Chris Gill - Multi Instrumentalist /Founder
My first gig was in 1968 age of 13....Playing Bass. There followed a whole series of school bands, as well as playing in sheds with mates all over Bedford, which is where I really learned how to play as there were so many musicians in Bedford and the immediate surroundings in the 70s. I played at The Bath Arts Workshop in 1973, where I met up with Hawkwind. We jammed for hours in an abandoned hotel. Ironically my path in later life would involve a lot of interaction with either members, or roadcrew of Hawkwind...
I spent the next couple of years drifting from festival to festival, playing with people like Lol Coxhill - The Global Village Trucking Company - The Mike Westbrook Orchestra - And some regulars who ended up as Ian Durys Blockheads... I moved to the USA in November 1975...Spending 4 years in Texas and a year in Los Angeles.It opened up a whole new ball game for me, and I suddenly found there were many places to play, and you could keep pretty busy.... We (The band at that time) were doing a small tour of Universities in 1976, when the van we were in left the highway in the desert near Tuscon Arizona.
The end result was that both my hands got broken. I moved to Los Angeles where a friend got me a job helping actors to speak with an english accent.It was a good time for me,and I met with some very interesting people.... but after 12 months, I realised that I missed home, and so in June 1980 I returned to the UK.
By a strange twist of fate, I found myself living in Germany. I remained there for 6 years, and really loved it.I met so many really interesting musicians, and got in to synthesisers. I still hadn't really got the use of my fingers enough to play guitars.
I returned to the UK in April 1985. In 1989 I bought a guitar, and worked hard to get my fingers working again.By 1995 I was back in to it with no ill effects... My day job by now was in the media.I worked at Channel 5 TV then The BBC respectively.
My work had begun to take me away from music, and I almost lost it completely. Then in the space of about 3 months, I met up with Adrian Belew. We were discussing how, and what kind of imagery could be put together to reflect the music of King Crimson...Wearing my BBC hat...I got to work on it, but while doing that, I realised that music was still the thing I really wanted to do.
Then a few months later I met up with Nick Mason. We both share a love of Classic Cars, as well as Historic Racing cars. At this time I was working down at Beaulieu home of Lord Montagu and his National Motor Museum as Marketing Manager. Nick has his own company where he rents out all kinds of exotic cars to the film industry among others.The company is called Ten Tenths... In meeting these 2 giants of the industry, I knew what I wanted to do.I quit the 9 to 5 and got back in to music, at the exact time it was becoming possible to record good quality CDs, without having to hire Abbey Road for 9 months !
The rest as they say is history.
2004 DEEP SPACE
2005 GARLANDS
2007 ARTS & ALLUREMENTS
2011 SUN IN VIII
2017 THE DUST OF STARS
2019 SVENGALI (Release date to be decided).