Crescent

Crescent surfaced amid Bristol’s loosely connected post-rock circles in England, forging ties with nearly every notable act in that network. Matt Jones, the band’s vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, contributed bass to several Amp releases and also performed with Movietone. Kate Wright, Crescent’s bassist, handled guitar and vocals in Movietone, while Jones’s brother Sam occasionally added guitar to Flying Saucer Attack. Moving beyond the drone-oriented or spare, shadowy minimalism associated with those outfits, Crescent favored aggressive, full-throttle rock shaped by murky lo-fi production that delivered a more physical impact. The quartet first drew notice via the Planet Punk singles “Lost” and “Sun,” then gained U.S. visibility in the mid-’90s through an expanded EP spotlighting “Sun” plus the complete album Now, both issued by Atavistic. Electronic Sound Constructions appeared next yet was solely Matt Jones’s project; the group itself stayed silent on record until the 1999 surprise release of the Collected Songs compilation. Signing with Fatcat Records, Crescent delivered By the Roads and the Fields in 2003 and followed it with Little Waves in July 2007. An extended break followed, during which Frànçois Marry—who had joined in time for Little Waves—devoted attention to her own band Frànçois and the Atlas Mountains. The band resurfaced in 2017 with Resin Pockets on Geographic, a Domino subsidiary.