The Creatures
Encyclopedia
The Creatures were a musical act formed in 1981 as a side-project for Siouxsie and the Banshees members Siouxsie Sioux
and Budgie
. The Times
described their music as "adventurous art rock built around Siouxsie's extraordinary voice and drummer Budgie's battery of percussion".
With the dissolution of Siouxsie and the Banshees in 1996, The Creatures graduated from an occasional side project to a full-time concern. They disbanded in 2005.
The duo released four studio albums: Feast in 1983, Boomerang
in 1989, Anima Animus
in 1999 and Hai! in 2003.
Their music was hailed by Jeff Buckley
and PJ Harvey
.
titled Wild Things. The title track was a reworking of a hit by The Troggs
and the other numbers were Creatures compositions. The EP reached number 21 in the UK Singles chart
and the pair performed "Mad-Eyed Screamer" on Top of the Pops
.
. The band decided where to record the album by randomly placing a pin on a map of the world. The result was Hawaii, which led to the featuring of The Lamalani Hula Academy Hawaiian Chanters on some tracks. In the week of its release, the band was on the front cover of both the Melody Maker
and the NME
. The Melody Maker described Feast as "an album of filtered brilliance, fertile, sensual and erotic" and the NME accentuated "The humours of Sioux's frosty larynx are nakedly outlined against skins of sometimes fabulous quality" The album reached number 17 in the UK Albums Chart
. The hit single "Miss the Girl" took its inspiration from the book Crash by J. G. Ballard
. Shortly after its exit from the charts, a follow-up "Right Now
" was recorded: that song was initially performed by Mel Tormé
. The Creatures revamped it by adding a brass section, and it became their most successful single, reaching the top fifteen.
. Brass arrangements were used on some tracks and Anton Corbijn
took colour pictures for the sleeve. The record was critically acclaimed and widely regarded as Siouxsie and Budgie's crowning achievement as The Creatures. NME wrote : "it's a rich and unsettling landscape of exotica". One of the bluesy songs of Boomerang, "Killing Time", would be later covered live by Jeff Buckley
. In late 1989, The Creatures made their live debut appearance on U.K television and went on tour shortly after for the first time, visiting Europe and North America.
In February 1998, John Cale
contacted them for a future collaboration. He was the organizer of the "With a Little Help from My Friends" festival that took place at the Paradiso
in Amsterdam
. The concert was shown on Dutch national television and featured a Siouxsie song (made for The Creatures) especially composed for the event and still unreleased, "Murdering Mouth" sung in duet with Cale. That night, the Creatures also premiered a live orchestra version of "I Was Me". During mid-1998, the pair toured with John Cale in the U.S, playing yet unreleased material to their audience.
During that period, Siouxsie and Budgie created their own label, Sioux Records, and became an independent act. The Eraser Cut (an anagram of The Creatures), was released in July followed in October by the single "2nd Floor".
, the first studio album in just under a decade. Its urban sound was an important departure from Boomerang 's very organic atmosphere. The Times
wrote : "It's entrancing, hypnotic and inventive", and PJ Harvey
selected Anima Animus in her ten favourite albums released in 1999.
Other singles from the album were "Say" (dedicated to Billy Mackenzie
) and "Prettiest Thing". The song "Another Planet" was included on the soundtrack to the film Lost In Space
in a version radically reworked by Juno Reactor
. Live albums Zulu (London'98) and Sequins in the Sun (Glastonbury'99) were also released on limited editions via The Creatures website.
In June, The Creatures appeared on Marc Almond
's Open All Night; Siouxsie sang in duet on the track "Threat Of Love". Late 1999 saw the remix
album Hybrids, which featured tracks remixed by other acts including The Beloved
. During the same period, a compilation of unreleased Anima Animus-era tracks was released as U.S. Retrace
and three one-track CDs, ("Murdering Mouth" - live version, "Rocket Ship" and "Red Wrapping Paper"), were edited to fan club members.
. Budgie first worked with the Japanese taiko
drummer Leonard Eto, the basis of the album being a spontaneous drum duet between the two. The rest of the sessions were done in France over a period of several months. The single "Godzilla!" was described as "spookily brilliant" by the NME and the reviews were favourable for Hai!.
That same year, Siouxsie was asked to be the guest vocalist on the Basement Jaxx
's "Cish Cash": she wrote the lyrics and the electronic musicians composed the music for the track. This record was crowned at the 47th Grammy Awards.
In 2004, Siouxsie toured for the first time billed as a solo act but with Budgie still as drummer and musical arranger. The setlists combined Banshees and Creatures songs. A live DVD
called Dreamshow
depicted the last London concert of September 2004 performed with the Millennia Ensemble. Released in August 2005, this DVD
reached the number one position in the UK music DVD charts.
