April 1997 - August 2001 - Mark Beazley, Crawford Blair, Jon Meade

August 2001 - Mark Beazley

Rothko was formed in the Spring of '97, taking it's name and inspiration from Russian/American colourfield painter, Mark Rothko.

originally playing as an all bass trio, with myself, Jon Meade from the group Geiger Counter and Crawford Blair, and just finding our way slowly to see how we might sound, we played our first gig in August '97 at The Hope And Anchor in London with the band Monkey Boy, who we still remain friends with.

We were seen at our 5th gig by Simon Williams of Fierce Panda who offered, (unbelievably for us, as we thought he was joking until we saw the review he gave us in the following weeks NME) to release a single. The track 'For Danny' (featuring a sample of the double-bass playing of folk-rock legend Danny Thompson), was the result.

We were also the first band to be released on Fierce Panda off-shoot Livid Meerkat, with the 7" single, 'Seventyseven A'/'Undone'. All three tracks were produced by Julian Standen.

Since that first single, there have been three albums on Jon Tye's Lo Recordings label, including the debut album 'A Negative For Francis', various ep's, 10" and 12" singles, 7" singles and split singles, (including two releases in Belgium, 'Storm Cycle ep' and '291' / 'St. Seno'), collaborations and exclusive tracks on compilation albums by Leaf, Lo Recordings, Arbouse Recordings and Foundry Recordings.

In November of 2000, following the release of our second album for Lo Recordings, 'Forty Years To Find A Voice', we were very fortunate to sign a Publishing Deal with Mute Song, the Publishing arm of Mute Records.

We worked twice with Simon Raymonde of Cocteau Twins, who runs the Bella Union label, the first result of which was the 'Truth Burns' ep on Foundry Recordings, (which also went out as a radio session for XFM on the John Kennedy show) and the 7 track mini-album, released in March 2001, 'In The Pulse Of An Artery' as a part of the Bella Union '7 Series' set of releases.

2001 also saw us tour the UK as support to Porcupine Tree, culminating in us playing at Shepherds Bush Empire and we also had our first ever John Peel Session.

The last live performance by the original line-up was for Radio 3's 'Mixing It' programme at Ocean in Hackney in july 2001.

October 2001 saw the last release as the original bass trio, the live album, 'Not Gone. Not Forgotten.' on Lo Recordings, for me a sad, and poignant release, featuring mainly unreleased material, including a track from that first gig at The Hope And Anchor.

I can't stress enough at how amazing the 4 and half years with myself, Jon and Crawford were. We had some incredible journeys and experiences and got to meet and work with some incredible, fantastic people. it wasn't all good, I'd be lying if I said it was, there were some very dark times, but the good far outweighed the bad and our achievements as a bass trio speak for themselves.

With the support of people like Simon Raymonde, Nigel Adams, Jason White, John Peel, Robert Sandall, Sharon O'Connell, John Kennedy and Paul Filmer (who became our on the road manager) we were able to realise a hell of a lot of dreams.

But I felt that we had taken the notion of the 3 bass line-up as far as it could go, so it was time to move on, to try and take the music somewhere else, or even back to the beginning.

Jon now plays bass in Lomax and Crawford plays bass in Foe, who are signed to new label House of Stairs, and he continues to record his own material under the name Santa Dog.

From August 2001, the line-up of the band has consisted of myself and the musicians from the group Delicate Awol; Michael Donnelly, also on bass, Jim Version on guitars, Caroline Ross on guitars, vocals, percussion and flute, Tom Page on drums and guitars, Ben Page on keyboards and percussion and Jo Wright on trumpet.

We recorded an album together, 'A Continual Search For Origins', and had our first live show with the full line up at Reading Arts Centre in December 2001.

Also in December of 2001, i was very proud to have signed a recording contract with Too Pure records.

My first release for Too Pure was the 7" single, 'Red Cells'/'White Cells', which was recorded after the album, and was released in April 2002, followed by the album 'A Continual Search For Origins', released in June 2002.

2002 saw the live performance line-up of the group become completely flexible. Depending on who was available, we played as a duo, a trio, a bass duo, a 6 piece, the full 7 piece line-up and i even played some solo shows.

this, for me, gave the music total freedom and i will always look back on 2002 as the year when i felt that the music had fresh life breathed into it at every performance. the uncertainty and spontaneity of every show gave the tracks we played from 'A Continual Search For Origins' a new life, new meaning. 2002 was special.

more later...

...updated February 2003