Chris Connelly

Although Connelly built his early renown through ferocious industrial work with Ministry, the Revolting Cocks, and Pigface, his solo recordings as a singer and songwriter have gravitated toward gentler material aligned with Nick Cave, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, and Scott Walker’s later output. Raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, he absorbed the glam sounds of David Bowie, Roxy Music, and T. Rex until punk erupted. At fourteen he entered the punky group Rigor Mortis, which later transformed into the experimental industrial outfit Fini Tribe. As Fini Tribe developed, its spoken-word samples and abrasive synthesizers aligned the band with the catalog of Chicago’s Wax Trax! Records, home at the time to Front 242, Meat Beat Manifesto, and Ministry. Seeking a single release, Connelly delivered Fini Tribe’s material to the label’s London office, where he encountered Al Jourgensen, Paul Barker, and Bill Rieflin—Ministry members and associates then shaping the extravagant side project the Revolting Cocks. Within hours he had tracked a demo with the trio, and shortly afterward he left Fini Tribe to join the Revolting Cocks while also contributing to Ministry and additional Wax Trax! endeavors such as the Cabaret Voltaire/Jourgensen collaboration Acid Horse.

The label issued his solo debut, Whiplash Boychild, in 1991. That ambitious album diverged from anything previously associated with Connelly or Wax Trax!, occasionally echoing Bowie and Bolan while venturing into avant-garde structures. The same year he connected with the Chicago industrial imprint Invisible, participating in its Pigface, Murder Inc., and Damage Manual projects and thereby collaborating with Geordie Walker of Killing Joke and former Public Image Ltd. drummer Martin Atkins. Atkins contributed to the dark, introspective second solo album Phenobarb Bambalam, released in 1992. Shipwreck, from 1994, adopted a brighter tone and paid tribute to the singer’s early glam affinities through sharp guitars and Bowie-esque vocals. As Wax Trax! foundered, Connelly worked with industrial stalwarts KMFDM on their 1996 XTORT album and supplied an a cappella reading of the Wire composition “A Mutual Friend” for the tribute collection Whore: Tribute to Wire. With Wax Trax! gone, the more acoustic and folk-oriented The Ultimate Seaside Companion (Revisited) appeared on Invisible in 1997, featuring multi-instrumentalists Chris Bruce and Jim O’Rourke within the loose collective the Bells. Bruce rejoined for the Bells’ second album, Blonde Exodus, issued in 2001 with a noticeably more robust sound. Also in 2001 came Largo, a project with Bill Rieflin that the pair had first conceived in 1990.

Connelly resumed solo activity in 2002 with Private Education, released by the Invisible-affiliated Underground, Inc. That same year the label issued the two-CD compilation Initials C.C., gathering outtakes, rarities, and personal favorites from Connelly’s various projects excluding Ministry. He returned to Invisible proper for the 2004 album Night of Your Life, which garnered widespread critical acclaim. The six-CD collection simply titled Box Set followed on Invisible in 2006, encompassing all of his prior Invisible and Underground, Inc. material plus the new live disc Lounge Ax, Bottle, and Elsewhere. Members of Joan of Arc, U.S. Maple, and Town and Country joined his improv-focused 2007 release The Episodes, issued by Durtro Jnana—the label home to Current 93, Nurse with Wound, and Antony and the Johnsons—and recorded partly outdoors. Connelly reverted to more conventional song forms for the 2009 album Pentland Firth Howl, a set of pieces about his native Scotland whose titles consisted entirely of latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates; the starkly intimate record was performed almost exclusively on acoustic guitar and harmonica. Among the most restless yet understated artists when it comes to self-promotion, he delivered the ambitious two-part suite How This Ends on Lens Records in 2010, comprising extended renditions of the title track. Produced across several Chicago studios, the project enlisted James “Marlon” Magas, Tania Bowers, Zak Boerger, Sanford Parker, David Levine, Gordon Sharp, Izi Coonagh, and Brent Gutzeit. The more straightforward rock album Artificial Madness arrived the following year.

In 2013 Connelly issued the limited-edition Day of Knowledge on klanggalerie, revisiting dissonant textures from his Fini Tribe era alongside the art-song approach of The Episodes and various drone and electro-acoustic experiments. Decibels from the Heart appeared on Cleopatra in 2015, again featuring an elite roster of musicians and presenting the singer/songwriter in duets with female vocalists—including Meshell Ndegeocello, Rebecca Pidgeon, My Brightest Diamond, and Claire Massey—on more than half the tracks. He continued performing, writing, and demoing throughout the next year, resulting in two 2017 albums: Art & Gender in August and Further Days, a complete re-recording and reinterpretation of the 2002 album Private Education, released on November 11, his fifty-third birthday. Maintaining the same intense schedule, he released The Tide Stripped Bare in early 2018. Dedicated to the memory of fellow Scottish songwriter Jackie Leven, the album was entirely self-produced, engineered, and performed.