Starless & Bible Black
Starless & Bible Black (Locust Music)

Starless & Bible Black make beautiful spirited & catchy songs in the grand tradition of classic British folk rockers Pentangle and John & Beverley Martyn straight on up through the halcyon days of early 4AD records. On their debut self titled outing, the diverse Manchester 3 piece brings to bear much of the lively attitude, passion and rain, rain, rain of the old textile city they’ve all come to call home for the last several years. The result is a great collection of 11 songs - at once earthen and elevated – that are given added mood and flavor by the charcoal vocals of French chanteuse Hélène Gautier.

Hélène Gautier: singing
Peter Philipson: guitars, dulcimer, mandolin
Raz Ullah: electronics, keys, drones

What’s in a name:

While some may assume that the name is taken from the well known 1974 King Crimson album, it is actually inspired by the classic 1965 recording by Stan Tracey of the same name that in turn is taken from a line in Dylan Thomas’ "Under Milk Wood" radio play.

It all started one rainy evening when...

Peter puts forward his idea for a new project with Hélène : finger-picked guitars with spooked female vocals backed by double bass, drums, woodwind and electronic interference- Raz immediately agrees and Starless & Bible Black comes into existence.

Starless & Bible Black make their debut in Manchester in March 2005. At the second gig Raz falls backwards off stage in the middle of a song and wins many new fans and many invitations for future shows follow.The other contributing members are the main rhythm men in the Manchester music scene - Paul Blakesley on bass and Brian Edwards on drums - they have each perfected their craft playing with the likes of local heroes such as Aidan Smith, John Stammers and Jane Weaver. Together, all three of the main Starless folks run the Timbreland collective and independent label based in Manchester.

Hélène Gautier is a French native who emigrated to England from the forestsof the Loire Valley in 1998 with two bags, a plastic Norwegian troll and an eclectic musical past. Her first ever public performance was a Turkish free jazz singing duo in the staircase of a tower block in a French medieval town, the amazing acoustics made up for the lack of a sound system. This was followed by regular appearances as the front woman of a French blues band and a psych-rock collective, all rehearsed in dairy farms and 12th century prison vaults with mischievous gargoyles for an audience. She revels in a wide variety of musical genres, from Bulgarian choirs and twisted folk to German reggae and torch song, and thrives in the British clubbing and record collecting culture. A chance encounter with Peter after moving to England marked the beginning of a fruitful musical friendship.

Peter Philipson grew up in the North-west of England and started playing guitar at the age of tenand during his teenage years developed an obsession for anything with strings on and anything with tape on.

A few years later, after moving to Manchester, he spent time playing guitar and bass in all types of different bands and gradually became more interested in the record making process. Over the course of several years this lead to a life of fewer gigs and more staying up late in dark suburban rooms honing those studio skills.

His musical tastes have often been at odds with fashion and he's been known to enthuse about anything from early experimental electronic music through to scratchy funk and afrobeat but most of all he likes the sound of acoustic guitars.

Peter met Helene through a mutual musician friend at the turn of the century and suggested they made some tunes together. An acoustic guitar, a cassette recording, some Fringlish lyrics and three cups of tea later their songwriting partnership was born. The duo initially wrote and recorded as a studio project based around samples under layers of acoustic guitars - a kind of early folk-tronica but with good songs included. They released a couple of well received EPs and performed a few live shows with other musicians, but after a couple of years Peter left to work with A Certain Ratio front man Jez Kerr on his funk-noir studio side project, 24 Hours. It was through Jez that he first met Raz.

Raz Ullah was born in the 70's and spent his childhood living just North of Manchester. His earliest memories include a fascination in the sounds of Pink Floyd, Jean Michael Jarre and Doctor Who and this inspired him to experiment with cassette tape loops as early as ten years old. He bought his first guitar at sixteen and then formed his first band who mostly performed Jesus and Mary Chain covers.

Later after moving to Scotland, Raz met American and Canadian exchange students who introduced him to Neil Young, Dylan, The Band, Easy Rider, Grateful Dead, Hardol & Maude, Carlos Castaneda, Kerouac and tequila. He then spent several years playing guitar, keyboards and bass in Spacemen 3-influenced bands and a synth-experimental-metal-drone duo called Mungo & Shoddy; instruments used included broken efects pedals, toy keyboards, mandolins, cheap guitars, electric bass and charity shop records. Spare time is spent hill walking, sleeping in caves, staying up all night, lighting fires on beaches, selling his records to buy food and cigarettes, and cycling through forests. Eventually though, it was time to move on and he sold all of his possessions and moved to Spain with nothing but a guitar and a four-track recorder.

After lying about his work experience, Raz became an English teacher. This paid for guitar strings and toy keyboards and another band was formed, Xuta. The bass drum was an oil can with a snare skin stretched across it; the rest of the band played through one tiny practic amp. On returning to England, Raz initially escaped to the West Country for fresh air, open spaces and sea breezes, but then decided to move back up north to Manchester where he met Jez Kerr, joined 24 Hours and then met Peter.

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