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The final part of this ‘A.R. Kane reissue collection is 1989’s astonishing double-LP ‘i’ which

followed up on ‘sixty nine’s promise and saw the duo fully unleash their experimental

pop sensibilities over 26 tracks, plunging the A.R. Kane sound into a dazzlingly

kaleidoscopic vision of pop experiment and play. Suffused with new digital

technologies and combining searingly sweet and danceable pop with perhaps the

duo’s strangest and boundary-pushing compositions, the album did exactly what a

great double-set should do - indulge the artists sprawling pursuit of their own

imaginations but always with a concision and an ear for those moments where pop

both transcends and toys with the listeners expectations. Jason Ankeny has noted

that “In retrospect, ‘i’ now seems like a crystal ball prophesying virtually every major

musical development of the 1990s; from the shimmering techno of ‘A Love from

Outer Space’ to the liquid dub of ‘What’s All This Then?’, from the alien drone-pop of

‘Conundrum’ to the sinister shoegazer miasma of ‘Supervixens’ — it’s all here, an

underground road map for countless bands to follow.” Perhaps the most

overwhelmingly all-encompassing transmission from A.R. Kane, ‘i’ bookended a

three year period in which the duo had made some of the most prophetic and

revelatory music of the entire decade.

After ‘i’ the duo’s output became more sporadic with Tambala and Ayuli moving in

different directions both geographically and musically, with only 1994’s ‘New Clear

Child’ a crystalline re-fraction of future and past echoes of jazz, folk and soul, before

the duo went their separate ways. Since then, A.R. Kane’s music has endured, not

thanks to the usual sepia’d false memories that seem to maintain interest in so much

of the musical past, but because those who hear A.R. Kane music and are changed

irrevocably, have to share that universe which A.R. Kane opened up, with anyone

else who will listen. Far more than other lauded documents of the late 80s it still

sounds astonishingly fresh, astonishingly livid and vivid and necessary and NOW.

Remastered Rough Trade Debut LP Limited TO Just 500 Copies With Embossed Outer Sleeve AND Original Inner Sleeve ON Black Vinyl

A.R. Kane were formed in 1986 by Rudy Tambala and Alex Ayuli, two second-generation immigrants who grew up together in Stratford, East London. From the off the pair were outsiders in the culturally mixed (cockney/Irish/West Indian/Asian) milieu of the East End, with Alex and Rudy’s folks first generation immigrants from Nigeria and Malawi, respectively. The two of them quickly developed and fostered an innate and near-telepathic mutual understanding forged in musical, literary and

artistic exploration. Like a lot of second-generation immigrants, they were ferocious autodidacts in all kinds of areas, especially around music and literature. Diving deep into the music of afro-futurist luminaries such as Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Lee Perry and Hendrix, as well as devouring the explorations of lysergic noise and feedback from contemporaries like Sonic Youth and Butthole Surfers, they also thoroughly immersed themselves in the alternate literary realities of sci-fi and ancient history (the

fascination with the arcane that gave the band their name), all to feed their voracious cultural thirsts and intellectual curiosity.

It was seeing the Cocteau Twins performing on Channel 4 show the Tube that spurred A.R. Kane into being - “They had no drummer. They used tapes and technology and Liz Fraser looked completely otherworldly with those big eyes. And the noise coming out of Robin’s guitar! That was the ‘Fuck! We could do that!

The duo debuted with the astonishing ‘When You’re Sad’ single for One Little Indian in

1986. Immediately dubbed a ‘black Jesus & Mary Chain’ by a press unsure of Where to put a black band clearly immersed in feedback and noise, what was immediately apparent for listeners was just how much more was going on here – a tapping of dub’s stealth and guile, a resonant umbilicus back to fusion and jazz, the music less a conjuration of past highs than a re-summoning of lost spirits.

The run of singles and EPs that followed picked up increasingly rapt reviews in the press, but it was the ‘Up Home EP’ released in 1988 on their new home, Rough Trade that really suggested something immense was about to break. SimonReynolds noted the EP was: Their most concentrated slab of iridescent awesomeness and a true pinnacle of an era that abounded with astounding

landmarks of guitar-reinvention, A.R. Kane at their most elixir-like.

If anything, the remastered ‘Up Home’ is even more dazzling, even more startling than it was when it first emerged, and listening now you again wonder not just about how many bands christened ‘shoegaze’ tried to emulate it, but how all of them fell so far short of its lambent, pellucid wonder. This

remains intrinsically experimental music but with none of the frowning orthodoxy those words imply. A.R. Kane, thanks to that second generation auto-didacticism were always supremely aware about the interstices of music and magic, but at the same time gloriously free in the way they explored that connection within their own sound, fascinated always with the creation of ‘perfect mistakes’ and the possibilities inherent in informed play.