Jimmy Cauty
|
|
James Cauty, Jimmy or Jimi, also known as Rockman Rock, was born in Devon, England in 1956 and not much is known about him until, as a 17-year old artist, he painted a popular Lord of the Rings poster (and later, a counterpart based on The Hobbit) for Athena. He has continued painting over the years, with his early reputation being "London artist, bohemian".
In 1981/2 he and (now wife) Cressida were in a band called Angels 1-5 which did a Peel session.
In 1984, Cauty took on guitarist duties with Brilliant, a pop trio in collaboration with singer June Montana and Killing Joke bassist Youth. (Youth said he "cut the original ten (or so) members of the band down to just him, June (Montana) and Jimmy...") Brilliant signed with WEA, where Jimmy first met Bill Drummond.
Following Brilliant and a brief stint with Zodiac Mindwarp and The Love Reaction, Cauty joined Drummond to form The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, a Situationist-inspired artistic collaboration that played out in various guises and media over much of the next decade, including an unlikely UK #1 hit as The Timelords with the seminal Gary Glitter/Dr. Who novelty-pop mash-up "Doctorin' The Tardis".
During this period, Cauty was also DJing alongside Dr. Alex Paterson at The Land Of Oz, the chill-out room at Paul Oakenfold's London club Heaven. Paterson and Cauty were soon recording and releasing material as The Orb. The partnership failed to gel, however, and after the release of the breakthrough ambient house single "A Huge Ever-Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre of The Ultraworld (Loving You)" Cauty left The Orb to refocus on his ongoing collaboration with Bill Drummond, by this time in full bloom as The KLF. Shortly thereafter, Cauty's contributions to what would have become the first Orb LP were released by KLF Communications as an ambient album entitled Space.
Following the dissolution of The KLF in 1992, Cauty and Drummond collaborated occasionally (K Foundation, The One World Orchestra) as Cauty continued his solo work under new aliases. He eventually called himself AAA (aka Triple-A, Advanced Acoustic Armorments) and experimented with low-frequency weapons that he bought from the British Ministry of Defence. His Squawk-EP was already listed by Blast First Records but like a lot of his projects this album was never released.
In 1999 Cauty produced several remixes under the alias The Scourge Of The Earth for artists such as Placebo, Marilyn Manson, Hawkwind, Ian Brown, The Orb etc. Then, in December 1999, he was joined by Guy Pratt and they released the cellphone-themed novelty-pop record "I Wanna 1-2-1 With You" under the name Solid Gold Chartbusters. Although it was intended to be Christmas number 1 it didn't even go top ten as BBC Radio 1 refused to play the song.
In 2000 Cauty worked on several new tracks for his new record company Crapola Records. Currently, together with James Fogarty and Keir Jens-Smith, he is part of art/music collective Blacksmoke. He has also begun collaborating with Alex Paterson again, as The Transit Kings.