The Cassandra Complex are an electronic rock group formed by Rodney Orpheus

Rodney Orpheus

Rodney Orpheus is a musician, record producer, author, lecturer, and a leading member of the Thelemic organization Ordo Templi Orientis...

 and Paul Dillon in 1980 in Leeds

Leeds

Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, later expanding to a trio with the addition of Andy Booth.

History

The band initially comprised Rodney Orpheus and Paul Dillon who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party in Leeds. They began putting on large multimedia shows featuring various avant-garde acts from the Leeds area. Andy Booth was a journalist who interviewed the band and was later asked to join.
The band released their first self-financed single, "March", in March 1985. A live cassette followed a month later, and the band signed to local label Rouska. Dillon left the band to get married and the band recruited Rodney's childhood friend John Marchini, with Jez Willis and Keith Langley guesting live and in the studio.

After two albums on the Rouska label, Grenade (1986) and Hello America (1987), they signed to the Belgian-based Play It Again Sam

Play It Again Sam (record label)

[PIAS] Recordings is the recorded music division of the [PIAS] Entertainment Group, a European independent artist and label services company.The record labels that operate under the [PIAS] Recordings umbrella are: Play It Again Sam, Wall of Sound and Different Recordings.Aside from the three London...

 label, which issued the double-live album Feel the Width in 1987. During the production of the Theomania album in 1988, Marchini and Booth left, with Orpheus recruiting a new line-up for 1989's Satan, Bugs Bunny, and Me album. Hamburg guitarist Volker Zacharias from the band Girls Under Glass

Girls Under Glass

- Biography :1986Girls Under Glass were founded by Thomas Lücke , Hauke Harms and Zaphor aka Volker Zacharias as an offshoot of the gothic rock formation Calling Dead Red Roses.1987...

 joined a year later, and has been a stable member of the group since then.

Booth went on to become a lawyer and the head of Company Commercial and Creative Industries at Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

 firm Turner Parkinson. The band continued with Orpheus and Zacharias releasing Cyberpunx, The War Against Sleep and Sex & Death. In 1995, Orpheus worked with Patricia Nigiani and Marcus Giltes on a side project called Sun God. In 2000, the band released the Wetware album on SPV in Europe and Metropolis Records in the USA.

Over the years, the band's sound has included elements of EBM

Electronic body music

Electronic body music or industrial dance is a music genre that combines elements of industrial music and electronic dance music...

, industrial

Industrial music

Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...

, goth rock, new wave

New Wave music

New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...

 and synthpop

Synthpop

Synthpop is a genre of popular music that first became prominent in the 1980s, in which the synthesizer is the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic art rock, disco and particularly the "Kraut rock" of...

, and the band's sound has been described as a blend of Joy Division

Joy Division

Joy Division were an English rock band formed in 1976 in Salford, Greater Manchester. Originally named Warsaw, the band primarily consisted of Ian Curtis , Bernard Sumner , Peter Hook and Stephen Morris .Joy Division rapidly evolved from their initial punk rock influences...

, The Ramones and Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...

.

In 2007, the original band members reformed and since then have played several festival shows in Europe and Brazil. They are currently working on a new album.

Studio albums

• Grenade (1986) Rouska
• Theomania (1988) Play It Again Sam
• Satan, Bugs Bunny, and me ... (1989) Play It Again Sam
• Cyberpunx (1990) Play It Again Sam
• The War against Sleep (1992) Play It Again Sam
• Sex & Death (1993) Play It Again Sam
• Wetware (2000) Metropolis
  Metropolis Records
  Metropolis Records is a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania based record label, distributor, and mail-order store specializing in the post-industrial field such as electro-industrial, synthpop, futurepop, darkwave, and gothic musical genres....
  
  

Live albums

• Live in Leather (1985) Complex (cassette-only)
• Feel the Width (1987) Play It Again Sam
• Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1992)

EPs and 12"

• March (1985) Complex
• Moscow, Idaho (1985) Rouska
• Datakill (1986) Rouska
• Kill your Children/Something came over me (1987) Play It Again Sam
• 30 Minutes of Death (1988) aka "Gunship"
• Penny Century (1988)
• Finland (1990) Play It Again Sam
• Nice Work (1990) Play It Again Sam
• Gnostic Christmas (1991) free with lim. Ed. of "War against Sleep"
• Give me what I need (1994) Play It Again Sam
• Twice as Good (2000)

External links

• Official Site
• Official Rodney Orpheus site
• Cyberpunkreview.com review of Cyberpunx
• Hinds, Daniel "The Cassandra Complex" (Rodney Orpheus interview), The-plague.net