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BOB
DRAKE This
has been a long association. Where did I first meet Bob?
In France, a long time ago: he and Hank (half coyote)
came to the studio in Caudeval and eventually took up
residence. Back then, he and Susanne Lewis were
Hail
- and Bob had played drums and bass, and many other
things) on their recordings - which was impossible on
stage, so I joined them, along with guitarist Bill
Gilonis, for several European tours. Around this Swiss
Guitarist Wadi Gysi were in the middle of a series of
duo concerts - and a tour as a trio with Hans Reichel – and in 1993 Wadi and I
cooked up a song trio with our mutual pal Amy Denio. We
booked 2 studio sessions and came out as The
(ec) Nudes.
Bob mixed the CD and we gave him a free hand to add
parts and rearrange things so, when we next performed
live, we asked him to join us on bass. So when Stevan
Tickmayer and I decided to make the first Science
Group album, it was obvious that Bob would
record it - and we also asked him to play bass, as well
as mix and master. And Amy was drafted in to sing. On
the next Peter
Blegvad Trio recording, Hangman’s
Hill, Bob also recorded and mixed and, when a
couple of years later we played at the RIO festival in
Carmaux, Bob joined us on guitar - and has now become a
regular member of the Quintet
(with Peter, John Greaves, Karen Mantler and myself). In
2002 Bob and I co-founded Vril, with guitarist Lukas Simonis - because we were all fans of guitar
instrumentals and
thought the form could be rethought for the C21. It’s a
very small field – what its maestro, Alan Jenkins, calls
Experimental Surf Music and happily he joined us for our
only tour, in 2011, in a few small Dutch clubs.  Vril
in Holland: Lukas Simonis, CC, Bob Drake, Alan Jenkins / And,
for decades, Bob has engineered all the recordings I’ve
made, including theProbes
series,
in France, where he lives. And he has mastered or
re-mastered all of ReR’s releases. In
turn, ReR
has released 8 of his
records
to date. ON RECORD. VRIL (Bob
Drake, Chris Cutler, Lukas Simonis) PETER
BLEGVAD QUINTET (Blegvad/Cutler/Greaves/Mantler/Drake) THE
SCIENCE GROUP
(Tickmayer/Drake/Frith/Denio/Puntin/Cutler) on CC100 - Uncle Toby and the Fly and Bunte Weise (both with Susanne Lewis) settings of Kandonsky poems I did for Radio Bavaria, in 2015
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