About Clan of Xymox
Clan of Xymox, also known as simply Xymox, are a Dutch rock band formed in 1981 best known as pioneers of darkwave music. Clan of Xymox featured a trio of singer-songwriters – Ronny Moorings, Anka Wolbert, and Pieter Nooten – and gained success in the 1980s, releasing their first two albums on 4AD, before releasing their third and fourth albums on Wing Records and scoring a hit single in the United States. The band is still active, continuing to tour and release records with Moorings as the sole remaining original member.
Clan of Xymox were formed in Nijmegen, Netherlands, in 1983 by Ronny Moorings and Anka Wolbert . Wolbert stated of the band's formation:
Ronny and I met as students in Nijmegen and we connected over our taste in music. We started making music together and picked up some equipment to experiment with, like the Korg MS-10 and a rhythm machine...We started to perform live, just the two of us, changing instruments in between songs. While I had a bass guitar strapped around my neck and simultaneously hit the monophonic keyboard, Ronny played guitar and sang. We combined our sound with tape loops, a Casio, plus a few weird instruments.
About a year later, Moorings and Wolbert moved to Amsterdam, where they joined Pieter Nooten and Frank Weyzig, who added their own contributions. Assuming the name "Xymox" after the word zymotic , in 1983 the group released a five-track EP titled Subsequent Pleasures, limited to 500 copies.
The band was invited by Brendan Perry to support Dead Can Dance on a UK tour and were signed to the indie label 4AD, which released their eponymous debut album in 1985. The track 7th Time, with Anka Wolbert on lead vocals, was picked up by John Peel, leading to the band recording two of the Peel Sessions at the BBC, in June and November 1985. Peel referred to the band's dark and melancholic sound as "darkwave".
In 1986, they released their second and last album on 4AD, Medusa, before signing with PolyGram. Simultaneously, Pieter Nooten recorded and released his album Sleeps with the Fishes , in collaboration with Canadian session musician Michael Brook. In a 2010 interview with AlterNation Magazine, Moorings expressed disappointment at the divided interests of the band members at this stage, exclaiming Medusa's follow-up album was "made entirely independently, without the rest of the musicians, who were then on vacation."
Map & Directions To Venue
