a rehearsed “rock band” that would be an apt description. With two drummers it was the heaviest sound I had encountered up to that point. We could conquer small countries! We played five loud gigs, first supporting Godflesh. I think we took it as far as we could and just stopped before we did it “too much”.

The line-up consisted of Keith Stutter (guitar and vocal), Gavin Mitchell (drums), you on bass and for a short while second drummer Stick Nöbils. What’s the story behind the only 7″ you released?

Stick is not on the record. The recording went fine. The problems started with the pressing. I found a pressing plant on the Acton Business Estate who took their time after saying they had made a few. Months seemed to go by. One day we had enough and visited them where we found they had only pressed 230 or so of the 500 we had paid for. We made some threatening noises about being fobbed off and we were given the 230 or so records eventually and stormed out. I can’t remember exactly if they gave a refund but I found someone else who pressed up the 500. The first press has paper labels.

It was out on Mongolian Tourist Board, was that your own label?

Yes, as there wasn’t a tourist board there at the time. I think the name came about because I found out somehow that the word Chud is Mongolian for people who live underground!

If I understand correctly, you moved on with Stick Nöbils and formed Wayward Sunns. What was the concept behind this group?

Stick was in Drug Squad and our band was formed, after Geoff called it a day. We called it Innerpropriates.Whatever Stick did he’d make it sound lots better! I didn’t have to say anything! Innerpropriates didn’t play many gigs between 1981 – ’87 because Stick was living and then got married in the Netherlands. Our first cassette album had Nik Turner on three tracks and Ashley Wales (from 5 or 6 and Shock Headed Peters) guesting. It sold a few! We made seven cassette albums. Anyway, Stick and his wife separated and he came back to London to join Chud and then form this band as sort of polar opposite to Innerpropriates.

The Innerpropriates did rock out but we wanted our new venture Wayward Sunns to be full on! We definitely had our influences mainly World Domination Enterprises, Killing Joke and the Butthole Surfers, which is what I think the album ‘Spont’ sounds like. It was not spontaneous in reality but it felt like the best description for the title. Bassmaster Dik played bass but our keyboard player/second guitar John the Window P. had no previous experience got into the band because Stick and I were led to believe he was Dik’s brother! He wasn’t! But his untutored playing was very spont-taneous! On the first track on the album his guitar is literally falling to pieces. It was so exciting we kept the recording!

What can you tell me about Nasi Om Bami & Identical?

As far as I know Gavin and Stephen Thrower formed Nasi Om Bami together in the early ’90s. Keyboard player Orlando joined them soon after and they changed their name to Identical. I put out tracks of theirs on the Grit From The Pit cassette compilation & The Red Rose Concerts 1995 cassette compilation plus the promo only ‘Elitism For All’ CD. Which deserves a re-release. A few years later they morphed with David Knight, Karl Blake and sometimes guest Danielle Dax, into Amal Gamal Ensemble, who I wished I had seen and heard. (I auditioned for Dax back in 1981 as a guitar player but I did not have my rockabilly chops together! David Knight got the spot).

You formed Koven-oe and 46,000 Fibres. Tell me about both groups…

When Stick was asked by Joe Rush to join the Mutoid Waste Company as a drummer in July ’92 I was left without my great ally. I’d had enough of guitar bands/playing by this point. After I purchased a home-made synth I thought I would try to get a more musical venture going. Dik from the Sunns switched to sax and keyboards. I bought in MLR mate Leon for percussion playing. Then Dick told me of a guy who worked with him at Fulham library who was interested in getting some music together. His name was Robin Rimbaud, who fitted in like a glove. So much so that I cut my hair! We worked on an album based on ideas and themes. Robin bought backing tracks for techno type pieces and the rest of us had some good ideas.

The album was called ‘Spharenklangen’, (German for Music of the Spheres) and it’s a very well rounded musical work. We played some gigs. Then one day Robin turned up all excited with his new “toy”. A scanner that intercepted phone calls. I must admit I thought the thing gimmicky. We were known as Koven-oe. All seemed well playing a handful of cool gigs until I noticed that wherever I went for a gig Robin had just played there under the name Scanner! He did not tell me of these gigs but I sensed he wanted to move on. Five gigs and we were done but it was then time for something else out of the comfort zone of rock…

Improvisation was something me and my musical friends had been doing since the late ’70s, so I thought it really about time to get serious and try to create “something unique”. Again, a name set me off…In our ears we have 23,000 nerve endings. A total of 46,000 to create stereo…I was reading a book by Harry Partch and he referred to these nerve endings as fibres. That’s IT! 46,000 Fibres were born. My longest going project.

Dick and Leon were back on board but we needed fresh minds. Somehow, I found out about a guy who lived in my street who played improvised music: Eddie Green. He bought in a friend, Nick Rowan. Eddie played prepared guitar. The first time I had come across this since Nigel Moyse in the SME. Eddie reminded me of Fred Frith from Henry Cow and Keith Rowe from AMM. The five of us played together for months, trying to create something ‘we did not know’. Sometimes there was a non-meeting of minds between us, the rock side and the ‘LMC’ side but we persevered and after six or so months bit the bullet and made our debut at the Anarchist book shop on Railton Road….and we just continued….It’s a long story from here on but improvisation was a great way to get my musical kicks…to create without egos flying, which I like but there were hidden rules we did not go along with, alienating the purists…

To what degree were you inspired by AMM?

