Severed Heads
| Severed Heads | |
|---|---|
Performing at BIMFest, Antwerp, December 2011
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| Background information | |
| Also known as | Mr. and Mrs. No Smoking Sign (1979) |
| Origin | Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
| Genres | Industrial, synthpop, post-punk, electronica, dance |
| Years active | 1979–2008, 2010–2011, 2013, 2015–present |
| Labels | Terse/Wrong, Terse Tapes/Dogfood Production System, Virgin, Ink/Red Flame, Volition / Nettwerk, CBS, Sony, Les Temps Modernes, Dark Entries, Medical |
| Associated acts | Coklacoma |
| Website | sevcom |
| Members |
Tom Ellard Stewart Lawler |
| Past members |
Richard Fielding Andrew Wright Garry Bradbury Simon Knuckey Stephen Jones Paul Deering |
Severed Heads are an Australian electronic music group founded in 1979 as Mr. and Mrs. No Smoking Sign. The original members were Richard Fielding and Andrew Wright, who were soon joined by Tom Ellard. Fielding and Wright had both left the band by mid-1981. Throughout the next decade several musicians joined Severed Heads' ranks; including Garry Bradbury, Simon Knuckey, Stephen Jones, and Paul Deering. In 1984 they released "Dead Eyes Opened" as a single, which was remixed in 1994 and re-released, the latter version reached No. 16 on the ARIA Singles Chart. Two of their singles, "Greater Reward" (1988) and "All Saints Day" (1989), reached the top 30 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart. Ellard disbanded the group in 2007 and continued with other projects. Subsequent Severed Heads reunions have occurred in 2010 for a 30th anniversary concert, in 2011 they supported Gary Numan's tour of Australia, also that year they appeared at BimFEST in Antwerp, in 2013 they had a gig at the Adelaide Festival of Arts, and in September 2015 they toured the United States for the first time in over 20 years.
In 1979 Richard Fielding and Andrew Wright formed an experimental electronic duo, Mr. & Mrs. No Smoking Sign in Sydney. By the end of that year Tom Ellard joined the group. They issued cassette albums including Mr and Mrs No Smoking Sign Go Cruising fer Burgers!. In December 2006 Ellard explained to Todd E Jones about the name change "[w]e were called Mr. & Mrs. No Smoking Sign, because that was really ugly. Then, we wanted to fool people that we were Industrial and it worked. Severed Heads was a really dumb name, so that’s what stuck. Forever. I hate it by the way".
Their early music was characterised by the use of tape loops, noisy arrangements of synthesisers and other dissonant sound sources in the general category of industrial music. Wright departed late in 1979; leaving the duo of Ellard and Fielding to put together the band's early studio offerings;, including the A-side of a split album, Ear Bitten/No Vowels, No Bowels, with the B-side by Rhythmyx Chymx. Fielding then departed the band during the recording of 1981's Clean, leaving much of the work to be completed solely by Ellard.
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