This was the last release by the pair, as Siouxsie announced publicly during an interview with The Sunday Times in 2007 that she and Budgie had divorced. Their musical partnership has been discontinued for the foreseeable future and, thus, The Creatures have disbanded.
Siouxsie celebrated her 50th birthday in May 2007, and released the first solo album of her career, MantaRay
, in October 2007, to critical acclaim.
Siouxsie Sioux
Siouxsie Sioux is an English singer-songwriter. She is best known as the lead singer of the critically acclaimed rock band Siouxsie and the Banshees and of its splinter group The Creatures . The Banshees produced eleven studio albums and a string of hit singles including "Hong Kong Garden",...
and Budgie
Budgie (drummer)
-External links:*...
. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
described their music as "adventurous art rock built around Siouxsie's extraordinary voice and drummer Budgie's battery of percussion".
With the dissolution of Siouxsie and the Banshees in 1996, The Creatures graduated from an occasional side project to a full-time concern. They disbanded in 2005.
The duo released four studio albums: Feast in 1983, Boomerang
Boomerang (The Creatures album)
Boomerang is the second album to be released by British duo The Creatures aka singer Siouxsie Sioux and musician Budgie. The album was recorded in Andalusia, Spain. One of the bluesy songs of this album, "Killing Time", was covered live by Jeff Buckley a few years later.At its release, the album...
in 1989, Anima Animus
Anima Animus
Anima Animus is the third album to be released by British duo The Creatures aka singer Siouxsie and musician Budgie. The title of the album was inspired by Carl Jung's concept of transgender, the woman inside the man, the man inside the woman. The album was released in 1999.PJ Harvey selected Anima...
in 1999 and Hai! in 2003.
Their music was hailed by Jeff Buckley
Jeff Buckley
Jeffrey Scott "Jeff" Buckley , raised as Scotty Moorhead, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He was the son of Tim Buckley, also a musician...
and PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey
Polly Jean Harvey is an English musician, singer-songwriter, composer and occasional artist. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments including piano, organ, bass, saxophone, and most recently, the autoharp.Harvey began her career in...
.
Wild Things era (1981)
Singer Siouxsie Sioux and drummer Budgie created The Creatures while recording the Banshees' Juju album. During one session, they discovered by accident that the association of just the voice and the drums suited to the track "But Not Them". A recording session was organized with the aim of recording five songs. This project was released in the form of an EPExtended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...
titled Wild Things. The title track was a reworking of a hit by The Troggs
The Troggs
The Troggs are an English rock band from the 1960s that had a number of hits in UK and the US. Their most famous songs include, "Wild Thing", "With a Girl Like You", and "Love Is All Around"...
and the other numbers were Creatures compositions. The EP reached number 21 in the UK Singles chart
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...
and the pair performed "Mad-Eyed Screamer" on Top of the Pops
Top of the Pops
Top of the Pops, also known as TOTP, is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly from 1 January 1964 to 30 July 2006. After 25 December 2006 it became a radio program, now hosted by Tony Blackburn...
.
Feast era (1983)
In 1983, The Creatures released their first full length album FeastFeast (album)
-Critical reception:Record Mirror praised the album by the note of 4/5, and Paul Prayag wrote: "Siouxsie and Budgie are wondering deeper and deeper into a jungle that looks like having no easily definable boundaries"...
. The band decided where to record the album by randomly placing a pin on a map of the world. The result was Hawaii, which led to the featuring of The Lamalani Hula Academy Hawaiian Chanters on some tracks. In the week of its release, the band was on the front cover of both the Melody Maker
Melody Maker
Melody Maker, published in the United Kingdom, was, according to its publisher IPC Media, the world's oldest weekly music newspaper. It was founded in 1926 as a magazine targeted at musicians; in 2000 it was merged into "long-standing rival" New Musical Express.-1950s–1960s:Originally the Melody...
and the NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
. The Melody Maker described Feast as "an album of filtered brilliance, fertile, sensual and erotic" and the NME accentuated "The humours of Sioux's frosty larynx are nakedly outlined against skins of sometimes fabulous quality" The album reached number 17 in the UK Albums Chart
UK Albums Chart
The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...
. The hit single "Miss the Girl" took its inspiration from the book Crash by J. G. Ballard
J. G. Ballard
James Graham Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction...
. Shortly after its exit from the charts, a follow-up "Right Now
Right Now (1962 song)
"Right Now" is an uptempo 1962 jazz/pop song with music by Herbie Mann and lyrics by Carl Sigman. As a jazz instrumental, it was the title track of a 1962 bossa nova-style album by Mann...
" was recorded: that song was initially performed by Mel Tormé
Mel Tormé
Melvin Howard Tormé , nicknamed The Velvet Fog, was an American musician, known for his jazz singing. He was also a jazz composer and arranger, a drummer, an actor in radio, film, and television, and the author of five books...
. The Creatures revamped it by adding a brass section, and it became their most successful single, reaching the top fifteen.
Boomerang era (1989)
The Creatures came back six years later. Siouxsie and Budgie went to a stone barn in Jerez, Andalucia, Spain to record BoomerangBoomerang (The Creatures album)
Boomerang is the second album to be released by British duo The Creatures aka singer Siouxsie Sioux and musician Budgie. The album was recorded in Andalusia, Spain. One of the bluesy songs of this album, "Killing Time", was covered live by Jeff Buckley a few years later.At its release, the album...
. Brass arrangements were used on some tracks and Anton Corbijn
Anton Corbijn
Anton Corbijn is a Dutch photographer, music video and film director. He is the creative director behind the visual output of Depeche Mode and U2, having handled the principal promotion and sleeve photography for both for more than a decade...
took colour pictures for the sleeve. The record was critically acclaimed and widely regarded as Siouxsie and Budgie's crowning achievement as The Creatures. NME wrote : "it's a rich and unsettling landscape of exotica". One of the bluesy songs of Boomerang, "Killing Time", would be later covered live by Jeff Buckley
Jeff Buckley
Jeffrey Scott "Jeff" Buckley , raised as Scotty Moorhead, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He was the son of Tim Buckley, also a musician...
. In late 1989, The Creatures made their live debut appearance on U.K television and went on tour shortly after for the first time, visiting Europe and North America.
Collaboration with John Cale and Eraser Cut EP (1996-1998)
When Siouxsie and the Banshees called it a day in 1996, The Creatures had already began composing new material. At the same time, the long-out-of-print Wild Things EP and Feast album were remastered and re-released through the compilation A Bestiary Of.In February 1998, John Cale
John Cale
John Davies Cale, OBE is a Welsh musician, composer, singer-songwriter and record producer who was a founding member of the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground....
contacted them for a future collaboration. He was the organizer of the "With a Little Help from My Friends" festival that took place at the Paradiso
Paradiso (Amsterdam)
Paradiso is an iconic rock music venue and cultural center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.-History:It is housed in a converted former church building that dates from the nineteenth century and that was used until 1965 as the meeting hall for a liberal Dutch religious group known as the "Vrije...
in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
. The concert was shown on Dutch national television and featured a Siouxsie song (made for The Creatures) especially composed for the event and still unreleased, "Murdering Mouth" sung in duet with Cale. That night, the Creatures also premiered a live orchestra version of "I Was Me". During mid-1998, the pair toured with John Cale in the U.S, playing yet unreleased material to their audience.
During that period, Siouxsie and Budgie created their own label, Sioux Records, and became an independent act. The Eraser Cut (an anagram of The Creatures), was released in July followed in October by the single "2nd Floor".
Anima Animus era (1999-2002)
Early in 1999, the Creatures released Anima AnimusAnima Animus
Anima Animus is the third album to be released by British duo The Creatures aka singer Siouxsie and musician Budgie. The title of the album was inspired by Carl Jung's concept of transgender, the woman inside the man, the man inside the woman. The album was released in 1999.PJ Harvey selected Anima...
, the first studio album in just under a decade. Its urban sound was an important departure from Boomerang 's very organic atmosphere. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
wrote : "It's entrancing, hypnotic and inventive", and PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey
Polly Jean Harvey is an English musician, singer-songwriter, composer and occasional artist. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments including piano, organ, bass, saxophone, and most recently, the autoharp.Harvey began her career in...
selected Anima Animus in her ten favourite albums released in 1999.
Other singles from the album were "Say" (dedicated to Billy Mackenzie
Billy Mackenzie
William MacArthur "Billy" Mackenzie was a Scottish singer, with a distinctive falsetto voice best known as a member of The Associates.- Biography :...
) and "Prettiest Thing". The song "Another Planet" was included on the soundtrack to the film Lost In Space
Lost in Space (film)
Lost in Space is a 1998 American science fiction film starring Gary Oldman and William Hurt. The film was shot in London and Shepperton, and produced by New Line Cinema. The plot is adapted from the 1965–1968 CBS television series Lost In Space...
in a version radically reworked by Juno Reactor
Juno Reactor
Juno Reactor is a musical and performing act known for the cinematic fusion of electronic, orchestral, and global music. Central to the project is Ben Watkins and his collaborations with a constantly changing ensemble of musicians from across the world, including percussionist Mabi Thobejane from...
. Live albums Zulu (London'98) and Sequins in the Sun (Glastonbury'99) were also released on limited editions via The Creatures website.
In June, The Creatures appeared on Marc Almond
Marc Almond
Marc Almond is an English singer-songwriter and musician, who originally found fame as half of the seminal synthpop/New Wave duo Soft Cell...
