Anthony Moore

Anthony Moore, also known as Anthony More, pursued an eclectic path that began with minimalist composition and eventually led him to serve as a lyricist for the post-Roger Waters lineup of Pink Floyd. Limited visibility among record buyers remained the sole constant across his projects. His earliest solo efforts adhered to the John Cage approach to minimalism and gave almost no sign of the unconventional pop material he would later produce. In 1972, however, he formed Slapp Happy with fellow outsiders Peter Blegvad and Dagmar Krause, allowing his bent for idiosyncratic songwriting to emerge. Moore and Blegvad shared compositional duties, generating pieces that addressed spies, Siamese twins, and other eccentric themes. After Slapp Happy merged with Henry Cow in 1975, Moore left the group to restart his solo work. He joined Canterbury scene veteran Kevin Ayers, along with Blegvad and Andy Summers, on the 1977 album Out. Virgin soon ended its contract with him because of weak sales. Moore next released the albums Flying Doesn't Help and World Service on modest independent labels. Following 1984’s The Only Choice, he exchanged the unstable existence of an underrecognized singer for steadier employment writing lyrics for Pink Floyd. Slapp Happy resurfaced irregularly during the 1990s, issuing occasional singles and the opera Camera for British television. In 1998 Moore, Blegvad, and Krause reconvened to record Ça Va, an album of entirely new songs. Late in the decade many of his earlier recordings appeared on compact disc for the first time. Flying Doesn't Help and World Service were paired and reissued as a double-disc set by the Floating World label in 2012. From the 1990s onward Moore concentrated on music and sound research and teaching, including a professorship at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany.