Fiat Lux

Presented by: Plumhall

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0	BRADFORD: St Clement's Church
P	Saturday 19th October, 2019
N	7:00pm

Event information

The legendary Fiat Lux return to the live arena after the release of their acclaimed new album and long-awaited re-release package. The venue is a hidden gem - a beautiful church, filled with original art by legends of the Arts & Crafts movement - not far from the centre of Bradford.
This will be an incredibly special event.
Steve Wright and David Crickmore met when they attended Bretton Hall College, Wakefield, where they both studied drama. Steve joined David’s college based new wave band, The Juveniles (whose two songs were released in a various artists compilation called Household Shocks). Steve later helped form The Yorkshire Actors theatre company where he met Wakefield based guitar hero Bill Nelson, who had been commissioned to write a soundtrack for one of their plays. Steve gave Bill a demo tape that he and David had put together of proto-type Fiat Lux music. Bill Nelson was sufficiently impressed to fund and produce their debut release, “Feels Like Winter Again”, b/w “This Illness” on his Cocteau Records label in November 1982. Shortly after the recording session Bill’s brother Ian, who was already known to Steve and David through the Wakefield music scene, joined the band.
“Feels Like Winter Again” achieved “single of the week” in the leading UK weekly music paper of the time NME and gained the band national radio airplay, and Indie chart success.
This led to them signing a record deal with major label Polydor and saw them undertaking their first significant live work: UK tour support slots with Blancmange and Howard Jones. The band had minor UK chart hits with “Secrets” and “Blue Emotion”, which were followed by the mini album Hired History in August 1984. They made several TV appearances, including a performance on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test and a Channel 4 special dedicated to them. There was also a long format Polygram video release Commercial Breakdown, which included live versions of the shelved tracks for their debut full-length Polydor album.

David left the line up after the chart failure of their fifth Polydor single release ‘House Of Thorns’ frustrated at the non issue of the much anticipated Hugh Jones produced album. Steve and Ian continued for a period recording some songs with session musicians, which Polydor also failed to release, before disbanding in 1985.

Steve joined another Wakefield outfit Camera Obscura, which morphed into Hoi Poloi, another short-lived pop group. He then abandoned the music industry to become a television director which has continued to be his profession since then.

Meanwhile David tried his hand at more experimental musical projects through the remaining 1980s, culminating in an album on the London based independent record label, Yellow Moon Records, “Lettuce Spay” under the name This. In the 1990s he rediscovered his love of folk and roots music and became a founder member of The Durbervilles. From 2006 he, Mark and Lee from the band also became radio presenters with a folk and roots show on BBC Radio Leeds which still broadcasts weekly on Sunday evenings.David has also built up a reputation as a record producer making a number of critically acclaimed albums for established and emerging artists in the folk and acoustic scene.

Ian Nelson continued to work with his brother Bill, joining the re-formed line-up of Be-Bop Deluxe in the early 1990s; Sadly Ian died in his sleep on 23 April 2006.R.I.P.

Founder members Steve and David have remained in touch and have recently pooled resources to search through some of the photos and archive items they have from their 1980s Fiat Lux days.

Meanwhile various attempts on different occasions in the time line to acquire Polydor master tapes from the current owners Universal for issue/re-issue have so far proved fruitless, although BBC 6 Music have re-aired a number of the Fiat Lux Radio 1 sessions from that period.

2017 sees Steve and David working together again and Feburary will see a new version of Secrets released and dedicated to the memory of Ian. Who knows what else will happen, but it will be worth hanging around to find out.

Taken from the Fiat Lux facebook page.