I was never inspired by AMM having not heard them too much. I think they may have influenced the Fibres guitar players Eddie Green and Nick Rowan. I was trying to get rid of any influences for the project at this point. A press release was made up to send to reviewers when we did our debut ‘Emanates’. It mentioned loads of bands but the list was more to do with, if you like these bands you might like 46,000 Fibres (?). I think to a certain degree we came up with some original improvisations and pieces that could never be achieved by trying to write them. We seem to wind up rock fans because of our improvised nature and the improv crowd because we broke their “rules”. We were glad when Lol Coxhill turned up to play with us. He was very open minded. We knew we must be doing something right if he keeps turning up! The Fibres main reason for existence is to try and create something “new”. We didn’t always succeed but in the main I think we did. We had a couple of phases of playing structured material but they never lasted long…

 

Would you mind going through your discography and tell us about each of the releases?

I have done so many that I’ll only mention the best/interesting ones. The MLR vinyl album ‘Persian Version’ is now a collector’s item going for £40 now. No plans for a repress or the five other cassettes to be aired again. The ‘Simplicity’ and ‘Probability L’ CDs have sold out. (‘Probability L’ is on the website). Drug Squad’s ‘Perversion Street’ CD is worth tracking down for a secret thrill. Out of the Innerpropriates seven cassettes, ‘Is This The Aqueous’ is the best. I have deleted the others. On the website is the Thoroughly Revised set which has the highlights…

The MTB label had some good compilations: ‘Grit From The Pit’, ‘Is God Analogue?’, ‘The Red Rose Concerts 1995’ and the original ‘Elitism for All’ CD. ‘The Red Rose Concerts’ might be getting a re-release by another label. (The original cassette has sold for £70!). I’m thinking of putting them out again…

Of my albums ‘Mantras for Dream Machine’s can be found on the website. I’m fond of that one and the one I did with Simon Wickham-Smith ‘From A to B’. Hardcore electronics that one. Another good one is ‘John Plant’s Stories’.

I still think all the Diary albums stand up. There’s a new best of compilation called ‘LXXV’ that is being put together as I tell you this. All the 46,000 Fibres albums still sound good to me. There’s a new compilation coming out and a small run of lathe cuts called Noisy Stains/Stained Glass Noise just out. The band I play guitar for, Purple Implosion has made a CD and a vinyl album and are good fun if you are into ’60s influenced garage/psyche mania! If anyone wants more info just get in touch. There’s a new compilation of MLR instrumentals called Labbasounds also due for release in the next few months on the Infinite Expanse label. That collection is really “out there”! Never been so busy…

What can you say about ‘The Extra Traveller’, your solo work?

I have been writing since I left school. I was always a budding songwriter. I knew from MLR days I could improvise words. When I formed Innerpropriates I had to come up with words for the tunes. The first complete song I wrote was called ‘Never’, which was described as a ‘psychedelic anthem’ in one review. I kept writing about my feelings…but I did not have the confidence to let these go public. I thought them very 6th form. Then in about 2010 I just felt I had the confidence in my writing to go public with my more personal writings. I learnt a lot from Diary vocalist John Plant in terms of how to deliver words live. A precursor to these albums was a CD I made in 2005 as Underground (K)no(w) One but the backing music is more rock based on that album rather than the more esoteric sounding musics of ‘Traveller and Signposts’.

Howard Jacques who ran These Records was available to help with the music side. He interpreted what I wanted. Sometimes I had ideas for atmospheres in which to set the words. I found that out of all the performances reciting the spoken word is the most satisfying. Playing rock music can be very hit and miss in terms of delivering what you intend. Words are so focused on themselves and in speaking them to an audience I cannot but feel that I have actually conveyed something with real meaning. And I answered all that without mentioning the dreaded “p” word’!

What about ‘Signposts’?

That was my second spoken word album, with Eugene Bezodis contributing music with Howard Jacques. I recommend both those albums. If you want the words on the page or screen I have a collection called ‘The Moral Canyon’ and I’m ready to send it to anybody who wants it. I have a follow up nearing completion…

Then there’s Tonehenge…

Tonehenge is a nickname that Nik Turner gave me. Mainly so he could remember who he was speaking to! A very popular man! Tonehenge existed for two albums but we felt the name a bit gimmicky and so I agreed to change our name to Anonions. This is an old English obscure word for a self-made man and may have its root in the Eton school tie: An Onion. I got the name confirmed in an episode of The Avengers. I’m taking the rise. As our first two releases were online it was easy to change the band name without too many people noticing! Anonions came about because I felt I had gone as far as I could with the Fibres and synth improvising, so I switched to percussion. My good friends Justin Paton on synths and bass plus guitarist Sacha Colgate complete the line up. All the pieces come from improvising but we recently did a cover of Neu! ‘Hero’ song. We have, after three years yet to play a gig. Hopefully we will break our gig duck in 2022…It’s been described as minimalist rock but there’s more to it than that. I recommend our CD ‘Facilitators’, where I switched to electronic percussion as a starting point…

How about Pink FA and Milk Roar?

