Ahead of their London O2 Academy Islington show on Saturday (1st October), Vive Le Rock catches up with '80s post-punk goth rockers BALAAM AND THE ANGEL.
So what has Balaam And The Angel been up to since I saw you at the Marquee all those years ago ?
"Wow.......If I remember correctly the last time we were at The Marquee Club was Feb 1991 (20 years ago). By that stage it was in Charing Cross Road having moved from the Wardour Street location (which we also played in our even earlier days). We used to love playing the Marquee – great atmosphere – we played there several times and at one point we played, and sold out, three consecutive nights at the Charing Cross Road site. Since then ? Well the easiest way to describe what has been going on is to say that all three of us have been busy developing a successful life outside of the music industry. You see by ‘91 we were beginning to become disillusioned with the “business” side of making music – what had initially been fun and exciting had become a chore and we decided to take a break to allow us to concentrate on some other things and maybe rediscover some of the magic that had inspired us in our early days. We hadn’t intended to stay away forever, and certainly not for as long as we have, but you know how it is you blink and suddenly 5, 10, 20 years have gone by. We have played some gigs in the period since the last full tour but we have been very selective about this – the great thing about the situation that we are in at the moment is that we do not have the pressure of having to play to support a music career so we can choose things that we think are interesting or exciting (like the Dudley Castle show we did in 2000 and more recently the special guest support slot with The Mission in 2008)."
What can we expect from the O2 Academy Islington show ?
"I would like to think that one of the things that we did particularly well was to play live. We certainly did a lot of it and we did put a great deal of effort into every detail of our performances. The Islington show will be no different – in fact because it is a special one off and because we are so keen to create a stir we will be really pushing the boat out. Musically we will be playing numbers from pretty much every part of our career. There will be all the usual favourites alongside some songs that we have never ever played live. Also with the help of some of our long time musical colleagues we will be performing some songs with their full instrumentation in a way that we have never been able to do before. Visuals wise we have enlisted the help of an up and coming Dalston based visual artist who has developed some interesting footage for the evening so all in all it should be a truly memorable evening."
READ THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW WITH BALAAM AND THE ANGEL IN THE NEXT ISSUE OF VIVE LE ROCK (ISSUE 5), OUT NOVEMBER 10TH!
