Gareth Williams (English musician)

Gareth Williams (23 April 1953 – 24 December 2001) was a British musician best remembered as the bassist and vocalist for the experimental rock group This Heat.

Gareth John Williams was born in Cardiff, Wales on 23 April 1953. He was educated at Greenshaw High School in Sutton, Surrey. Before concentrating full-time on his studies for his A-level tests, he spent a period of time in Newfoundland, Canada. By the mid-1970s he was working in a London record shop. An avid record collector, Williams made himself known to drummer Charles Hayward and guitarist Charles Bullen. This eventually led to the formation of the band This Heat where Williams proved to be an excellent lyricist and musician, and a maniacal but intuitive performer on bass guitar and keyboards.

The band itself anticipated a punk style whereby their sometimes excessive experimentalism steered them away from more mainstream success, but regardless of this they built up a solid base of passionate admirers. They shunned musical technique in favor of what they called "accidents." They played their first concert in Feb 1976, only days after their formation. During the early days improvisation dominated their performances, but gradually they encompassed both abstract and formal stylings in their music, where trance-like soundscapes merged into violent yet danceable anthems with cascades of noise punctuated by abrupt silence.

In 1977 John Peel featured them on his BBC Radio 1 show. This Heat's performance proved an intoxicating hybrid of music played exceptionally noisily, usually in complete darkness, with a proto-punk attitude. Their first album, titled This Heat (1979), was two years in the making. The maxi-single Health and Efficiency (1980) permitted Williams to demonstrate his now considerable skill.

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