NME: Veteran band set to release sixth LP, breaking press ambargo(possibly)...missed out on 'em? Prepare for an education...

For a quiet band, they have a good knack for amking a mark on the popular conscience.

You hear about them in circle of music fans whose loyalty and fandom is fierce and opinionated. Their name regularly appears in Top 10 and Top 20 albums and singles run-downs month after month and year after year, despite relatively little radio play or magazine features and covers. The chances are that they are probably playing an arena or stadium sized venue somewhere near you right now or very soon, such is their relentless work ethic. It's highly possible that you might well hear one of their songs while dancing at your local nightclub, in its original or re-mixed form, but you never had a clue that it was even their song or that they were responsible for something so utterly danceable yet intelligent, such is their vast range and speed of evolution...or you might have seen their videos (or rip offs of their videos) on daytime and nighttime music channel rotation.

But who are they?

Although Ratner's Star have effectively shunned the press and have been keeping a much lower profile the last few years, releasing their high-selling records and playing to large crowds worldwide without music press coverage, the news that the band are set to release a "straight up quirky alt.pop record" has re-ignited interest in the group. Anticipation is especially high as there are rumours that the bands self-imposed press embargo may be being broken, meaning we may finally be finding out what has been going on in camp R.S. since they played an explosive mini-set at the Birdies but failed to earn to recognition of their musical peers.

So with all of this in mind, we here at the NME have decided that this is as good a time as any for the NME to reconsider one of the most mysterious, expectedly successful, eccentric and independent alt rock groups of the last decade.

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Ratner's Star are a six piece experimental alt. rock outfit from the English coastal town of Southampton, England. To date they have released nineteen singles, five studio albums, and two live albums. To date, the band-who are not on a major label or an indie and whom run all of their business affairs themselves-have sold over eighteen million singles and sixteen million albums worldwide.

The group has its origins in the underground music scene of Hampshire, England, particularly the art-school crowds of the University of Southampton and Winchester School of Art. Local students and musicians Johnathan Foster Frantzen [Vocals/Guitar/Keyboards/Percussion], Alexei Wright [Bass Guitar], Mike James [Guitar], Daniel Byrne [Keyboards/Synths/Programming/Drum Machines/Samplers/Effects/Sound Manipulation], Jack Lee [Guitar/Backing Vocals], and David Nicholas [Drums/Drum Machines/Percussion] gradually drifted together after the break-up of a number of smaller local bands HoursTilAutumn, Today's Eden and Pitchnoir. Finding that they had a number of shared interests musically and all desiring to work in a truly adventurous, democratic and experimental band, they began rehearsals under the name The Pallette. They changed their name to Ratner's Star soon after, inspired by the Don DeLillo novel of the same name.

The group quickly gained a reputation for its high aspirations and far out sound, with Daniel Byrne's role as "sound manipulator" key in forging their early diverse sonic textures. As each member was previously in bands of a different genre (but with a great deal of willingness to adapt and learn new styles shared by all), the mixture of musical techniques, preferences, playing styles and attitudes combined together to create a hard-to-define collage of sound. After a numer of well attended local gigs and some great music press coverage, the band began the release of a sequence of well reviewed singles that lead to theirself-funded/self-produced/self-recorded debut LP, "Ratner's Star", which amazingly-without any label muscle behind it-cracked the U.K. Top 20 and the U.S. Top 50.

Their second album "Further Thoughts on Politics and Culture" was recorded quickly in the Carribbean at Compass Point studios, and was released within a year of their debut. Although the band were initially worried that they hadn't taken as long as they should have, the sessions saw incredible growth and diversity bloom across the album, and it was unexpectedly was a major commercial breakthrough in terms of chart success. Embracing art funk, acid house, modern eletronica, prog rock, grunge, skinny funk, carribbean music and African polyrhythms, it was one of the most varied and ambitious albums of the year. The album peaked at #3 in the U.K. and #2 in the U.S.A. and contains two Top 10 U.K. singles ("Inherent Vice" and "I've Lost My Balls Inside My Computer") and one Top 20 U.K. single ("Halfway House").

However, in sales terms, the album only sold slightly more than the debut, and, despite several Birdies nominations, it failed to win much industry recognition. Bassist Alexei Wright briefly became something of a tabloid bette noir for his drunken and womanising antics, but the group's overall stature wasn't damaged.

After the lack of recognition for what they regarded eventually as a really great album, Ratner's Star became more introverted, doing less press and looking towards a darker and more introspective musical direction. The band moved to New York and started recording in a loft over a disused abbatoir, trying to capture a new harder, harsher, and grimly industrial edge to their music. At first, the main instrumentalists in the group worked together in jamming sessions to create fifteen instrumental tracks, which singer and lyricist Jonathan Foster Frantzen listened to and assessed for suitability. It was then down to him to write the lyrics, which the group then fitted to the most appropriate tracks. The working title of the album was "#3", but over time other suggestions were made, including "Everything's So Crazy It's Normal", "The American Book of The Dead", "The Modern Dark Ages", and "Bunker Mentality".

Asked at the time what the album was about, singer Jonathan Foster Frantzen summed it up as thus: "It's about an unspoken fear in the world at the moment, the fear of modernity and the state things are in...and a desire to live in the past or to just not exist at all...People try to find forms of escape from the things they fear and the trend towards a boring overload of pointless information through work, technology, sex, marriage, criminal behaviour and drugs, and the songs on the album deal with all of that...[it is] postmodern introspective alienation that you can dance to."

