The Masters of Drone

The Masters of Drone concept was as an umbrella term to encompass all the bands and personnel of the bands that Simon, Graham, George and Marc were part of – perhaps similar to the wudness which has abounded for some time. The name and concept was coined by Simon, possibly during the Grosvenor Place days.

By this time the focus of wud activity had moved to 62 Victoria Street, that well-known house of plutting. It was not far to Cliff’s residence at Number Four and that notorious address of 7 Union Road where Dean was living, as well as the house in Powderham Crescent where strange things took place fairly often at the respective homes of Jack the Frag and Ben and Martin and others.

Graham, Marc and Simon all lived at Victoria Street at various times, and when resident landlord Chris the Squirrel went on holiday at Her Majesty’s convenience, increasingly wilder things took place there. An old Asteroids machine had taken up residence in the front room and Cliff especially would comment on how he could still see asteroids floating around his ceiling while he tried to sleep.

As an actual band, however, this was quite a bizarre and short-lived thing and featured Graham on drums, Marc on bass and George on guitar and vocals. It began around January 1986 and ceased to be due to lack of interest after just a few rehearsals.

George returned to his recordings and Graham and Marc (aka Atom Hat) went on to do more work as a drums-and-bass session duo and they worked with Simon in a new line-up of Laughing Sun.