Pioneering 90s group announce huge reunion show 30 years after massive global hit and two decades on from last gig
A PIONEERING UK dance act will reunite this summer for a huge gig 30 years on from the release of their global smash hit.
The Grid – made up of Soft Cell’s Dave Ball and Richard Norris – today announced their first gig in 20 years.
The duo will play on the bill of Pete Tong’s Ibiza Classics show in the grounds of Englefield House, Berkshire.
Jules Buckley also features on the bill as do Groove Armada who will play a DJ set.
The Grid are best known for their banjo-infused global hit Swamp Thing, which peaked at number three on the UK chart in 1994.
The idea behind the song, which features an iconic banjo run from the late Roger Dinsdale, came to Ball after a trip to a London pub.
He told electricityclub.co.uk: “I’ve never heard it called cow-punk techno before. Swamp Thing was inspired by a guy I saw playing sort of Bluegrass with an Irish band in a pub in Marylebone and it occurred to me that the tempo and feel would work with a 4/4 dance beat.”
Though the result produced something unlike anything else in the charts, its success also came at a price.
“Unfortunately it became a bit of a novelty record,” said Ball. “We sold a million copies worldwide and it got synced on a John Waters movie, Pecker and on Robert Altman’s film Pret A Porter – so it’s not all bad.”
The Grid emerged from the UK Acid House scene of the late eighties and found commercial success in the following decade with 10 charting UK singles.
Revealing how he settled on the group’s name, Ball said: “We were looking for something techno and electronic. The two names we settled on were The Grid and The Matrix – obviously that was a few years before the films came out. We liked The Grid because it gave the sense of a ‘network’.
Another of their best known songs is Balearic classic and debut single Floatation.
The duo, who have released six studio albums as well as a collaboration LP with King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, also graced the famous Top Of The Pops stage multiple times.
Their summer show will feature brand new visuals created by Bafta winning film director Kieran Evans.
Though they haven’t performed live in two decades The Grid have put out new music.
In 2008, after a 12 year hiatus, they put out the album Doppelganger, while One Way Traffic followed a decade later.
Three years later they released ambient album Leviathan with prog master Fripp.