Biography
Although Paul Sadler, David Block, and Deborah Denton—the central members of Big Electric Cat—never set out to form a gothic group, their choice to program rhythms on a drum machine rather than perform with live drums gradually steered the music away from dark pop toward a gothic sensibility that examined humanity’s bleaker dimensions, among them sorrow. Having left his previous band behind in the United Kingdom, Sadler relocated to Sydney in 1989 in search of a more supportive climate for live music. There he linked up with Block on bass and Denton on keyboards and vocals, and the trio launched Big Electric Cat in 1993; the name was taken from the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Once the musicians began using the drum machine they had affectionately dubbed Dr. Ruth after the celebrated sex therapist, they cut a four-track demo called Suspira. The recording caught the attention of Cleopatra Records, the storied Los Angeles label devoted to gothic music. The band signed a three-album agreement, reworked the original four songs, and added six new ones to complete the 1994 debut Dreams of a Mad King—an album whose sound was both haunting and dreamy, laced with a twisted, sinister edge.
Inspired by the mood of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, a romantic regard for intense emotion, and the idea that love can survive beyond death, Big Electric Cat released Burning Embers in October 1995 and Eyelash in August 1997. The two albums enabled extensive tours of the United States and Europe, where the group’s innocence and playfulness, offset by themes of moody darkness and illuminated by Denton’s gifted feminine sensibility, began to reach the fringes of the dance scene.
Once the musicians began using the drum machine they had affectionately dubbed Dr. Ruth after the celebrated sex therapist, they cut a four-track demo called Suspira. The recording caught the attention of Cleopatra Records, the storied Los Angeles label devoted to gothic music. The band signed a three-album agreement, reworked the original four songs, and added six new ones to complete the 1994 debut Dreams of a Mad King—an album whose sound was both haunting and dreamy, laced with a twisted, sinister edge.
Inspired by the mood of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, a romantic regard for intense emotion, and the idea that love can survive beyond death, Big Electric Cat released Burning Embers in October 1995 and Eyelash in August 1997. The two albums enabled extensive tours of the United States and Europe, where the group’s innocence and playfulness, offset by themes of moody darkness and illuminated by Denton’s gifted feminine sensibility, began to reach the fringes of the dance scene.
Albums
