Kabuki Music - History Page



Here is a look back at our history so far.

Kabuki was formed in early 1999 by Chris Thomson and Craig Henderson
(drums), with  the idea of trying  to do some Trip Hop style music along the
lines of Massive Attack right down to a revolving line up of singers. We 
recruited Phil Miller on guitars to add more sound. After losing our first singer
we brought in Beverley Coleman. Our sound slowly started to develop.

A year after forming we recorded 3 track CD under the band name "Bevanko" 
with Beverley Coleman on vocals, Craig Henderson on drums, Don McLean 
on bass, Phil Miller on guitar and Chris Thomson on keys. Tracks on the CD
were "Not you", "Tear Drop"(Massive Attack), and "Perfect Illusion" - the 
first and last tracks were written by the band. After recording the CD, Beverley
left and Don became a permanent member of the band. Eilidh McKenzie 
became our new vocalist in 2000 and we shifted our musical direction.

Following a band break up towards the end of 2000 the band reformed in the
New Year of 2001 as "Slider" with Neil Norman (Sax) becoming a permanent 
member and Dan Cohen joining on drums. We played our first gig at The Attic 
in the Cowgate in March 2001 supporting "Unquiet". We then played a gig at 
Merkat Music Festival June 2001 followed by another at The Merkat in July
2001.

Our next demo CD was recorded August 19th-24th 2001 at Heartbeat Studios. 
There are three original tracks on this CD - Don't walk away, Discovery, You 
don't miss what you've got. We changed our name to "Kabuki"in September 
2001 due to the fact that Slider is not a unique band name. Kabuki was chosen 
one evening at Phil's while we were looking through a Japanese travel guide. 
Kabuki is a traditional form of Japanese Theatre. We thought that Kabuki made
a good band name and decided to use it.

In March 2002 Eilidh left the band, Karen Ross stepped in as a temporary 
singer until September 2002. Karen sang for us at our gig in Belushi’s at the end
of March.

In September 2002 we recruited Shona Brodie as our new permanent singer. 
Since then we  have re-written the lyrics to all of our existing songs and added
a few new songs too. Our first gig with the new line up was a  20 minute set at 
Bannermans in the Irozmusic Battle of the Bands competition. We made it to the 
finals and finished in joint third place.