Bristol
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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- A city and county in South West England.
Music
The music scene is thriving and significant. From the late 1970s onwards it was home to a crop of cultish bands combining punk, funk, dub and political consciousness, the most celebrated being The Pop Group, close friends of The Cortinas, who led the City's punk scene from 1976. Bristol's premier fanzine from this time through until early 1978 was Loaded. It featured all of the Bristol bands as well as those who visited the city, some of whom were promoted by the magazine.
Ten years later, Bristol was the birthplace of a type of English hip-hop music called trip hop or the Bristol Sound, epitomised in the work of artists such as Tricky, Portishead, Smith & Mighty and Massive Attack. It is also a stronghold of drum n bass with notable bands like the Mercury Prize winning Roni Size/Reprazent and Kosheen as well as the pioneering DJ Krust and More Rockers. The progressive house duo Way Out West also hails from Bristol. This music is part of the wider Bristol Urban Culture scene which received international media attention in the 1990s and still thrives today.
Other forms of popular music also thrive on the city's scene. In the 1980s the city gave birth to thrash metal band Onslaught who became the first non-American thrash band to sign to a major label. Other notable rockers from Bristol include folk rock outfit K-Passa, Stackridge, Vice Squad, Wushcatte, The Claytown Troupe, Rita Lynch, Herb Garden, Doreen Doreen, The Seers, Pigbag, and The Blue Aeroplanes. More recently a new wave of Bristol-based bands have been promoting themselves across the UK underground, including New Rhodes,Santa Dog, Big Joan, You and the Atom Bomb, Riot:Noise, Two Day Rule, Alien Stash Tin, Osmium, Hacksaw, Bronze Age Fox and Legends De Early.
There is also a leftfield/ experimental music scene in Bristol, which has built on the tradition of Bristol bands like The Pop Group, Third Eye Foundation and Crescent. These musicians are supported by record labels such as Invada, Farm Girl, Blood Red Sound and Super Fi, and promoters such as Qu Junktions, Illegal Seagull, Let the Bastards Grind, Noise Annoys and the, now defunct, Choke (music collective). Despite regular performances and the success of many of its members, this scene tends to be passed over in the national press' view of Bristol music which focuses on Trip Hop, which represents only one aspect of the city's musical culture. Active bands include Gravenhurst (Warp), Team Brick (Invada), The Heads (Invada), Fuck Buttons (ATP - now moved to London), Hunting Lodge (Yosada), SJ Esau (Anticon, Twisted Nerve), Bronnt Industries Kapital (Static Caravan), Aut (Fällt) and Geisha (Crucial Blast).
Bristol is home to many live music venues including Colston Hall which can attract big names, the Carling Academy Bristol which is part of the national touring circuit for rock bands, the Thekla, The Croft and the Louisiana.
The city also has a popular jazz and blues scene with The Old Duke pub being a popular venue for bands such as Fortune Drive. Internationally recognised jazz and blues musicians active in Bristol include Eddie Martin, Jim Blomfield and Andy Sheppard. Other notable supporters of jazz include the Bristol Jazz Society, the Be-Bop Club and the East Bristol Jazz Club. St George's Hall, on Brandon Hill, is notable for its jazz along with classical and world music performances.
