by TRAX MAGAZINE - MARCH 1981
Tim strokes his scarlet and black barnet and recalls their initial meeting. ´ Barbie and myself had a mime show that we dragged around the place while Robert and L.A. had a kind of dance/disco/theatre groupe. We actually met in a shop window n Chelsea : we were being used as live show-room dummies while they were dancing inside. Afterwards we started chatting, exchanged phone numbers and all that kind of thing but it wasn´t until six months later that we did any work together.
´ Totally out of the blue, I got a call from Robert saying that one of the people he and L.A. had been working with had left and would I like to do a couple of mime pieces in a show that they were doing at Maunkberry´s. At first I said no because I thought it was impossible to put the two ideas together and make them work. But eventually I did it . . .and it was very successfull. ´
´ Now, of course, with the integration of two styles we can relate to the audience while still maintaining that mime style. I really had to unlearn everything I had been taught in terms of discipline and the set staging of mime pieces. But I think it worked both ways . . . maybe they absorded some of that discipline and discovered that it is better to have a visual focus rather than have things all over the place´ .
It was Tim´s first contact with a show that used music as an integral part of its performance. ´ I had always wanted to use music but couldn´t think of how to do it in a mime show. You know what most mime shows are like - half an hour of Tangerine Dream and that´s it´
Suddenly, that absurd notion of a rock groupe without instruments comes to resemble a peculiar reality. One step on from interpreting visually a musical backing track is to get a musical backing
track taht interprets aurally a visual experience.
´ I think we are creating our own area to work in ´ , claims Robert. ´ We could sing live if we wanted but if there is absolutely no reason why we should, then we won´t. There is nobody else doing what we´re doing, so why not create a totally new art ? ´
The next stage is, of course, the album. Signed to RCA (the re-recording restrictions of their deal must be quite a hoot ), they have once again employed the services of Richard Burgess and Rusty Egan. ´ Its going to be a very different album´ opinies Robert. ´ Not all heavy eletronic dance music. There will be a great variety of moods ... whatever feels right. The real beauty of having someone like Richard who is a musician-cum-producer is that he can reproduce a lot of sounds far better than we ever could, so we can contribute musical ideas without actually having to play. The video´s going to be great!´
Along with the likes of Spandau Ballet, Visage and Landscape, Shock are re-defining the rock umbrella, providing a new form of entertainment that has no comfortable comparison with anything that has been witnessed before.
