Hugo Race
Hugo Race is an Australian rock musician and record producer who has been based in Europe since 1989. He was a member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, before forming The Wreckery with Nick Barker and Robin Casinader in the 1980s. He is currently a member of Hugo Race and the True Spirit.
Race is currently residing in Catania, Sicily. True Spirit have released 12 albums. At least 6 of these are available through Glitterhouse records, Germany.
Melbourne-born multi-instrumentalist, producer, performer and songwriter Hugo Race is an eclectic and prolific artist who has lived and worked in the USA, UK, France, Germany and Italy since 1988. He was a founding member of Nick Cave's Bad Seeds (1983), with whom he started working in the terminal stages of the legendary Birthday Party (he appears on five CDs of the Seed's catalogue). In Melbourne he founded The Wreckery (1985) who went on to become one of Australia's seminal cult bands of the 80s, releasing with the White, Rampant, and Citadel labels.
Throughout the 90s, Hugo released a series of nine records under his own name with the Berlin-based musical collective True Spirit for the Normal and Glitterhouse labels, (Germany), culminating in the Long Time Ago double-CD retrospective released in 2001. The True Spirit has toured Europe repeatedly, performing on a vast trajectory from the UK to Greece and were literally one of the first western (let alone Australian) acts performing inside the ex-eastern bloc European territories. Recording in diverse situations and locations from Brussels to Bologna, the True Spirit have followed a personal musical vision in a series of mutating line-ups that have fused the boundaries between the blues and electronica - described by London Sounds as "night music of the soul", and by Melody Maker as "industrial-trance-blues".
In 1999 Hugo set up his own production base, Helixed, incorporating diverse musical side-projects such as the Italian-based Sepiatone, the Zurich-based "Transfargo" (RecRec Music, Switzerland) and the Sicilian-based multimedia project, "Merola Matrix" (Desvelos Records, Sardinia). He has also produced Italian artists such as Cesare Basile and Nove Rose, as well as the Australian artist Mia Stone's "Michaela" project. Hugo's involvement in film stretches from soundtracks to acting in such diverse major productions as Richard Lowenstein's Dogs In Space, John Hillcoat's Ghosts... of the Civil Dead, and Michael Rymer's The Queen of the Damned.