's Open All Night; Siouxsie sang in duet on the track "Threat Of Love". Late 1999 saw the remix
Remix
A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song ....
album Hybrids, which featured tracks remixed by other acts including The Beloved
The Beloved
The Beloved are an English electronic dance music group, best known for the singles "Sweet Harmony", "Hello", "Your Love Takes Me Higher", and "Satellite".-Formation:...
. During the same period, a compilation of unreleased Anima Animus-era tracks was released as U.S. Retrace
US Retrace
U.S. Retrace is a compilation album by the British act The Creatures aka singer Siouxsie and musician Budgie. It reunites out of print material : the Eraser Cut EP initially released in July 1998 and a couple of B-sides appeared on the "Say" cd-single."All She Could Ask For" first appeared on...
and three one-track CDs, ("Murdering Mouth" - live version, "Rocket Ship" and "Red Wrapping Paper"), were edited to fan club members.
Hai! era (2003-2004)
Siouxsie and Budgie returned with a full-length album, Hai!, in 2003. The drum sessions were recorded in Japan less than 24 hours after the Banshees had completed their reunion tour Seven Year ItchSeven Year Itch (album)
Years after the breakup of Siouxsie and the Banshees, the three core members plus final Banshees guitarist Knox Chandler reunited for an abbreviated tour of the US and the UK in 2002. The Seven Year Itch is a live album composed of performances recorded at London's Shepherd's Bush Empire on July...
. Budgie first worked with the Japanese taiko
Taiko
means "drum" in Japanese . Outside Japan, the word is often used to refer to any of the various Japanese drums and to the relatively recent art-form of ensemble taiko drumming...
drummer Leonard Eto, the basis of the album being a spontaneous drum duet between the two. The rest of the sessions were done in France over a period of several months. The single "Godzilla!" was described as "spookily brilliant" by the NME and the reviews were favourable for Hai!.
That same year, Siouxsie was asked to be the guest vocalist on the Basement Jaxx
Basement Jaxx
Basement Jaxx are a British electronic dance music duo from London, England consisting of Felix Buxton born 1971 and Simon Ratcliffe born 1 December 1969. They first rose to popularity in the late 1990s...
's "Cish Cash": she wrote the lyrics and the electronic musicians composed the music for the track. This record was crowned at the 47th Grammy Awards.
In 2004, Siouxsie toured for the first time billed as a solo act but with Budgie still as drummer and musical arranger. The setlists combined Banshees and Creatures songs. A live DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
called Dreamshow
Dreamshow
Dreamshow is a live DVD by Siouxsie, released in 2005. It was filmed at the Royal Festival Hall in London in October 2004. The songs are performed on stage with the Millennia Ensemble orchestra and incorporate music from her thirty year career with her bands The Banshees and The Creatures.- Track...
depicted the last London concert of September 2004 performed with the Millennia Ensemble. Released in August 2005, this DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
reached the number one position in the UK music DVD charts.
This was the last release by the pair, as Siouxsie announced publicly during an interview with The Sunday Times in 2007 that she and Budgie had divorced. Their musical partnership has been discontinued for the foreseeable future and, thus, The Creatures have disbanded.
Siouxsie celebrated her 50th birthday in May 2007, and released the first solo album of her career, MantaRay
MantaRay
MantaRay is an album by Siouxsie Sioux. It is her first full-length solo studio album after a thirty-year music career as the frontwoman for Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Creatures. It was released in the UK on September 10, 2007 on W14, a new label within the Universal Music Group. A U.S....
, in October 2007, to critical acclaim.
Discography
| Year | Album | Peak chart positions | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK Album Chart |
US Billboard 200 Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists... |
NZ Recording Industry Association of New Zealand The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand is a non-profit trade association of record producers, distributors and recording artists who sell music in New Zealand... |
||
| 1983 | Feast | 17 | - | 28 |
| 1989 | Boomerang Boomerang (The Creatures album) Boomerang is the second album to be released by British duo The Creatures aka singer Siouxsie Sioux and musician Budgie. The album was recorded in Andalusia, Spain. One of the bluesy songs of this album, "Killing Time", was covered live by Jeff Buckley a few years later.At its release, the album... |
- | 197 | - |
| 1999 | Anima Animus Anima Animus Anima Animus is the third album to be released by British duo The Creatures aka singer Siouxsie and musician Budgie. The title of the album was inspired by Carl Jung's concept of transgender, the woman inside the man, the man inside the woman. The album was released in 1999.PJ Harvey selected Anima... |
79 | - | - |
| 2003 | Hai! | 153 | - | - |
Sources
- Budgie. The Creatures Biography. The Creatures.com April 2000
- Paytress, Mark. Siouxsie & the Banshees: The Authorised Biography. Sanctuary, 2003. ISBN 1-86074-375-7