In 1993 I was a founder member and drummer of The Barretts who played Syd Barrett songs. This was so much fun amongst the serious music making. This was at the beginning of all this tribute band boom which I’m not too keen on, as it’s too showbiz for my tastes. The thought of acting a part of a true underground band made me uneasy but a few years later I thought the ultimate for me would be a Pink Fairies/Deviants cover band. NOT a tribute as we would alter some of their arrangements to keep the music fresh. I called on my old friend Ralph Beckford, who originally told me about the Fairies back in ’76 to play guitar. Blacken, from Mournblade, came from an ad in a Pink Fairies fanzine, to play bass.

We had a few sessions but we still did not have a frontman/guitarist. That was solved a few years later when Graze walked into a guitar shop where Blacken worked…We got going again and decided to play live. I got Nik Turner to appear at our debut then Terry Ollis turned up via Ralph knowing him, I think. All of a sudden, we had two players who were there at the time to give us more of what mattered. Playing alongside Terry was a dream, but playing in front of actual Pink Fairies was surreal. They liked us especially Sandy who thought us better than them! I could not agree but I was flattered! The name I had for us was Deviating Pink but I asked Nik Turner who came up with the better Pink FA…My highlight was when we placed an ad in the Melody Maker for a singer/guitarist. There was only one reply – from a certain Larry Wallis. I got invited over to play Pink FA tapes. It was so surreal and much tea was consumed! The music of the Pink Fairies is the most fun you can have with your clothes on…or off for that matter!

Milk Roar came about in late 2006 when Diary eventually called it a day. Nick Rowan from Diary came with me to resume the two-guitar attack. I got Andy Clarke to be the words man and we just set about trying to come up with songs that were exciting and a bit bonkers. The song about Ross Kemp actually got made video/song of the week in the NME. We did two albums on CD but my favourite was a song called ‘London Look 2007/8’. I got a whole bunch of people including Scanner, now, A- Soma and Stick Nöbils to do remixes for a long CD e.p. of which there’s some copies left. I knew Milk Roar was a project that was going to be a short fast burn that within three years we all went to do different things. Andy became Ming the Mong then later Henning Tong!

I’m sure I left many projects out.

One project that springs to mind that I got involved with was playing with Crass Agenda. My Fibres/Diary friend Soma was involved in the narration for a piece written by Penny Rimbaud called ‘Savage Utopia’. The original synth player dropped out. Soma asked me to substitute. It was a challenge to actually learn some written music and my synth has a mind of its own. (It behaved on the night!)

The performance was at a place called The Ocean in Hackney. A benefit with some name bands playing. I bumped into one of the organisers and asked if they had made much money? To my amazement he said they would be lucky to break even. He explained that the bands with proper management wanted money for their bands appearing. Some wanted expenses. Let’s say if I do a charity gig, I’ll pay my own way there. It was a bit of a confirmation of how I see the money sucking music biz. Quite disillusioning…

The band Diary was a big part of my life from 1996-2006. I formed the band after John Plant and I did a few gigs where I played improvised synthesiser to fit his words. But the improvised scene is small to me so I thought of forming a 3-piece band playing proper songs. I got Nick Rowan from the Fibres to play guitar and he bought in Tomoko Yamashita on bass. (Who Elastica tried to nab!). Anyway, I think it is some of the best music I’ve played. With each new line up I changed instruments. I started on drums, then guitar, then bass. There’s still copies of the first album to be had but the other three are difficult to find. I think the song ‘Cold Calling’ is a classic. There’s so much that we didn’t record. I think along with the band Brain of Morbius we were the antidote to that Brit pop schlang of the ’90s. No one looked or sounded like Diary!

I’m also currently recording my songs with Joss Cope doing the vocals. Hopefully, in time, an album will emerge, as ‘Out For A Duck’!

How important is improvisation for you?

Very! Playing in the heat of the moment is challenging and when “it works” I get an incredible natural high. I feel more natural in improvisation than playing structured material but Lol Coxhill confirmed to me that “you can’t beat a good tune!”… Both sorts of music have their rewards…

Let’s end this interview with some of your favourite albums. Have you found something new lately you would like to recommend to our readers?

There are so many. I’ve never answered this in print. I don’t want to miss anyone out! My favourite albums number about 400! I think from reading this you will gather what I like. I will say though that Soft Machine ‘Volume Two’ is the record I’ve played most. Followed by Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica & Metal Box by P.I.L. The best live bands’ experiences being The Magic Band, Faust, Einstürzende Neubauten, Misty in Roots and Sun Ra Arkestra but the list could go on…for a LONG time!

Something new? That’s hard to answer as there’s so much from the not-too-distant past to catch up with… Check out the band called now, also Henning Tong, Dave’s Doors of Perception, The Drift, Foul Geese, Adam and Elvis….

Thank you. Last word is yours.

Thank you. No Sell Out!

Klemen Breznikar

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Headline photo by Simon Taylor

TRI Records Official Website / Bandcamp