Mick Karn

Born July 24, 1958, Mick Karn began by learning woodwind and wood instruments including the bassoon and clarinet. Recognition came chiefly for the singular voice he developed on fretless bass, a style that earned him frequent comparison to Jaco Pastorius. Karn himself observed that bass went unnoticed and his mission was to get it noticed. Even the earliest Japan releases already carried his signature, sinuous lines. By the band’s final studio album, 1981’s Tin Drum, he had been widely hailed as one of the world’s foremost bassists. Prior to that release he had already contributed bass and saxophone to Gary Numan’s Dance, and he became the first member of Japan to issue a solo album, Titles. The 1983 live recording Oil on Canvas introduced his work to jazz legend Jan Garbarek. The next year brought an unexpected partnership with Peter Murphy of Bauhaus; their sole release under the name Dali’s Car was The Waking Hour. Karn soon resumed solo activity, collaborating once more with longtime associate Steve Jansen on Dreams of Reason Produce Monsters. Session appearances for Kate Bush and Joan Armatrading punctuated the intermittent solo discs that followed, many of them bearing characteristically eccentric titles and timbres such as Beard in the Letter Box and Plaster the Magic Tongue. The early 1990s proved more active: Karn joined Jansen and Richard Barbieri in establishing the Medium label, then enlisted guitarist David Torn for two of his strongest projects, Bestial Cluster in 1993 and The Tooth Mother in 1995. In between came the exploratory trio Polytown, completed with Torn and drummer Terry Bozzio; its robust, occasionally funky prog-rock textures were hardly aimed at casual listeners. Karn also devoted time to sculpture, and a period spent in San Francisco eventually yielded the album Each Eye a Path. The Concrete Twin appeared in 2010. That same year he received a cancer diagnosis; he died on January 4, 2011, at age 52. In 2016 K-Scope launched an extensive reissue campaign intended to keep his catalog in circulation.