Out of these long but productive sessions came "Fear of Modern Life", the band's third studio album, which is widely regarded as one of the bands very best (if also probably one of the least accessible): A colder, less accessible brew that the first two albums, it mixes the personal and the political, inner angst and collective fear in an urbanized world. The group found itself collaborating more on this release, a trend that would continue with their next releases.

The album peaked at #6 in the U.K. and the U.S.A. Recorded in New York, the album's first single was "Living Under Gunfire", which peaked at #16 in the U.K. and #12 in the U.S.A. "...Modern life"'s second single was the eerie "Afterlife", and it peaked at #10 in the U.K. and #5 in the U.S.A., giving the band it's first taste of Top Ten singles chart action in America. It sold just shy of 2 million copies and the band-along with is many collaborators-followed the album with the "Everything's So Normal It's Crazy" tour.

The tour saw the band extensively perform in North America, Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand with an expanded 18 person line-up including the opening track Play Ball and the spooky minimalism of Transcript feature new-wave inflected guitar contributions from Favorite Son, guitarist in The Prisoners; additional instrumentation and bits of production also provided by local New York based New-No-Wave scene figure Johnny Fingers on keyboards during Living Under Gunfire; Harlem gospel eight piece the Twist Sisters provide backing vocals and chants on Play Ball, Afterlife and Documents; New York based solo artist and noted funk bassist Buster Jaww jams alongside Ratner's Star bassist Alexei Wright on Hold Those Thoughts and Urban Space; and Cuban percussionist brothers Jerry and Che Marquez-Allegre provided their additional drumming, percussion and rhythm in a Cuban style.

Recording sessions for the band's fourth studio album "Stay in the Light" were done in Los Angeles, resulting in a combination of experimental weirdness and more upbeat music, focussing more on the tribal polyrhtyms of "...Modern Life" and constructing a kind of 'death disco' with most of the 'death' deleted and replaced by jitters and tranquil surrender. Lyrically, the record found the band tackling new concerns with the English everyman and the destruction of the environment by humankind, as well as the usual off-beat and quirky observations about life and how people live it in technologically advanced age. As opposed to being enthalled by the sheer decadence and glamour of Los Angeles where they were recording, thh group tried to get a closer look into the lives of ordinary Americas, the facade of domesticity and the trappings of middle class affluence being at odds with the idealised surroundings and the poverty of the lower working classes.

Favorite Son from The Prisoners returned to contribute some guitar to a few tracks; Buster Jaww returned to add extra bass, and Jerry and Che Marquez-Allegre returned once again for exotic percussion and additional backing vocals.

The album was another unexpected commerical success, peaking at #4 in the U.K. and #5 in America. The first single from the record was 'For Once in This Lifetime...', which peaked at #5 in the U.K. and #15 in America largely due to a memorable video. The second and final single was 'Born into Chaos (The Madness Continues)', a storming percussive flurry. This is one of the bands biggest selling studio albums to date, featuring singer Frantzen as a possessed TV newscaster going mad with fits of peculiar dancing and movement as he reports on numerous stories around Los Angeles.

Despite the massive leap in sales, the band still couldn't get arrested by either a major or an indie label. Instead, they now formally formed thier own label and distribution company that would handle all of their business affairs for them.

Next, the band compiled and released a triple live album entitled "You Will Find This Band on...Ratner's Star", featuring recordings from the bands first five years playing live. The epic set contained songs from all of its albums to date, B-sides, rareities and a cover version. It was intended as a stop-gap, but sold incredibly well for a live album

The band has recently released its fifth studio album "Talking in Nonsense". "Talking in Nonsense" is the bands biggest hit album to date, selling over three and a half million copies world wide and reaching the Top 10 of the albums chart in every worldwide territory. The album contains three big selling hit singles: "Tearing up the Road","This Must Be the Tune {Happy Place)", and "Better Girlfriend" and expands on the funk aspect of the bands sound, with many tracks drawing heavily upon balck disco, p-funk, Motown, and R'n'B while the band incorported a sludgier, more loose and low-slung take on the quirky and deep electronics of "Further Thoughts...".

This album was supported by the band once again taking its expanded line-up out on the road to play the new material on conjunction with an onstage media and performance art experiment taking in dancers in tutus, projections, mime artists, moving stage parts and some of the worlds most advanced strobe lights and lighting rigs.

After "Talking in Nonsense" came a single disc live album of the 'Nonsense' tour, entitled "Stop Talking Nonsense", from which the single "Afterlife (Acoustic)" unexpectedly reached #1 in Australia. A concert film of one gig at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood as heard on the "Stop Talking Nonsense" album is set for general release soon.

Sessions for the bands sixth studio album are currently underway once again in Nwe York and Los Angeles. The band has revealed that after the previous four albums being increasingly experimental, the next album is intended to be a straight up quirky alt.pop record.

For the best part of a decade now six peculiar but gifted British art-school drop outs have been making diverse, challenging, exciting and inspiring music on their own terms and in their own time. Long may they mess around with different styles...

Edited by user 30 November 2009 02:25:10(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified