Skunk anansia
| Skunk anansia | |
|---|---|
 Skunk Anansie at the 2011 Eska Music Awards |
|
| General information | |
| Genre (s) | Alternative rock , crossover |
| founding | 1994, 2009 |
| resolution | 2001 |
| Website | skunkanansie.net |
| Current occupation | |
| Deborah Anne Dyer aka Skin | |
| Martin Ivor Kent aka Ace | |
| Mark Richardson | |
| Richard Keith Lewis aka Cass | |
Skunk Anansie is a British band that, shaped by their front woman and with politically explicit lyrics, caused a musical turmoil in the mid-1990s. Especially in Europe, the band with their bald front woman Deborah Anne Dyer (“Skin”) and their feminist, anti-racist lyrics resonated. The band name Skunk Anansie is derived from a mythical West African figure, Anansi , the spider man, and the word Skunk - a strain of cannabis - added "to make the name more obnoxious."
history
Singer Dyer founded Skunk Anansie in 1994 with Martin Ivor Kent, known as Ace (guitar), and Richard Keith Lewis, known as Cass (bass). The group had emerged from previous formations ( Mama Wild and others). The band's first drummer was Robbie France , around 1995 Mark Richardson took over the drums.
In 1995 the indie label One Little Indian released the debut single Selling Jesus and the first album Paranoid & Sunburnt , which immediately met with a great response, especially in Europe; Stoosh followed in 1996 (Jamaican, roughly “stinkfein”). The decoupled title Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good) became a hit across Europe and made the band known to mainstream audiences.
Anansi is a mythical creature from West African mythology; Dyer learned about it through her ancestors in the times of slavery. The three albums of "Skunkz" (the nickname in England) were sold four million times worldwide. About 25 other songs appeared as so-called B-sides on singles. In Germany there were live performances and a. at Rock am Ring , the Bizarre Festival or in the Rockpalast .
In 2001 the band broke up. The members announced that they had achieved enough with the band and wanted to go solo in the future. Dyer did so in 2003 with Fleshwounds and in 2006 with Fake Chemical State , guitarist Kent that same year with Still Hungry . Richardson has been a drummer for the British rock band Feeder since 2002 .
Bassist Richard Keith Lewis recorded the album "Scars" with Gary Moore in 2002 and toured Europe with him.
In 2009, the band confirmed rumors of a reunion on their newly created Myspace profile and announced that they would be writing songs for a best of LP and tour.
On March 5, 2009, two appearances under the pseudonym SCAM (Skin, Cass, Ace, Mark) were announced, which were sold out within 20 minutes. These concerts were followed by their first European tour in eight years on September 9th.
In 2010, after more than ten years, the reunited band released “Wonderlustre”, a new album that is musically diverse, hard rock alternates with ballads, hymns and Caribbean groove. Another album followed in 2012 with "Black Traffic".
style
The music can best be classified in the field of alternative rock and is characterized by a. through political songwriting. There are points of contact with Black Sabbath and Rage Against the Machine . The texts deal with racism and prosperity thinking and emphasize the diversity of possible forms of life. Dyer programmatically describes himself as a "black, bald, bisexual Amazon".
Discography
Studio albums
| year | title |
Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes) |
Remarks | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 DE
|
 AT
|
 CH
|
 UK
|
|||
| 1995 | Paranoid and Sunburnt |
DE37 (37 weeks) DE |
AT19 (14 weeks) AT |
- |
UK8th  (52 weeks)UK |
First published: September 18, 1995
Sales: + 380,000 |
| 1996 | Stoosh |
DE11  (51 weeks)DE |
AT6th (43 weeks)AT |
CH8th (23 weeks)CH |
UK9 (69 weeks)UK |
First published: October 7, 1996
Sales: + 735,000 |
| 1999 | Post orgasmic chill |
DE5 (25 weeks) DE |
AT6th (13 weeks)AT |
CH10 (13 weeks)CH |
UK16 (17 weeks)UK |
First published: March 22nd, 1999
Sales: + 150,000 |
| 2010 | Wonderlustre |
DE27 (5 weeks) DE |
AT33 (5 weeks) AT |
CH11 (8 weeks) CH |
UK58 (1 week) UK |
First published: September 13, 2010
|
| 2012 | Black Traffic |
DE33 (3 weeks) DE |
AT28 (2 weeks) AT |
CH7 (5 weeks) CH |
UK42 (1 week) UK |
First published: September 17, 2012
|
| 2016 | Anarchytecture |
DE52 (1 week) DE |
AT48 (1 week) AT |
CH11 (4 weeks) CH |
UK85 (1 week) UK |
First published: January 15, 2016
|
Web links
- Official website (English)
- Anansie at MusicBrainz (English)
- Anansie at Discogs (English)
- Fountain of youth rock music: Interview with Skunk Anansie , thegap, March 3, 2017
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dave Wilson: Rock Formations: Categorical Answers To How Band Names Were Formed , ISBN 0-9748483-5-2 , pp. 230-231.
- ^ "Their name was taken from the West Indian folktales of Anansi the Spider-Man, with a slight change of spelling and" Skunk "added to make the name nastier", quoted from: Steve Huey: Artist Biography by Steve Huey , allmusic. com.
- ↑ Skunk Anansie on Myspace
- ↑ Skin news page ( Memento of the original from August 10, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Steve Malins: Skunk Anansie. Skin I'm In . Chameleon Books, London 1998.
- ↑ Chart sources: DE AT CH UK
